_Plantagenet._ The truth appears _so_ naked on my side,
That any purblind eye may find it out.
_Somerset._ And on my side it is so well apparelled,
So clear, so shining, and so evident,
That it will glimmer through a blind man's eye.
_First Part of Henry VI._
Having made up our mind upon a question, probably by a delightfully
curt process, how pleasant and natural it is to laugh sublimely at all
dissentients! Poor creatures, those nonconformists are almost to be
pardoned, so much does their impenetrable dulness amuse us! How they
_can_ have scrambled to a conclusion opposite to ours, is a problem so
absurd that it tickles us amazingly.
Yet the formation of opinions is vastly dependent upon circumstances.
Whang-shing is born in the Celestial Empire; and the chances are that
the fellow will go the length of pinning his faith to Confucius.
Yonder squalid urchin, turning out of Saffron Hill or some other
sweet-scented purlieus, has been cradled on the ragged lap of
professional mendicancy; and there is a strong probability that he
will come to a misunderstanding with the police one of these fine
days. The mild-eyed priest who just passed you, was born and educated
within the states of the church; and somehow or other he firmly
believes in the Romanism you so hotly repudiate. The sallow-faced
gentleman crossing the road, and exhibiting so wobegone an aspect, has
always had a bad liver; and you will never persuade him to look on the
bright side of life. While this bustling, vivacious personage, who
approaches us with such a springy step, and rapid merry glance, has
never known a day's illness--is indebted to hearsay for his belief in
nerves--and is ready to challenge Europe to beat him at a hearty
guffaw--_he_ is perplexed by the shadow of a long face, marvels with
all his might at a heavy eye, and cannot unriddle the philosophy of a
bent brow. When shall we learn that the result of looking depends on
the state of the eye--that the vision is modified by the position of
the seer--that he who stands on one side, sees one side only? Says
Wordsworth--
We safely may affirm that human life
Is either fair or tempting, a soft scene,
Grateful to sight, refreshing to the soul,
Or a forbidden tract of cheerless view,
_Even as the same is looked at, or approached_.
And the pastor of the _Excursion_, who is the spokesman, illustrates
his doctrine by shewing that the church-yard among the mountains, in
which he and his companions are standing, if approached from the
sullen north, when 'in changeful April, fields are white with
new-fallen snow,' and ere the sun has gained his noontide height, will
appear an 'unillumined, blank, and dreary plain, with more than wintry
cheerlessness and gloom saddening the heart;' whereas, if it be
regarded from the quarter whence the lord of light dispenses his
beams, '_then_ will a vernal prospect greet your eye'--
All fresh and beautiful, and green and bright,
Hopeful and cheerful--vanished is the pall
That overspread and chilled the sacred turf,
Vanished or hidden; and the whole domain,
To some, too lightly minded, might appear
A meadow carpet for the dancing hours.
The same principle of mental optics is of universal application. We
cannot ignore it without fatal results when studying history, science,
art, human nature, or any conceivable object of inquiry. Thus, in
forming our opinion of the actions of others, there is no more
mischievous absurdity, it has been remarked, than to judge them from
the outside as they look to us, instead of from the inside as they
look to the actors; nothing more irrational than to criticise deeds as
though the doers of them had the same hopes, fears, desires, and
restraints with ourselves. 'We cannot understand another's character
except by abandoning our own identity, and realising to ourselves his
frame of mind, his want of knowledge, his hardships, temptations, and
discouragements.' If we turn to history, we are reminded of Thomas
Moore's lines--
By Tory Hume's seductive page beguiled,
We fancy Charles was just, and Stratford mild;
And Fox himself, with party pencil draws
Monmouth a hero 'for the good old cause!'
Then, rights are wrongs, and victories are defeats,
As French or English pride the tale repeats.
Thus, too, Macaulay remarks, that for many years every Whig historian
was anxious to prove that the old English government was all but
republican--every Tory, to prove it all but despotic. 'With such
feelings, both parties looked into the chronology of the middle ages.
Both readily found what they sought, and obstinately refused to see
anything but what they sought.' Accordingly, to see only one-half of
the evidence, you would conclude that the Plantagenets were as
absolute as the sultans of Turkey; to see only the other half, you
would conclude that they had as little real power as the Doges of
Venice: and both conclusions would be equally remote from the truth.
Carlyle justly affirms, that if that man is a benefactor to the world
who causes two ears of corn to grow where only one grew before, much
more is he a benefactor who causes two truths to grow up together in
harmony and mutual confirmation, where before only one stood solitary,
and, on that side at least, intolerant and hostile. Every genius rides
a winged horse; but all are apt to ride too fast. Plotinus, says
Emerson, 'believes only in philosophers; Fénélon, in saints; Pindar
and Byron, in poets. Read the haughty language in which Plato and the
Platonists speak of all men who are not devoted to their own shining
abstractions.' If genius is liable to such one-sidedness, the greater
the need of educational correctives to common-place minds. Hence the
overpursuit of any one subject may be hurtful, unless duly balanced by
countervailing forces. As the author of _Friends in Council_ says, a
human being, like a tree, if it is to attain to perfect symmetry, must
have light and air given to it from all quarters. This may be done
without making men superficial--without sanctioning the dissipation of
mere desultory reading. One or two great branches of science may be
systematically prosecuted, and others used in a more supplementary and
illustrative form. 'A number of one-sided men,' observes the same
writer, 'may make a great nation, though I much incline to doubt that;
but such a nation will not contain a number of great men.' With the
advance of intelligence, advances a catholicism of literature, of
taste, of humanity at large. Uncultured intellect, 'cabined, cribbed,
confined,' is ill at ease among the riches of variety in literary
lore; it is satisfied with the little, because, as Menzel says, it
knows not the great; it is content with one-sidedness, because it sees
not the other sides. If critical _esprit de corps_ has its advantages,
it has its penalties also; potent within its self-imposed bounds, it
is impotent outside of them. Longfellow reminds his brethren of the
lyre, that whatever is best in the great poets of all countries, is
not what is national in them, but what is universal: their roots are
in their native soil, but their branches wave in the unpatriotic air,
that speaks the same language to all men, and their leaves shine with
the illimitable light that pervades all lands. 'Let us throw all the
windows open; let us admit the light and air on all sides; that we may
look towards the four corners of the heavens, and not always in the
same direction.'
Monomania is sometimes simply the exaggerated regard to one side of
many-sided truth. It is not absolute, but only relative delusion. It
is in its degree true; but by affecting to be the whole truth, it
becomes untrue. Philosophic reflection shews, that if a man fasten his
attention on a single aspect of truth, and apply himself to that alone
for a long time, 'the truth becomes distorted, and not itself, but
falsehood;' and may be compared to the air, which is our natural
element, and the breath of our nostrils; 'but if a stream of the same
be directed on the body for a time, it causes cold, fever, and even
death.' 'How wearisome,' exclaims Emerson, 'the grammarian, the
phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, or, indeed, any
possessed mortal, whose balance is lost by the exaggeration of a
single topic! It is _incipient insanity_.' The bore of society is
constituted by his one-sidedness. His ear is deficient in the sense of
harmony, and he deafens and disgusts you by harping on one string. The
retired nabob holds you by the button, to hear his wearisome diatribes
on Indian economics; the half-pay officer is too fluent on his
worn-out recollections of the Peninsular War, and becomes savage if
you broach a new theme, or move to adjourn the debate; the university
pedant distracts you with his theories on philology and
scansion--with his amended translation of a hexameter in Persius, and
his new reading of a line in Theocritus; the bagman is all for 'the
shop;' the policeman is redolent of the 'lock-up house 'and 'your
wertchup;' the tailor is profoundly knowing on the 'sweating system;
'the son of Crispin vows and protests there's 'nothing like leather.'
All these _minus_ signs have a tendency to cancel each other: and thus
the equation of life is worked out. Society has been said to have at
all times the same want--namely, of one sane man, with adequate powers
of expression to hold up each object of monomania in its right
relations. 'The ambitious and mercenary bring their last new
Mumbo-Jumbo--whether tariff, railway, mesmerism, or California--and by
detaching the object from its relations, easily succeed in making it
seen in a glare, and a multitude go mad about it; and they are not to
be reproved or cured by the opposite multitude, who are kept from this
particular insanity by an equal frenzy on another crotchet. But let
one man have the comprehensive eye that can replace this isolated
prodigy in its right neighbourhood and bearings, and the illusion
vanishes--the returning reason of the community thanks the reason of
the monitor.' There is perhaps nothing which more urgently calls for
such a controlling and overseeing mind, to curb eccentric excesses,
and to restore equilibrium of action, than philanthropy itself. In the
enthusiasm of its impulses, it thinks it can afford to sneer at
political economy, and that it is right to wander at its own sweet
will, benevolently defying the remonstrances of all who have a method
to propound, a science to explain, a system to uphold. Though the
heart be large, yet the mind--as Nathaniel Hawthorne somewhere
observes--is often of such moderate dimensions, as to be exclusively
filled up with one idea; and thus, when a good man has long devoted
himself to a particular kind of beneficence, to one species of reform,
he is apt to become narrowed into the limits of the path wherein he
treads, and to fancy that there is no other good to be done on earth
but that selfsame good to which he has put his hand, and in the very
mode that best suits his own conceptions. 'All else is worthless; his
scheme must be wrought out by the united strength of the whole world's
stock of love, or the world is no longer worthy of a position in the
universe. Moreover, powerful truth, being the rich grape-juice
expressed from the vineyard of the ages, has an intoxicating quality
when imbibed by any but a powerful intellect, and often, as it were,
impels the quaffer to quarrel in his cups.' Even a saint with one idea
may be a plague to his neighbourhood; and, by being canonised, may
retard, not further, the progress of his church.
Let us own, however, that one-idea'd people are often amusing as well
as mischievous--or rather, when not mischievous. The rapt devotion
they pay to their _idola specûs_ oscillates between the sublime and
the ridiculous. We have all seen such people, and alternately admired
and laughed at them. We have all witnessed or read pleasant
illustrations of their doings. With one such illustration we conclude
this discursive fragment. It is related by the witty author of _A
Defence of Ignorance_, who introduces it in the course of an imaginary
dialogue on one-sided university training, in which one of the
speakers (at dessert) says to his companion: 'If you reach after that
pear, without considering what stands against your elbows, you may
empty a decanter over me. He who desires thoroughly to know one
subject, should be possessed of so much intellectual geography as will
enable him to see its true position in the universe of thought.' The
allusion to upsetting a decanter reminds the other interlocutor of a
story, which he proceeds to tell. A gentleman who carved a goose was
inexpert; and thinking only of the stubborn joints that would not be
unhinged, he totally forgot the gravy. Presently, the goose slipped
off the dish, and escaped into his neighbour's lap. Now, to have
thrown a hot goose on a lady's lap would disconcert most people, but
the gentleman in question was _not_ disconcerted. Turning round, with
a bland smile, he said: 'I'll trouble you for that goose.' Here we
have a sublime example of a man with one idea. This gentleman's idea
was the goose; and in the absorbing interest attached to his
undertaking, that he was to carve the goose, not altogether knowing
how, he had shut out extraneous objects. Suddenly the goose was gone,
but his eye followed it, his mind was wrapt up in his struggle with
it; what did he know of that lady? 'I'll trouble you for that goose,'
expressed the perfect abstraction of a mind bent on developing its one
idea.