21. Novel-reading thus aggravates two of the worst maladies of modern
times, self-consciousness and want of reverence. Many a man in these
days, instead of doing some sound piece of work for mankind, spends his
time in explaining to himself why it is that he does not do it, and how,
after all, he is superior to those who do. Even men of a higher sort
never seem to forget themselves in their work. Our popular writers
generally take the reader into confidence as to their private feelings
as they go along; our men of action are burdened by a sense of their
reputation with "intelligent circles." No one loses himself in a cause.
Scarcely understanding what is meant by a "divine indifference" as to
the fate of individual existences in the evolution of God's plan, we
weary heaven with complaints that we find the world contrary, or that we
cannot satisfy ourselves with a theory of life. Thus "measuring
ourselves by ourselves, and comparing ourselves among ourselves, we are
not wise." The novel furnishes the standard for the measurement, and the
data for the comparison. It presents us with a series of fictitious
experiences, in the light of which we read our own, and become more
critically conscious of them. Instead of idealising life, if we may so
express ourselves, it sentimentalises it. It does not subordinate
incidents to ideas; yet it does not treat them simply as phenomena to
excite curiosity, but as misfortunes or blessings to excite sentiment.
The writer of the "Mill on the Floss" reaches almost the tragic pitch
towards the close of her book, and if she had been content to leave us
with the death of the heroine and her brother[20] in the flood, we
might have supposed that in this case, as representing the annihilation
of human passion in the struggle with destiny, the novelist had indeed
attained the ideal view of life. But the novelistic instinct does not
allow her to do so. At the conclusion we are shown the other chief
actors standing, with appropriate emotions, over the heroine's grave,
and thus find that the catastrophe has not really been the manifestation
of an idea, but an occasion of sentiment. The habitual novel-reader,
from thus looking sentimentally at the fictitious life which is the
reflex of his own, soon comes to look sentimentally at himself. He
thinks his personal joys and sorrows of interest to angels and men; and
instead of gazing with awe and exultation upon the world, as a theatre
for the display of God's glory and the unknown might of man, he sees in
it merely an organism for affecting himself with pains and pleasures.
Thus regarded, it must needs lose its claim on his reverence, for it is
narrowed to the limits of his own consciousness. Conversant with present
life in all its outward aspects, he forgets the infinite spaces which
lie around and above it. This confinement of view, which among the more
intelligent appears merely as disbelief in the possibilities of man,
takes a more offensive form in the complacent blindness of ordinary
minds. We have no wish to disparage our own age in comparison with any
that have preceded it. Young men have always been ignorant, and
ignorance has always been conceited. There is, however, this difference.
The ignorant young men of past time, such as the five sons of Sir
Hildebrand Osbaldistone,[21] knew that they were ignorant, but thought
it no shame: the ignorant young men of our days, with the miscellaneous
knowledge of life which they derive from the popular novelists, fancy
themselves wiser than the aged. Whoever be the philosopher, the coxcomb
nowadays will answer him not merely with a grin, but with a joke which
he has still in lavender from Dickens or his imitators. The comic aspect
of life is indeed plain enough to see, nor is the merely pathetic much
less obvious; but there is little good in looking at either. It is far
easier to laugh or to weep than to think; to give either a ludicrous or
sentimental turn to a great principle of morals or religion than to
enter into its real meaning. But the vulgar reader of our comic
novelists, when he has learnt from them a jest or a sentiment for every
occasion of life, fancies that nothing more remains unseen and unsaid.