say. Whether by the continuance and increase of individual protests, or
whether by the union of many persons for the practice and propagation of
some better system, the future alone can decide. The influence of
dissentients acting without cooperation, seems, under the present state
of things, inadequate. Standing severally alone, and having no
well-defined views; frowned on by conformists, and expostulated with
even by those who secretly sympathise with them; subject to petty
persecutions, and unable to trace any benefit produced by their example;
they are apt, one by one, to give up their attempts as hopeless. The
young convention-breaker eventually finds that he pays too heavily for
his nonconformity. Hating, for example, everything that bears about it
any remnant of servility, he determines, in the ardour of his
independence, that he will uncover to no one. But what he means simply
as a general protest, he finds that ladies interpret into a personal
disrespect. Though he sees that, from the days of chivalry downwards,
these marks of supreme consideration paid to the other sex have been but
a hypocritical counterpart to the actual subjection in which men have
held them--a pretended submission to compensate for a real domination;
and though he sees that when the true dignity of women is recognised,
the mock dignities given to them will be abolished, yet he does not like
to be thus misunderstood, and so hesitates in his practice.
In other cases, again, his courage fails him. Such of his
unconventionalities as can be attributed only to eccentricity, he has no
qualms about: for, on the whole, he feels rather complimented than
otherwise in being considered a disregarder of public opinion. But when
they are liable to be put down to ignorance, to ill-breeding, or to
poverty, he becomes a coward. However clearly the recent innovation of
eating some kinds of fish with knife and fork proves the fork-and-bread
practice to have had little but caprice for its basis, yet he dares not
wholly ignore that practice while fashion partially maintains it. Though
he thinks that a silk handkerchief is quite as appropriate for
drawing-room use as a white cambric one, he is not altogether at ease in
acting out his opinion. Then, too, be begins to perceive that his
resistance to prescription brings round disadvantageous results which he
had not calculated upon. He had expected that it would save him from a
great deal of social intercourse of a frivolous kind--that it would
offend the fools, but not the sensible people; and so would serve as a
self-acting test by which those worth knowing would be separated from
those not worth knowing. But the fools prove to be so greatly in the
majority that, by offending them, he closes against himself nearly all
the avenues through which the sensible people are to be reached. Thus he
finds that his nonconformity is frequently misinterpreted; that there
are but few directions in which he dares to carry it consistently out;
that the annoyances and disadvantages which it brings upon him are
greater than he anticipated; and that the chances of his doing any good
are very remote. Hence he gradually loses resolution, and lapses, step
by step, into the ordinary routine of observances.
Abortive as individual protests thus generally turn out, it may possibly
be that nothing effectual will be done until there arises some organised
resistance to this invisible despotism, by which our modes and habits
are dictated. It may happen, that the government of Manners and Fashion
will be rendered less tyrannical, as the political and religious
governments have been, by some antagonistic union. Alike in Church and
State, men's first emancipations from excess of restriction were
achieved by numbers, bound together by a common creed, or a common
political faith. What remained undone while there were but individual
schismatics or rebels, was effected when there came to be many acting in
concert. It is tolerably clear that these earliest instalments of
freedom could not have been obtained in any other way; for so long as
the feeling of personal independence was weak and the rule strong, there
could never have been a sufficient number of separate dissentients to
produce the desired results. Only in these later times, during which the
secular and spiritual controls have been growing less coercive, and the
tendency towards individual liberty greater, has it become possible for
smaller and smaller sects and parties to fight against established
creeds and laws; until now men may safely stand even alone in their
antagonism.
The failure of individual nonconformity to customs, as above
illustrated, suggests that an analogous series of changes may have to be
gone through in this case also. It is true that the _lex non scripta_
differs from the _lex scripta_ in this, that, being unwritten, it is
more readily altered; and that it has, from time to time, been quietly
ameliorated. Nevertheless, we shall find that the analogy holds
substantially good. For in this case, as in the others, the essential
revolution is not the substituting of any one set of restraints for any
other, but the limiting or abolishing the authority which prescribes
restraints. Just as the fundamental change inaugurated by the
Reformation, was not a superseding of one creed by another, but an
ignoring of the arbiter who before dictated creeds--just as the
fundamental change which Democracy long ago commenced, was not from this
particular law to that, but from the despotism of one to the freedom of
all; so, the parallel change yet to be wrought out in this supplementary
government of which we are treating, is not the replacing of absurd
usages by sensible ones, but the dethronement of that secret,
irresponsible power which now imposes our usages, and the assertion of
the right of all individuals to choose their own usages. In rules of
living, a West-end clique is our Pope; and we are all papists, with but
a mere sprinkling of heretics. On all who decisively rebel, comes down
the penalty of excommunication, with its long catalogue of disagreeable
and, indeed, serious consequences.
The liberty of the subject asserted in our constitution, and ever on the
increase, has yet to be wrested from this subtler tyranny. The right of
private judgment, which our ancestors wrung from the church, remains to
be claimed from this dictator of our habits. Or, as before said, to free
us from these idolatries and superstitious conformities, there has still
to come a protestantism in social usages. Parallel, therefore, as is the
change to be wrought out, it seems not improbable that it may be wrought
out in an analogous way. That influence which solitary dissentients fail
to gain, and that perseverance which they lack, may come into existence
when they unite. That persecution which the world now visits upon them
from mistaking their nonconformity for ignorance or disrespect, may
diminish when it is seen to result from principle. The penalty which
exclusion now entails may disappear when they become numerous enough to
form visiting circles of their own. And when a successful stand has
been made, and the brunt of the opposition has passed, that large amount
of secret dislike to our observances which now pervades society, may
manifest itself with sufficient power to effect the desired
emancipation.
Whether such will be the process, time alone can decide. That community
of origin, growth, supremacy, and decadence which we have found among
all kinds of government, suggests a community in modes of change also.
On the other hand, Nature often performs substantially similar
operations, in ways apparently different. Hence these details can never
be foretold.
Society, in all its developments, undergoes the process of exuviation.
These old forms which it successively throws off, have all been once
vitally united with it--have severally served as the protective
envelopes within which a higher humanity was being evolved. They are
cast aside only when they become hindrances--only when some inner and
better envelope has been formed; and they bequeath to us all that there
was in them of good. The periodical abolitions of tyrannical laws have
left the administration of justice not only uninjured, but purified.
Dead and buried creeds have not carried with them the essential morality
they contained, which still exists, uncontaminated by the sloughs of
superstition. And all that there is of justice and kindness and beauty,
embodied in our cumbrous forms of etiquette, will live perennially when
the forms themselves have been forgotten.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 37: From "Illustrations of Universal Progress," 1864.]
TALK AND TALKERS[38]
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
"Sir, we had a good talk."--JOHNSON.
"As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle
silence."--FRANKLIN.
There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in talk; to be affable,
gay, ready, clear and welcome; to have a fact, a thought, or an
illustration, pat to every subject; and not only to cheer the flight of
time among our intimates, but bear our part in that great international
congress, always sitting, where public wrongs are first declared, public
errors first corrected, and the course of public opinion shaped, day by
day, a little nearer to the right. No measure comes before Parliament
but it has been long ago prepared by the grand jury of the talkers; no
book is written that has not been largely composed by their assistance.
Literature in many of its branches is no other than the shadow of good
talk; but the imitation falls far short of the original in life,
freedom, and effect. There are always two to a talk, giving and taking,
comparing experience and according conclusions. Talk is fluid,
tentative, continually "in further search and progress;" while written
words remain fixed, become idols even to the writer, found wooden
dogmatisms, and preserve flies of obvious error in the amber of the
truth. Last and chief, while literature, gagged with linsey-woolsey, can
only deal with a fraction of the life of man, talk goes fancy free and
may call a spade a spade. It cannot, even if it would, become merely
aesthetic or merely classical like literature. A jest intervenes, the
solemn humbug is dissolved in laughter, and speech runs forth out of the
contemporary groove into the open fields of nature, cheery and cheering,
like schoolboys out of school. And it is in talk alone that we can learn
our period and ourselves. In short, the first duty of a man is to speak;
that is his chief business in this world; and talk, which is the
harmonious speech of two or more, is by far the most accessible of
pleasures. It costs nothing in money; it is all profit; it completes our
education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any
age and in almost any state of health.
The spice of life is battle; the friendliest relations are still a kind
of contest; and if we would not forego all that is valuable in our lot,
we must continually face some other person, eye to eye, and wrestle a
fall whether in love or enmity. It is still by force of body, or power
of character or intellect, that we attain to worthy pleasures. Men and
women contend for each other in the lists of love, like rival
mesmerists; the active and adroit decide their challenges in the sports
of the body; and the sedentary sit down to chess or conversation. All
sluggish and pacific pleasures are, to the same degree, solitary and
selfish; and every durable bond between human beings is founded in or
heightened by some element of competition. Now, the relation that has
the least root in matter is undoubtedly that airy one of friendship; and
hence, I suppose, it is that good talk most commonly arises among
friends. Talk is, indeed, both the scene and instrument of friendship.
It is in talk alone that the friends can measure strength, and enjoy
that amicable counter-assertion of personality which is the gauge of
relations and the sport of life.
A good talk is not to be had for the asking. Humours must first be
accorded in a kind of overture or prologue; hour, company and
circumstance be suited; and then, at a fit juncture, the subject, the
quarry of two heated minds, springs up like a deer out of the wood. Not
that the talker has any of the hunter's pride, though he has all and
more than all his ardour. The genuine artist follows the stream of
conversation as an angler follows the windings of a brook, not dallying
where he fails to "kill." He trusts implicitly to hazard; and he is
rewarded by continual variety, continual pleasure, and those changing
prospects of the truth that are the best of education. There is nothing
in a subject, so called, that we should regard it as an idol, or follow
it beyond the promptings of desire. Indeed, there are few subjects; and
so far as they are truly talkable, more than the half of them may be
reduced to three: that I am I, that you are you, and that there are
other people dimly understood to be not quite the same as either.
Wherever talk may range, it still runs half the time on these eternal
lines. The theme being set, each plays on himself as on an instrument;
asserts and justifies himself; ransacks his brain for instances and
opinions, and brings them forth new-minted, to his own surprise and the
admiration of his adversary. All natural talk is a festival of
ostentation; and by the laws of the game each accepts and fans the
vanity of the other. It is from that reason that we venture to lay
ourselves so open, that we dare to be so warmly eloquent, and that we
swell in each other's eyes to such a vast proportion. For talkers, once
launched, begin to overflow the limits of their ordinary selves, tower
up to the height of their secret pretensions, and give themselves out
for the heroes, brave, pious, musical, and wise, that in their most
shining moments they aspire to be. So they weave for themselves with
words and for a while inhabit a palace of delights, temple at once and
theatre, where they fill the round of the world's dignities, and feast
with the gods, exulting in Kudos.[39] And when the talk is over, each
goes his way, still flushed with vanity and admiration, still trailing
clouds of glory; each declines from the height of his ideal orgy, not in
a moment, but by slow declension. I remember, in the _entr'acte_ of an
afternoon performance, coming forth into the sunshine, in a beautiful
green, gardened corner of a romantic city; and as I sat and smoked, the
music moving in my blood, I seemed to sit there and evaporate _The
Flying Dutchman_ (for it was that I had been hearing) with a wonderful
sense of life, warmth, well-being, and pride; and the noises of the
city, voices, bells and marching feet, fell together in my ears like a
symphonious orchestra. In the same way, the excitement of a good talk
lives for a long while after in the blood, the heart still hot within
you, the brain still simmering, and the physical earth swimming around
you with the colours of the sunset.
Natural talk, like ploughing, should turn up a large surface of life,
rather than dig mines into geological strata. Masses of experience,
anecdote, incident, cross-lights, quotation, historical instances, the
whole flotsam and jetsam of two minds forced in and in upon the matter
in hand from every point of the compass, and from every degree of mental
elevation and abasement--these are the material with which talk is
fortified, the food on which the talkers thrive. Such argument as is
proper to the exercise should still be brief and seizing. Talk should
proceed by instances; by the apposite, not the expository. It should
keep close along the lines of humanity, near the bosoms and businesses
of men, at the level where history, fiction and experience intersect and
illuminate each other. I am I, and You are You, with all my heart; but
conceive how these lean propositions change and brighten when, instead
of words, the actual you and I sit cheek by jowl, the spirit housed in
the live body, and the very clothes uttering voices to corroborate the
story in the face. Not less surprising is the change when we leave off
to speak of generalities--the bad, the good, the miser, and all the
characters of Theophrastus--and call up other men, by anecdote or
instance, in their very trick and feature; or trading on a common
knowledge, toss each other famous names, still glowing with the hues of
life. Communication is no longer by words, but by the instancing of
whole biographies, epics, systems of philosophy, and epochs of history,
in bulk. That which is understood excels that which is spoken in
quantity and quality alike; ideas thus figured and personified, change
hands, as we may say, like coin; and the speakers imply without effort
the most obscure and intricate thoughts. Strangers who have a large
common ground of reading will, for this reason, come the sooner to the
grapple of genuine converse. If they know Othello and Napoleon, Consuelo
and Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin and Steenie Steenson, they can leave
generalities and begin at once to speak by figures.
Conduct and art are the two subjects that arise most frequently and that
embrace the widest range of facts. A few pleasures bear discussion for
their own sake, but only those which are most social or most radically
human; and even these can only be discussed among their devotees. A
technicality is always welcome to the expert, whether in athletics, art,
or law; I have heard the best kind of talk on technicalities from such
rare and happy persons as both know and love their business. No human
being ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes
me suspect we hear too much of it in literature. The weather is regarded
as the very nadir and scoff of conversational topics. And yet the
weather, the dramatic element in scenery, is far more tractable in
language, and far more human both in import and suggestion than the
stable features of the landscape. Sailors and shepherds, and the people
generally of coast and mountain, talk well of it; and it is often
excitingly presented in literature. But the tendency of all living talk
draws it back and back into the common focus of humanity. Talk is a
creature of the street and market-place, feeding on gossip; and its last
resort is still in a discussion on morals. That is the heroic form of
gossip; heroic in virtue of its high pretensions; but still gossip,
because it turns on personalities. You can keep no men long, nor
Scotchmen at all, off moral or theological discussion. These are to all
the world what law is to lawyers; they are everybody's technicalities;
the medium through which all consider life, and the dialect in which
they express their judgments. I knew three young men who walked together
daily for some two months in a solemn and beautiful forest and in
cloudless summer weather; daily they talked with unabated zest, and yet
scarce wandered that whole time beyond two subjects--theology and love.
And perhaps neither a court of love[40] nor an assembly of divines would
have granted their premises or welcomed their conclusions.
Conclusions, indeed, are not often reached by talk any more than by
private thinking. That is not the profit. The profit is in the exercise,
and above all in the experience; for when we reason at large on any
subject, we review our state and history in life. From time to time,
however, and specially, I think, in talking art, talk becomes effective,
conquering like war, widening the boundaries of knowledge like an
exploration. A point arises; the question takes a problematical, a
baffling, yet a likely air; the talkers begin to feel lively
presentiments of some conclusion near at hand; towards this they strive
with emulous ardour, each by his own path, and struggling for first
utterance; and then one leaps upon the summit of that matter with a
shout, and almost at the same moment the other is beside him; and behold
they are agreed. Like enough, the progress is illusory, a mere cat's
cradle having been wound and unwound out of words. But the sense of
joint discovery is none the less giddy and inspiriting. And in the life
of the talker such triumphs, though imaginary, are neither few nor far
apart; they are attained with speed and pleasure, in the hour of mirth;
and by the nature of the process, they are always worthily shared.
There is a certain attitude combative at once and deferential, eager to
fight yet most averse to quarrel, which marks out at once the talkable
man. It is not eloquence, not fairness, not obstinacy, but a certain
proportion of all of these that I love to encounter in my amicable
adversaries. They must not be pontiffs holding doctrine, but huntsmen
questing after elements of truth. Neither must they be boys to be
instructed, but fellow-teachers with whom I may wrangle and agree on
equal terms. We must reach some solution, some shadow of consent; for
without that, eager talk becomes a torture. But we do not wish to reach
it cheaply, or quickly, or without the tussle and effort Wherein
pleasure lies.
The very best talker, with me, is one whom I shall call Spring-Heel'd
Jack. I say so, because I never knew any one who mingled so largely the
possible ingredients of converse. In the Spanish proverb, the fourth man
necessary to compound a salad, is a madman to mix it: Jack is that
madman. I know not which is more remarkable: the insane lucidity of his
conclusions, the humorous eloquence of his language, or his power of
method, bringing the whole of life into the focus of the subject
treated, mixing the conversational salad like a drunken god. He doubles
like the serpent, changes and flashes like the shaken kaleidoscope,
transmigrates bodily into the views of others, and so, in the twinkling
of an eye and with a heady rapture, turns questions inside out and
flings them empty before you on the ground, like a triumphant conjuror.
It is my common practice when a piece of conduct puzzles me, to attack
it in the presence of Jack with such grossness, such partiality and such
wearing iteration, as at length shall spur him up in its defence. In a
moment he transmigrates, dons the required character, and with
moonstruck philosophy justifies the act in question. I can fancy nothing
to compare with the _vim_ of these impersonations, the strange scale of
language, flying from Shakespeare to Kant, and from Kant to Major
Dyngwell--
"As fast as a musician scatters sounds
Out of an instrument--"