I cannot help wondering what the substance was which my
fellow-traveller to-day was consuming under the outward guise of
cigarettes. It had a scent that was at once strange and afflicting. It
was no more like tobacco than tobacco is like violets. It seemed as
though it must have been carefully prepared and procured for some
unknown purpose, but it was impossible to connect pleasure with it. It
had a corroding mineral scent, and must have been digged, I think, out
of the bowels of the surely not harmless earth. And the man himself! He
was primly and precisely dressed, but he had an indefinable resemblance
to a goat; his hair curled like horns; and he had the thin, restless,
sneering lips, the impudent, inexpressive eyes of the goat. I found
myself curiously oppressed by him. I hated his slow, deliberate
movements; the idea that the air he breathed should mingle with the air
of the carriage, and be transferred to my own lungs and blood, was
horrible to me. I pitied those who had to serve him, and the relations
compelled to own him. Yet I cannot trace the origin of this deep
repugnance. There are innumerable natural objects far more hideous and
outwardly repellent, but which yet do not possess this nauseating
quality. Such shuddering hostility may lie far deeper than the outward
appearance, and arise from some innate enmity of soul. It is a wholly
unreasonable thing, no doubt, and yet it transcends all reason and
surmounts all moral principle. I should not, I hope, refuse to help or
succour such a man if he were in need or pain; but I do not wish to see
him or to be near him, nor can I desire that he should continue to
exist.
It is an interesting question how far it is allowable to dislike other
people. Of course we are bound to love our enemies if we can, but even
the Gospel sets us an example of unbounded and uncompromising
denunciation, in the case of the Pharisees. It is the habit of
preachers to say that when we are dealing with detestable and
impossible people we should perform that subtle metaphysical process
that is described as hating the sin and loving the sinner. But that is
surely a very difficult thing to do? It is like saying that when one is
contemplating a very ugly and repulsive face, we are to dislike the
ugliness of it but admire the face; and the fact remains that it is an
extremely difficult and complicated thing to do to separate an
individual from his qualities. The most one can say is that one might
like him if he were different from what he is; but as long as that
remains what the grammarians call an unfulfilled condition, one's
liking is of a very impersonal nature. Such a statement as that one
would like a person well enough if he were only not what he is, is like
the speech that was parodied by Archbishop Whately in the House of
Lords. A speaker was recommending a measure on the ground that it would
be a very satisfactory one if only the conditions which it was meant to
meet were different. "As much as to say," said Whately to his neighbour
on the conclusion of the speech, "that if my aunt were a man, he would
be my uncle."
Of course the thing is easy enough when one is dealing, say, with a
fine and generous nature which is disfigured by a conspicuous fault. If
a man who is otherwise lovable and admirable has occasional outbursts
of spiteful and vicious ill-temper, it is possible to love him, because
one can conceive of him without the particular fault. But there are
some faults that permeate and soak through a man's whole character, as
in the Cornish _squab pie_, where an excellent pasty of bacon,
potatoes, and other agreeable commodities is penetrated throughout with
the oily flavour of a young cormorant which is popped in at the top
just before the pie is baked.
If a man is malignant or unreliable or mean or selfish, the savour of
his fault has a way of noisomely imbuing all his qualities, especially
if he is not aware of the deficiency. If a man is humbly and sadly
aware of the thing that is vile, if he makes clumsy and lamentable
attempts to get rid of it, one may pity him so much that one may almost
find oneself admiring him. One feels that he is made so, that he cannot
wholly help it, and we lose ourselves in wondering why a human being
should be so strangely hampered. But if a man displays an odious fault
complacently; if he takes mean advantage of other people, and frankly
considers people fools who do not condescend to the same devices; if he
gives one to understand that he dislikes and despises one; if he
reserves a spiteful respect only for those who can beat him with his
own weapons; if he is vulgar, snobbish, censorious, unkind, and
self-satisfied into the bargain, it is very hard to say what the duty
of a Christian is in the matter. I met the other day, at a country
house, a man whom I will frankly confess that I disliked. He was a
tall, grim-looking man, of uncompromising manners, who told
interminable stories, mostly to the discredit of other people--"not
leaving Lancelot brave or Galahad clean." His chief pleasure seemed to
be in making his hearers uncomfortable. His stories were undeniably
amusing, but left a bad taste in the mouth. He had an attentive
audience, mainly, I think, because most of us were afraid to say what
we thought in his presence. He was a man of wide and accurate
knowledge, and delighted in showing up other people's ignorance. I
suppose the truest courage would have been to withstand him boldly, or,
better still, to attempt to convert him to a more generous view of
life. But it did not seem worth the trouble; it was impossible to argue
with him successfully, and his conversion seemed more a thing to be
prayed for than to be attempted. One aged and genial statesman who was
present did indeed, by persistent courtesy, contrive to give him a few
moments of uneasiness; and the sympathies of the party were so plainly
on the side of the statesman that even our tyrant appeared to suspect
that urbanity was sometimes a useful quality. We all breathed more
freely when he took his departure, and there was a general sense of
heightened enjoyment abroad.
Yet it is impossible to compassionate such a man, because he does not
need compassion. He is perfectly satisfied with his position; he does
not want people to like him--he would consider that to be sentimental,
and for sentiment of every kind he has a profound abhorrence. His view
of himself is, I suppose, of a brilliant and capable man who holds his
own and makes himself felt. The only result on the mind, from
contemplating him, is that one revels in the possibility of
metempsychosis and pictures him as being born again to some dreary and
thankless occupation, a scavenger or a sewer-cleaner, or, better still,
penned in the body of some absurd and inefficient animal, a slug or a
jelly-fish, where he might learn to be passive and contemptible.
Meanwhile it is true, of course, that the most detestable people
generally do improve upon acquaintance. I have seldom spent any length
of time in the enforced society of a disagreeable person without
finding that I liked him better at the end than at the beginning. Very
often one finds that the disagreeable qualities are used as a sort of
defensive panoply, and that they are the result, to a certain extent,
of unhappy experiences. Since I met our friend I have learnt a fact
about him, which makes me view him in a somewhat different light, I
have discovered that he was bullied at school. I am inclined to believe
that his fondness for bullying other people is mainly the result of
this, and that it arises partly from a rooted belief that other people
are malevolent, and that the only method is to exhibit his own spines;
partly also from a perverted sense of justice; on the ground that, as
he had to bear undeserved persecution in the days when he was
defenceless, it is but just that others should bear it in their turn.
He is like the cabin-boy Ransome in _Kidnapped_, who, being treated
with the grossest brutality by the officers, kept a rope's end of his
own to wallop the little ones with. I do not say that this is a
generous or high-hearted view of life. It would be better if he could
say _Miseris succurrere disco_. What he rather says, to parody the
words of the hermit in _Edwin and Angelina_, is--
"The flocks that range the valley free,
To slaughter I condemn;
Taught by the Power that bullies me,
I learn to bully them."
It is a poor consolation to say that the man who is not loved is
miserable. He is, if he desires to be loved and cannot attain it; if he
says, as Hazlitt said, "I cannot make out why everybody should dislike
me so." But if he does not want love in the least, while he gets what
he does desire--money, a place in the world, influence of a sort--then
he is not miserable at all, and it is idle to pretend that he is.
But if, as I say, one is condemned to the society of a disagreeable
person, it generally happens that on his discovering one to be harmless
and friendly he will furl his spines and become, if not an animal that
one can safely stroke, at least an animal whose proximity it is not
necessary to dread and avoid. One can generally establish a _modus
vivendi_, and unless the man is untrustworthy as well, one may hope to
live peacefully with him. The worst point about our friend is that he
is frankly jealous, and woe betide you if you gain any species of
reputation on lines that he does not approve. Then indeed nothing can
save you, because he resents your success as a personal injury done to
his own.
The truth is that anyone who has any pronounced views at all, any
definite strain of temperament, is sure to encounter people who are
entirely uncongenial. What one is bound to do is to realise that there
is abundant room for all kinds of personalities in the world, and it is
much better not to protest and censure unless one is absolutely certain
that the temperament one dislikes is a mischievous one. It is not
necessarily mischievous to be quarrelsome, though a peaceable person
may dislike it. There is no reason whatever why two quarrelsome people,
if they enjoy it, should not have a good set-to. What is mischievous is
if a man is brutal and tyrannical, and prefers a tussle with an
inoffensive person who is no match for him. That is a piece of
cowardice, and protest is more than justifiable. There is a fine true
story of a famous head-master, who disliked a weakling, putting on a
stupid, shy, and ungainly boy to construe, and making deliberate fun of
him. There was a boy present, of the stuff of which heroes are made,
who got up suddenly in his place and said, "You are not teaching that
boy, sir; you are bullying him." The head-master had the generosity to
bear his censurer no grudge for his outspokenness. But even if one is
sure that one's indignation is justified and that one's contempt is
deserved, it is a very dangerous thing to assume the disapproving
attitude. One may know enough of a man to withstand him to the face, if
one is sure that his action is base or cruel; one can hardly ever know
enough of a man's temperament and antecedents to condemn him
unreservedly. It is scarcely possible to be sure that a man is worse
than he need have been, or that one would have done better if one had
been in his place; and thus one must try to resist any expression of
personal disapproval, because such an expression implies a
consciousness of moral superiority, and the moment that one is
conscious of that, as in the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican,
the position of the condemner and the condemned is instantaneously
reversed. To hate people is the most dangerous luxury that one can
indulge in, and the most that one is justified in doing is to avoid the
society of entirely uncongenial people. It is not a duty to force
yourself to try to admire and like everyone who repels you. The truth
is that life is not long enough for such experiments. But one can
resolutely abstain from condemning them and from dwelling in thought
and speech upon their offensive qualities. _Nous sommes tous
condamnés_, says the sad proverb, and we have most of us enough to do
in rooting up the tares in our own field, without pointing out other
people's tares exultantly to passers-by.