Chapter VII: Part 7

You have observed what happens to the unfortunate questioner. What a sorry exhibition he makes of himself! No sooner does he open his mouth than every one recognizes his intellectual feebleness. He seems unable to grasp the simplest ideas. He stumbles at the first premise, and lies sprawling at the very threshold of the argument. "If what I have taken for granted be true," says the chairman, "do not all the fine things I have been telling you about follow necessarily?"

"But," murmurs the questioner, "the things you take for granted are just what trouble me. They don't correspond to my experience."

"Poor, feeble-minded questioner!" cry the members of the society, "to think that he is not even able to take things for granted! And then to set up his experience against our constitution and by-laws!"

We sometimes speak of an inconsequent, harum-scarum person, who is always going off after new ideas, as quixotic. But true Quixotism is grave, self-contained, conservative. Within its own sphere it is accurate and circumstantial. There is no absurdity in its mental processes; all that is concealed in its assumptions. Granted the reality of the scheme of knight-errantry, and Don Quixote becomes a solid, dependable man who will conscientiously carry it out. There is no danger of his going off into vagaries. He has a mind that will keep the roadway.

He is a sound critic, intolerant of minor incongruities. When the puppet-player tells about the bells ringing in the mosques of the Moorish town, the knight is quick to correct him. "There you are out, boy; the Moors have no bells; they only use kettledrums. Your ringing of bells in Sansuena is a mere absurdity." Such absurdities were not amusing; they were offensive to his serious taste.

The quixotic mind loves greatly the appearance of strict logic. It is satisfied if one statement is consistent with another statement; whether either is consistent with the facts of the case is a curious matter which it does not care to investigate. So much does it love Logic that it welcomes even that black sheep of the logical family, the Fallacy; and indeed the impudent fellow, with all his irresponsible ways, does bear a family resemblance which is very deceiving. Above all is there delight in that alluring mental exercise known as the argument in a circle. It is an intellectual merry-go-round. A hobby-horse on rockers is sport for tame intelligences, but a hobby that can be made to go round is exciting. You may see grave divines and astute metaphysicians and even earnest sociologists rejoicing in the swift sequence of their own ideas, as conclusion follows premise and premise conclusion, in endless gyration. How the daring riders clutch the bridles and exultingly watch the flying manes of their steeds! They have the sense of getting somewhere, and at the same time the comfortable assurance that that somewhere is the very place from which they started.

"Didn't we tell you so!" they cry. "Here we are again. Our arguments must be true, for we can't get away from them."

Your ordinary investigator is a disappointing fellow. His opinions are always at the mercy of circumstances over which he has no control. He cuts his coat according to his cloth, and sometimes when his material runs short his intellectual garments are more scanty than decency allows. Sometimes after a weary journey into the Unknown he will return with scarcely an opinion to his back. Not so with the quixotist. His opinions not being dependent on evidence, he does not measure different degrees of probability. Half a reason is as good as a whole one, for the result in any case is perfect assurance. All things conspire, in most miraculous fashion, to confirm him in his views. That other men think differently he admits, he even welcomes their skepticism as a foil to his faith. His imperturbable tolerance is like that of some knight who, conscious of his coat of mail, good-humoredly exposes himself to the assaults of the rabble. It amuses them, and does him no harm.

When Don Quixote had examined Mambrino's enchanted helmet, his candor compelled him to listen to Sancho's assertion that it was only a barber's basin. He was not disposed to controvert the evidence of the senses, but he had a sufficient explanation ready. "This enchanted helmet, by some strange accident, must have fallen into the possession of one who, ignorant of its true value as a helmet, and seeing it to be of the purest gold, hath inconsiderately melted down the one half for lucre's sake, and of the other half made this, which, as thou sayest, doth indeed look like a barber's basin; but to me, who know what it really is, its transformation is of no importance, for I will have it so repaired in the first town where there is a smith that it shall not be surpassed or even equaled. In the mean time I will wear it as I can, for something is better than nothing, and it will be sufficient to defend me from stones."

Where have you heard that line of argument, so satisfying to one who has already made up his mind? Yesterday, it runs, we had several excellent reasons for the opinion which we hold. Since then, owing to investigations which we imprudently entered into before we knew where we were coming out, all our reasons have been overthrown. This, however, makes not the slightest difference. It rather strengthens our general position, as it is no longer dependent on any particular evidence for its support.

We prate of the teaching of Experience. But did you ever know Experience to teach anything to a person whose ideas had set up an independent government of their own? The stern old dame has been much overrated as an instructor. Her pedagogical method is very primitive. Her instruction is administered by a series of hard whacks which the pupil is expected to interpret for himself. That something is wrong is evident; but what is it? It is only now and then that some bright pupil says, "That means that I made a mistake." As for persons of a quixotic disposition, the most adverse experience only confirms their pre-conceptions. At most the wisdom gained is prudential. After Don Quixote had made his first unfortunate trial of his pasteboard visor, "to secure it against like accidents in future he made it anew, and fenced it with thin plates of iron so skillfully that he had reason to be satisfied with his work, and so, without further experiment, resolved that it should pass for a good and sufficient helmet."

One is tempted to linger over that moment when Quixote ceased to experiment and began to dogmatize. What was the reason of his sudden dread of destructive criticism? Was he quite sincere? Did he really believe that his helmet was now cutlass proof?

For myself, I have no doubts of his knightly honor and of his transparent candor. He certainly believed that he believed; though under the circumstances he felt that it was better to take no further risks.

In his admirable discourse with Don Fernando on the comparative merits of arms and literature, he describes the effects of the invention of gunpowder.

"When I reflect on this I am almost tempted to say that in my heart I repent of having adopted the profession of knight-errantry in so detestable an age as we live in. For though no peril can make me fear, still it gives me some uneasiness to think that powder and lead may rob me of the opportunity of making myself famous and renowned throughout the world by the might of my arm and the edge of my sword."

There is here a bit of uneasiness, such as comes to any earnest person who perceives that the times are out of joint. Still the doubt does not go very deep. In an age of artillery knight-errantry is doubtless more difficult, but it does not seem impossible.

It is the same feeling that must come now and then to a gallant twentieth-century Jacobite who meets with his fellow conspirators in an American city, to lament the untimely taking off of the blessed martyr King Charles, and to plot for the return of the House of Stuart. The circumstances under which they meet are not congenial. The path of loyalty is not what it once was. A number of things have happened since 1649; still they may be treated as negligible quantities. It is a fine thing to sing about the king coming to his own again.

"But what if there isn't any king to speak of?"

"Well, at any rate, the principle is the same."

I occasionally read a periodical devoted to the elevation of mankind by means of a combination of deep breathing and concentrated thought. The object is one in which I have long been interested. The means used are simple. The treatment consists in lying on one's back for fifteen minutes every morning with arms outstretched. Then one must begin to exhale self and inhale power. The directions are given with such exactness that no one with reasonably good lungs can go astray. The treatment is varied according to the need. One may in this way breathe in, not only health and love, but, what may seem to some more important, wealth.

The treatment for chronic impecuniosity is particularly interesting. The patient, as he lies on his back and breathes deeply, repeats, "I am Wealth." This sets the currents of financial success moving in his direction.

One might suppose that a theory of finance so different from that of the ordinary workaday world would be surrounded by an air of weirdness or strangeness. Not at all. Everything is most matter of fact. The Editor is evidently a sensible person when it comes to practical details, and, on occasion, gives admirable advice.

A correspondent writes: "I have tried your treatment for six months, and I am obliged to say that I am harder up than ever before. What do you advise?"

It is one of those obstinate cases which are met with now and then, and which test the real character of the practitioner. The matter is treated with admirable frankness, and yet with a wholesome optimism. The patient is reminded that six months is a short time, and one must not expect too quick results. A slow, sure progress is better, and the effects are more lasting. This is not the first case that has been slow in yielding to treatment. Still it may be better to make a slight change. The formula, "I am Wealth," may be too abstract, though it usually has worked well. A more concrete thought might possibly be more effective. Why not try, remembering, of course, to continue the same breathings, "I am Andrew Carnegie?"

Then the practitioner adds a bit of advice which was certainly worth the moderate fee charged: "When the exercises are over, ask yourself what Andrew would do next. Andrew would hustle."

A slight acquaintance with the pseudo sciences which are in vogue at the present day reveals a world to which only the genius of Cervantes could do justice. We see Absurdity clothed, and in its right mind. It is formally correct, punctiliously exact, completely serious, and withal high-minded. Until it comes in contact with the actual world we do not realize that it is absurd.

Religion and medicine have always furnished tempting fields for persons of the quixotic temper. Perhaps it is because their professed objects are so high, and perhaps also because their achievements fall so far below what we have been led to expect. Neither spiritual nor mental health is so robust as to satisfy us with the usual efforts in their behalf. Sin and sickness are continual challenges. Some one ought to abolish them. An eager hearing is given to any one who claims to be able to do so. The temptation is great for those who do not perceive the difference between words and things to answer the demands.

It is not necessary to go for examples either to fanatics or quacks. Not to take too modern an instance, there was Bishop Berkeley! He was a true philosopher, an earnest Christian, and withal a man of sense, and yet he was the author of "Siris, a Chain of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries concerning the Virtues of Tar Water, and divers other Subjects connected together, and arising One from Another." It is one of those works which are the cause of wit in other men. It is so learned, so exhaustive, so pious, and the author takes it with such utter seriousness!

Tar is the good bishop's Dulcinea. All his powers are enlisted in the work of proclaiming the matchless virtues of this mistress of his imagination, who is "black but comely." Our minds are prepared by a lyric outburst:--

"Hail, vulgar Juice of never-fading Pine!
Cheap as thou art! thy virtues are divine,
To show them and explain (such is thy store),
There needs much modern and much ancient Lore."

For this great work the author is well equipped. Plato, Aristotle, Pliny, and the rest of the ancients appear as vanquished knights compelled to do honor to my Lady Tar.

Other specifics are allowed to have their virtues, but they grow pale before this paragon. Common soap has its admirers; they are treated magnanimously, but compelled to surrender at last. "Soap is allowed to be cleansing, attenuating, opening, resolving, sweetening; it is pectoral, vulnerary, diuretic, and hath other good qualities; which are also found in tar water.... Tar water therefore is a soap, and as such hath all the medicinal qualities of soaps." To those who put their faith in vinegar a like argument is made. It is shown that tar water is not only a superior kind of soap, but also a sublimated sort of vinegar; in fact, it appears to be all things to all men.

To those who incline to the philosophy of the ancient fire-worshipers a special argument is made. "I had a long Time entertained an Opinion agreeable to the Sentiments of many ancient Philosophers, that Fire may be regarded as the Animal Spirit of this visible World. And it seemed to me that the attracting and secreting of this Fire in the various Pores, Tubes, and Ducts of Vegetables, did impart their specifick Virtues to each kind, that this same Light, or Fire, was the immediate Cause of Sense and Motion, and consequently of Life and Health to animals; that on Account of this Solar Light or Fire, Phoebus was in the ancient Mythology reputed the God of Medicine. Which Light as it is leisurely introduced, and fixed in the viscid juice of old Firs and Pines, so setting it free in Part, that is, the changing its viscid for a volatile Vehicle, which may mix with Water, and convey it throughout the Habit copiously and inoffensively, would be of infinite Use in Physic." It appears therefore that tar water is not only a kind of soap, but also a kind of fire.

Yet is not Quixote himself more careful to avoid all appearance of extravagance? The author shrinks from imposing conclusions on another. After an elaborate argument which moves irresistibly to one conclusion, he stops short. "This regards the Possibility of a Panacea in general; as for Tar Water in particular, I do not say it is a Panacea, I only suspect it to be so." Yet he must be a churlish reader who could go with him so far and then refuse to take the next step. Nor can a right-minded person be indifferent to the moral argument in favor of "Tar Water, Temperance, and Early Hours." If tar water is to be known by the company it keeps, it is to be commended.

There is a great advantage in taking our example from another age than ours. Our enjoyment of the bishop's Quixotism does not cast discredit on any similar hobby of our own day. "However," as the author of Siris remarked, "it is hoped they will not condemn one Man's Tar Water for another Man's Pill or Drop, any more than they would hang one Man for another's having stole a Horse."

Indeed, of all quixotic notions the most extreme is that of those who think that Quixotism can be overcome by any direct attack. It is a state of mind which must be accepted as we accept any other curious fact. As well tilt against a cloud as attempt to overcome it by argument. It is a part of the myth-making faculty of the human mind. A myth is a quixotic notion which takes possession of multitudes rather than of a single person. Everybody accepts it; nobody knows why. You can nail a lie, but you cannot nail a myth,--there is nothing to nail it to. It is of no use to deny it, for that only gives it a greater vogue.

I have great sympathy for all mythical characters. It is possible that Hercules may have been an amiable Greek gentleman of sedentary habits. Some one may have started the story of his labors as a joke. In the next town it was taken seriously, and the tale set forth on its travels. After it once had been generally accepted, what could Hercules do? What good would it have been for him to say, "There's not a word of truth in what everybody is saying about me. I am as averse to a hard day's work as any gentleman of my social standing in the community. They are turning me into a sun-myth, and mixing up my private affairs with the signs of the zodiac! I won't stand it!"

Bless me! he would have to stand it! His words would but add fuel to the flame of admiration. What a hero he is; so strong and so modest! He has already forgotten those feats of strength! It is ever so with greatness. To Hercules it was all mere child's play. All the more need that we keep the stories alive in order to hand them down to our children. Perhaps we had better touch them up a bit so that they may be more interesting to the little dears. And so would begin a new cycle of myths.

After Socrates had once gained the reputation for superlative wisdom, do you think it did any good for him to go about proclaiming that he knew nothing? He was suspected of having some ulterior design. Nobody would believe him except Xanthippe.

When after hearing strange noises in the night Don Quixote sallies forth only to discover that the sounds come from fulling hammers instead of from giants, he rebukes the ill-timed merriment of his squire. "Come hither, merry sir! Suppose these mill hammers had really been some perilous adventure, have I not given proof of the courage requisite to undertake and achieve it? Am I, being a knight, to distinguish between sounds, and to know which are and which are not those of a fulling mill, more especially as I have never seen any fulling mills in my life?"

If the mill hammers could only be transformed into giants, how easy the path of reform! for it would satisfy the primitive instinct to go out and kill something. I have heard a temperance orator denounce the Demon Drink so roundly that every one in the audience was ready to destroy the monster on sight. The solution of the liquor problem, however, was quite a different matter. The young patriot who conceives of the money power under the terrifying image of an octopus resolves at once to give it battle. When elected to the legislature he meets many smooth-spoken gentlemen whose schemes are so plausible that he readily assents to them,--but not an octopus does he see. Yet I believe that were he to see an octopus he would slay it.

Perhaps there is no better test of a person's nature than his attitude toward Quixotism. The man of coarse, unfriendly humor sees in it nothing but a broad farce. He greets the misadventures of Don Quixote with a loud guffaw. What a fool he was not to know the difference between an ordinary inn and a castle!

There are persons of a sensitive and refined disposition to whom it is all a tragedy, exquisitely painful to contemplate. Alas, poor gentleman, with all his lofty ideals, to be so buffeted by a world unworthy of him!

But this refinement of sentiment comes perilously near to sentimentalism. Cervantes had the more wholesome attitude. He appreciated the valor of Don Quixote. It was genuine, though the knight, owing to circumstances beyond his own control, had been compelled to make his visor out of pasteboard. He had heroism of soul; but what of it! There was plenty more where it came from. A man who had fought at Lepanto, and endured years of Algerine captivity, was not inclined to treat manly virtue as if it were a rare and delicate fabric that must be preserved in a glass case. It was amply able to take care of itself. He knew that he couldn't laugh genuine chivalry away, even if he tried. It could stand not only hard knocks from its foes, but any amount of raillery from its friends.

The bewildered soldier who mistakes a harmless camp follower for the enemy must expect to endure the gibes of his comrades; yet no one doubts that he would have acquitted himself nobly if the enemy had appeared. The rough humor of the camp is a part of its wholesome discipline.

Quixotism is a combination of goodness and folly. To enjoy it one must be able to appreciate them both at the same time. It is a pleasure possible only to one who is capable of having mixed feelings.

When we consider the faculty which many good people have of believing things that are not so, and ignoring the plainest facts and laws of nature, we are sometimes alarmed over the future of society. If any of the Quixotisms which are now in vogue should get themselves established, what then?

Fortunately there is small need of anxiety. When the landsman first ventures on the waves he observes with alarm the keeling over of the boat under the breeze, for he expects the tendency to be followed to its logical conclusion. Fortunately for the equilibrium of society, tendencies which are viewed with alarm are seldom carried to their logical conclusion. They are met by other tendencies before the danger point is reached, and the balance is restored.

The factor which is overlooked by those who fear the ascendency of any quixotic notion is the existence of the average man. This individual is not a striking personality, but he holds the balance of power. Before any extravagant idea can establish itself it must convert the average man. He is very susceptible, and takes a suggestion so readily that it seems to prophesy the complete overthrow of the existing order of things. But was ever a conversion absolute? The best theologians say no. A great deal of the old Adam is always left over. When the average man takes up with a quixotic notion, only so much of it is practically wrought out as he is able to comprehend. The old Adam of common sense continually asserts itself. The natural corrective of Quixotism is Sancho-Panzaism. The solemn knight, with his head full of visionary plans, is followed by a squire who is as faithful as his nature will permit. Sancho has no theories, and makes no demands on the world. He leaves that sort of thing to his master. He has the fatalism which belongs to ignorant good nature, and the tolerance which is found in easy-going persons who have neither ideals nor nerves. He has no illusions, though he has all the credulity of ignorance.

He belongs to the established order of things, and can conceive no other. When knight-errantry is proposed to him, he reduces that also to the established order. He takes it up as an honest livelihood, and rides forth in search of forlorn maidens with the same contented jog with which he formerly went to the village mill. When it is explained that faithful squires become governors of islands he approves of the idea, and begins to cherish a reasonable ambition. Knight-errantry is brought within the sphere of practical politics. Sancho has no stomach for adventures. When his master warns him against attacking knights, until such time as he has himself reached their estate, he answers:--

"Never fear, I'll be sure to obey your worship in that, I'll warrant you; for I ever loved peace and quietness, and never cared to thrust myself into frays and quarrels."

When Sancho becomes governor of his snug, land-locked island, there is not a trace of Quixotism in his executive policy. The laws of Chivalry have no recognition in his administration; and everything is carried on with most admirable common sense.

It is an experience which is quite familiar to the readers of history. "All who knew Sancho," moralizes the author, "wondered to hear him talk so sensibly, and began to think that offices and places of trust inspire some men with understanding, as they stupefy and confound others."

Mother wit has a great way of evading the consequences of theoretical absurdities. Natural law takes care of itself, and preserves the balance. So long as Don Quixote can get no other follower than Sancho Panza, we need not be alarmed. There is no call for a society for the Preservation of Windmills.

After all, there is an ambiguity about Quixotism. They laugh best who laugh last; and we are not sure that satire has the last word. Was Don Quixote as completely mistaken as he seemed? He mistook La Mancha for a land of romance, and wandered through it as if it were an enchanted country.

The Commentator explains to us that in this lay the jest, for no part of Spain was so vulgarly commonplace. Its villages were destitute of charm, and its landscape of beauty. La Mancha was a name for all that was unromantic.

"I cannot make it appear so," says the Gentle Reader, who has come under the spell of Cervantes. "Don Quixote seems to be wandering through the most romantic country in the world. I can see

'The long, straight line of the highway,
The distant town that seems so near,

* * * * *

White crosses in the mountain pass,
Mules gay with tassels, the loud din
Of muleteers, the tethered ass
That crops the dusty wayside grass,
And cavaliers with spurs of brass
Alighting at the inn;

White hamlets hidden in fields of wheat,

* * * * *

White sunshine flooding square and street,
Dark mountain-ranges, at whose feet
The river-beds are dry with heat,--
All was a dream to me.'

"Through this enchanted country it is pleasant to wander about in irresponsible fashion, climbing mountains, loitering in secluded valleys, where shepherds and shepherdesses still make love in Arcadian fashion, meeting with monks, merchants, muleteers, and fine gentlemen, and coming in the evening to some castle where one is lulled to sleep by the splash of fountains and the tinkle of guitars; and if it should turn out that the castle is only an inn,--why, to lodge in an inn of La Mancha would be a romantic experience!"

The Spain of the sixteenth century is to us as truly a land of romance as any over which a knight-errant roamed. It seems just suited for heroic adventure.

Some day our quixotic characters may appear to the future reader thus magically conformed to the world they live in, or rather, the world may be transformed by their ideals.

"They do seem strange to us," the Gentle Reader of that day will say, "but then we must remember that they lived in the romantic dawn of the twentieth century."

Intimate Knowledge and Delight

IN the affairs of the mind we are all "Indian givers." We will part with our most cherished convictions for a merely nominal consideration, such as "for the sake of the argument,"--even when we do not really care for arguments. But let no one be deceived into thinking that this is the end. Renunciation usually has some mental reservation, or at least some saving ambiguity.

You may see a saint, in his enthusiasm for disinterested virtue, give up all claim to personal happiness. But does he expect to be taken at his word and to live miserably ever after? Not he! Already, if he be a true saint, he has begun to enjoy the beatific vision.

I know a teacher of religion who is inclined to rebel against what seems to him to be the undue emphasis upon faith. For himself, it seems a wholesome thing to do a little doubting now and then, and he looks upon this as a religious exercise. He affirms that the characteristic attitudes of the spiritual man can be expressed in terms of skepticism as well as of belief. It is all one whether the matter be put positively or negatively. Materialism he treats as a form of dogmatism based on the appearance of things. The religious mind is incredulous of this explanation of the universe and subjects it to a destructive criticism. The soul of man is full of "obstinate questionings of sense and outward things." Yet this same person, when he forgets his argument, is apt to talk like the rest of us. After all, it is some kind of faith that he is after, even when he pursues it by the methods of skepticism. In his most radical moods he never lets his convictions slip away from him; at least, they never go so far away that he cannot get them again.

In like manner I must confess that I am an Indian giver. In giving over to Science all claim to the domain of Knowledge, and reserving to my friend the Gentle Reader only the right of way over the picturesque but less fruitful fields of Ignorance, I was actuated by the purest motives. At the time it seemed very magnanimous, and, moreover, it saved the trouble of a doubtful contest.

But now that so much has been given away, I am visited by compunctions, and, if it is not too late, I will take back part of the too generous gift. Let us make a distinction, and instead of treating knowledge as if it were indivisible, let us speak, after the manner of Swedenborg, of knowledges. The greater number of knowledges we will make over without question to Science and Philosophy; the knowledges which are concerned with laws and forces and with the multitudinous facts which are capable of classification. But for the Gentle Reader and his kind let us reserve the claim to a knowledge of some things which cannot be classified. I hardly believe that they will be missed; they are not likely to be included in any scientific inventory; their value is chiefly in personal association.

There is a knowledge of persons as well as of things, and in particular there is a knowledge of certain persons to whom one is drawn in close friendship. Emerson, in his essay on Milton, speaks of those who come to the poet with "intimate knowledge and delight." It is, after all, convenient to treat this feeling of delightful intimacy as a kind of knowledge. If it is not that, what is it?

The peculiarity of this kind of knowledge is that it is impossible to formulate it; and that the very attempt to do so is an offence. The unpardonable sin against friendship is to merge the person in a class. Think of an individual as an adult Caucasian, "an inhabitant of North America, belonging to the better classes," as to religion a moderate churchman, in politics a Republican, and you may accumulate a number of details interesting enough in a stranger. You may in this way "know where to place him." But if you do actually place him there, and treat him accordingly, he has ceased to be your friend.

A friend is unique. He belongs to no categories. He is not a case, nor the illustration of a thesis. Your interest is neither pathological nor anthropological nor statistical. You are concerned not with what he is like, but with what he is. There is an element of jealous exclusiveness in such knowledge.

In the Song of Songs, after the ecstatic praise of the beloved, the question is asked:--

"What is thy beloved more than any other beloved, that thou dost so
adjure us?"

The answer is a description of his personal perfections:--

"My beloved is white and ruddy,

* * * * *

His locks are bushy, and black as a raven.
His eyes are like doves beside the water brooks.

* * * * *

His aspect is like Lebanon, excellent as the cedars,
His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely.
This is my beloved, and this is my friend,
O daughters of Jerusalem."

Do you think that the daughters of Jerusalem would be so tactless as to reply that they had seen a number of handsome youths with bushy black hair and languishing eyes and fine forms, and that they represented an admirable type of manly beauty? That would be to confess that they had not seen the beloved, for he was unlike all others. "My beloved is marked out with a banner among ten thousand."

The knowledge that is required is not contained in a catalogue of the points in which he resembles the nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine; it is a recognition of the incommunicable grace that is his own.

Even in ordinary social intercourse the most delicate compliment is to treat the person with whom you are talking as an exception to all rules. That he is a clergyman or a commercial traveler tells you nothing of his inner life. That is left for him to reveal, if it so pleases him. Even a king grows tired of being addressed in terms appropriate to royalty. It is a relief to travel incognito, and he is flattered when he is assured that no one suspects his station in life. It makes him feel that he is not like the ordinary run of kings.

No one likes to be pigeon-holed or reduced to a formula. We resent being classed as old or middle-aged or young. Why should we be confounded with our coevals? We may not be any better than they are; but we are different. Nor is it pleasant to have our opinions treated as if they were the necessary product of social forces. There is something offensive in the curiosity of those who are all the time asking how we came by our ideas. What if they do bear a general resemblance to those of the honest people who belong to our party and who read the same newspaper. We do not care to be reminded of these chance coincidences. Because one has found it convenient and economical to buy a ready-made suit of clothing, it does not follow that he is willing to wear the tag which contains the statement of the price and size. These labels were very useful so long as the garment was kept in stock by the dealer, but the information that they convey is now irrelevant.

This sensitiveness in regard to personal identity is strangely lacking in many modern students of literature. They treat the man of genius as a phenomenon, to be explained by other phenomena and used to illustrate a general law. They love to deal in averages and aggregates. They describe minutely the period to which a writer belongs, its currents of thought, its intellectual limitations, and its generally received notions. With a knowledge of antecedent conditions there is the expectancy of a certain type of man as the result. Our minds are prepared for some one who resembles the composite photograph which is first presented to us. We are, for example, given an elaborate account of the Puritan movement in England. We form a conception of what the Puritan was, and then we are introduced to Milton. Our preconceptions stand in the way of personal sympathy.

The method of the Gentle Reader is more direct. He is fortunate enough to have read Milton before he has read much about him, and he returns to the reading with ever fresh delight. He does not think of him as belonging to a past age. He is a perpetual contemporary. The seventeenth century gave color to his words, but it did not limit his genius.

Seventeenth century Independency might be, as a general thing, lacking in grace, but when we turn away from Praise-God-Barebones to John Milton we find it transformed into a--

"divine philosophy,
Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets."

Into its austere beauty, into its wide free spaces, into its sensuous charms, no one but Milton can conduct us. We must follow not as those who know beforehand what is to be seen or heard, but as those who are welcomed by a generous householder who brings out of his treasures things new and old.

We come upon a sublime spirit--

"Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free."

That is Milton; but it is Milton also who can sing of--

"Jest and youthful Jollity,
Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles,
Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek,
And love to live in dimple sleek,
Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides."

If this be Puritanism, it is Puritanism with a difference. Did any one in a few words give such a picture of mirth--

"So buxom, blithe, and debonair?"

Was this the real Milton? Why not? His radiant youth was as real as his blindness and his old age. And Milton the political pamphleteer was real too, though his language was not always that which might have been expected from the author of "Paradise Lost." We pass lightly over pages of vituperation which any one might have written, and then come upon splendid passages which could have come from him alone. The sentiment of democratic equality is invested with a dignity which makes all the pretensions of privileged orders seem vulgar. Here is the Milton who is invoked to--

"Give us manners, virtue, freedom, power!"

In these moments we become aware of a man who was not to be explained by any general rule.

To one who takes delight in the personality of Milton, even "Paradise Lost" is not a piece of unmitigated sublimity. It is full of self-revelations. The reader who has come to share Milton's passion for personal liberty and scorn for a "fugitive and cloistered virtue" is curious to know how he will treat his new theme. In the "Areopagitica" he had frankly treated the "Fall of Man" as a "fall upward." "Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed on Psyche as an increased labor to cull out and sort asunder, were not more intermixt. And perhaps that is the doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil; that is to say, of knowing good by evil. As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil.... That virtue, therefore, which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not a pure.... Since, therefore, the knowledge and survey of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely and with less danger scout into the region of sin and falsity than by reading all manner of tractates and hearing all manner of reasons."

What would such an adventurous spirit make

"Of man's first Disobedience and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World and all our woe,
With loss of Eden"?

What would Milton make of Adam in his sheltered Paradise? And what would one whose whole life had been a passionate protest against the idea of submission to mere arbitrary power do with the element of arbitrariness which the theology of his day attributed to the Divine Ruler? And what of Satan?

"One who brings
A mind not to be changed by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same?"

There is a note in that proud creed that could not be altogether uncongenial to one who in his blindness could--

"still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The Conscience, Friend, t' have lost them overplied
In liberty's defense, my noble task;
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
This thought might lead me through this World's vain mask
Content though blind, had I no better Guide."

In its ostensible plot "Paradise Lost" is a tragedy; but did Milton really feel it to be so? One fancies--though he may be mistaken--that as Adam and Eve leave Paradise he hears a sigh of relief from the poet, who was himself ever a lover of "the Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty." At any rate, there is an undertone of cheer.

"Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon,
The World was all before them where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide."

Adam, when the old sheltered life is over, and the possibilities of the new life of struggle were revealed,--

"Replete with joy and wonder thus replied.
O goodness infinite, goodness immense!
That all this good of evil shall produce,
And evil turn to good; more wonderful
Than that which by creation first brought forth
Light out of darkness! full of doubt I stand,
Whether I should repent me now of sin
By me done and occasioned or rejoice
Much more that much more good thereof shall spring."

That Adam should treat the loss of Eden in such a casual manner, and that he should express a doubt as to whether the estate into which his fall plunged the race was not better than one in which no moral struggle was necessary, was not characteristic of seventeenth-century theology,--but it was just like Milton.

There is no knowledge so intimate as that possessed by the reader of one book. It is an esoteric joy. The wisdom of the ages concentrated into one personality and then graciously communicated to the disciple has a flavor of which the multitudes of mere scholars know nothing. To them Wisdom is a public character.

"Doth not Wisdom cry,
And understanding put forth her voice?
In the top of high places
Where the paths meet she standeth."

But the disciple is not content with such publicity. He shuns the crowded highways, and delights to hear wisdom speaking in confidential tones.

In a little settlement in the far West I once met a somewhat depressed-looking man who remained silent till a chance remark brought a glow of enthusiasm to his eyes.

"Oh," he cried, "you have been reading the Ruins."

My remark had been of a kind that needed no special reading to account for it. It merely expressed one of those obvious truths which are likely to occur to the majority of persons. But to him it seemed so reasonable that it could only come from the one source of wise thought with which he was acquainted.

"The Ruins" proved to be a translation of Volney's "Ruins of Empire." I fear that I must have given the impression of greater familiarity with that work than was warranted by the facts, for my new-found friend received me as a member of the true brotherhood. His tongue was unloosed, and his intellectual passions, so long pent up, were freed. Had we not both read "The Ruins"! It was to him more than a book; it was a symbol of the unutterable things of the mind. It was a passionate protest against the narrow opinions of his neighbors. It stood for all that was lifted above the petty gossip of the little community, and for all that united him to an intellectual world of which he dreamed.

As we talked I marveled at the amount of sound philosophy this lonely reader had extracted from "The Ruins." Or had it been that he had brought the wisdom from his own meditation and deposited it at this shrine? One can never be sure whether a text has suggested the thought or the thought has illuminated the text.

When it happens that the man of one book has chosen a work of intrinsic value, the result is a kind of knowledge which is of inestimable worth. It is deeply interfused with the whole imaginative life, it is involved in every personal experience.

The supreme example of such intimate knowledge was that which generations of English speaking men had of the Bible. Apart from any religious theory, this familiarity was a wonderful fact in the history of culture. It meant that the ordinary man was not simply in his youth but throughout his life brought into direct contact with great poetry, sublime philosophy, vivid history. These were not reserved for state occasions; they were the daily food of the mind. Into the plain fabric of western thought was woven a thread of Oriental sentiment. Children were as familiar with the names and incidents of remote ages and lands as with their own neighborhood.

The important things about this culture of the common people was that it came through mere reading. The Bible was printed "without note or comment." The lack of critical apparatus and of preliminary training was the cause of many incidental mistakes; but it prevented the greatest mistake of all,--that of obscuring the text by the commentary.

In these days there has been a great advance in critical scholarship. Much more is known about the Bible, at least by those who have made it the object of special study; but there is a suspicion that fewer persons know the Bible than in the days when there were no "study classes," but only the habit of daily reading.

The Protestant insistence upon publishing the Scriptures without note or comment was an effort to do away with the middle-men who stood between the Book and its readers. Private judgment, it was declared, was a sufficient interpreter even of the profoundest utterances. This is a doctrine that needs to be revived and extended till it takes in all great literature.

To come to a book as to a friend, to allow it to speak for itself, without the intrusion of a third person, this is the substance of the whole matter. There must be no hard and fast rules, no preconceived opinions. Because the author has a reputation as a humorist, let him not be received with an expectant smile. Nothing can be more disconcerting to his sensitive spirit; and besides, how can you know that he has not a very serious message to communicate? Because he is said to be capable of sublimity, do not await him with overstrained sensibilities. Perhaps you may find him much less sublime and much more entertaining than you had anticipated. If the sublime vision does come, you will appreciate it all the more if it comes upon you unawares.

"As cloud on cloud, as snow on snow, as the bird on the air, and the planet on space in its flight, so do nations of men and their institutions rest on thoughts."

If this be so, can there be any knowledge more important than the knowledge of what a man actually thinks. "A penny for your thoughts," we say lightly, knowing well that this hidden treasure cannot be bought. The world may be described in formal fashion as if it were an unchanging reality; but how the world appears to each inhabitant of it he alone can declare. Or perhaps he cannot declare it, for most of us find it impossible to tell what we really think or feel. In attempting to do it we fall into conventionality, and succeed only in telling what we think other people would like to have us think. Only now and then is one born with the gift of true self-expression. In his speech we recognize a real person, and not the confused murmur of a multitude. Institutions and traditions do not account for him; this thought is the more fundamental fact. Here is a unique bit of knowledge. There is no other way of getting at it than that of the Gentle Reader,--to shut out the rest of the world and listen to the man himself.

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The Riverside Press _Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._

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The following typographical error was corrected by the etext transcriber:

the surprise of the Frenchman over the pirate's immaculate attire.=>the surprise of the Frenchman over the pirates' immaculate attire.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Gentle Reader, by Samuel McChord Crothers