While it is evident enough that animal anger is one of those instincts

that are readily explained as conducive to self-preservation, it is not,

perhaps, so obvious that socialized anger has any such justification. I

think, however, that, though very liable to be excessive and

unmanageable, and tending continually to be economized as the race

progresses, so that most forms of it are properly regarded as wrong, it

nevertheless plays an indispensable part in life.

The mass of mankind are sluggish and need some resentment as a

stimulant; this is its function on the higher plane of life as it is on

the lower. Surround a man with soothing, flattering circumstances, and

in nine cases out of ten he will fail to do anything worthy, but will

lapse into some form of sensualism or dilettanteism. There is no tonic,

to a nature substantial enough to bear it, like chagrin—“erquickender

Verdruss,” as Goethe says. Life without opposition is Capua. No matter

what the part one is fitted to play in it, he can make progress in his

path only by a vigorous assault upon the obstacles, and to be vigorous

the assault must be supported by passion of some sort. With most of us

the requisite intensity of passion is not forthcoming without an element

of resentment; and common-sense and careful observation will, I believe,

confirm the opinion that few people who amount to much are without a

good capacity for hostile feeling, upon which they draw freely when they

need it. This would be more readily admitted if many people were not

without the habit of penetrating observation, either of themselves or

others, in such matters, and so are enabled to believe that anger, which

is conventionally held to be wrong, has no place in the motives of moral

persons.

I have in mind a man who is remarkable for a certain kind of aggressive,

tenacious and successful pursuit of the right. He does the things that

everyone else agrees ought to be done but does not do—especially things

involving personal antagonism. While the other people deplore the

corruption of politics, but have no stomach to amend it, he is the man

to beard the corrupt official in his ward, or expose him in the courts

or the public press—all at much pains and cost to himself and without

prospect of honor or any other recompense. If one considers how he

differs from other conscientious people of equal ability and

opportunity, it appears to be largely in having more bile in him. He has

a natural fund of animosity, and instead of spending it blindly and

harmfully, he directs it upon that which is hateful to the general good,

thus gratifying his native turn for resentment in a moral and fruitful

way. Evidently if there were more men of this stamp it would be of

benefit to the moral condition of the country. Contemporary conditions

seem to tend somewhat to dissipate that righteous wrath against evil

which, intelligently directed, is a main instrument of progress.

Thomas Huxley, to take a name known to all, was a man in whom there was

much fruitful hostility. He did not seek controversy, but when the

enemies of truth offered battle he felt no inclination to refuse; and he

avowed—perhaps with a certain zest in contravening conventional

teaching—that he loved his friends and hated his enemies.[69] His hatred

was of a noble sort, and the reader of his Life and Letters can hardly

doubt that he was a good as well as a great man, or that his pugnacity

helped him to be such. Indeed I do not think that science or letters

could do without the spirit of opposition, although much energy is

dissipated and much thought clouded by it. Even men like Darwin or

Emerson, who seem to wish nothing more than to live at peace with

everyone, may be observed to develop their views with unusual fulness

and vigor where they are most in opposition to authority. There is

something analogous to political parties in all intellectual activity;

opinion divides, more or less definitely, into opposing groups, and each

side is stimulated by the opposition of the other to define,

corroborate, and amend its views, with the purpose of justifying itself

before the constituency to which it appeals. What we need is not that

controversy should disappear, but that it should be carried on with

sincere and absolute deference to the standard of truth.

A just resentment is not only a needful stimulus to aggressive

righteousness, but has also a wholesome effect upon the mind of the

person against whom it is directed, by awakening a feeling of the

importance of the sentiments he has transgressed. On the higher planes

of life an imaginative sense that there is resentment in the minds of

other persons performs the same function that physical resistance does

upon the lower.[70] It is an attack upon my mental self, and as a

sympathetic and imaginative being I feel it more than I would a mere

blow; it forces me to consider the other’s view, and either to accept it

or to bear it down by the stronger claims of a different one. Thus it

enters potently into our moral judgments.

“Let such pure hate still underprop

Our love that we may be

Each other’s conscience.”[71]

I think that no one’s character and aims can be respected unless he is

perceived to be capable of some sort of resentment. We feel that if he

is really in earnest about anything he should feel hostile emotion if it

is attacked, and if he gives no sign of this, either at the moment of

attack or later, he and what he represents become despised. No teacher,

for instance, can maintain discipline unless his scholars feel that he

will in some manner resent a breach of it.

Thus we seldom feel keenly that our acts are wrong until we perceive

that they arouse some sort of resentment in others, and whatever selfish

aggression we can practise without arousing resistance, we presently

come to look upon as a matter of course. Judging the matter from my own

consciousness and experience, I have no belief in the theory that

non-resistance has, as a rule, a mollifying influence upon the

aggressor. I do not wish people to turn me the other cheek when I smite

them, because, in most cases, that has a bad effect upon me. I am soon

used to submission and may come to think no more of the unresisting

sufferer than I do of the sheep whose flesh I eat at dinner. Neither, on

the other hand, am I helped by extravagant and accusatory opposition;

that is likely to put me into a state of unreasoning anger. But it is

good for us that everyone should maintain his rights, and the rights of

others with whom he sympathizes, exhibiting a just and firm resentment

against any attempt to tread upon them. A consciousness, based on

experience, that the transgression of moral standards will arouse

resentment in the minds of those whose opinion we respect, is a main

force in the upholding of such standards.

But the doctrine of non-resistance, like all ideas that have appealed to

good minds, has a truth wrapped up in it, notwithstanding what appears

to be its flagrant absurdity. What the doctrine really means, as taught

in the New Testament and by many individuals and societies in our own

day, is perhaps no more than this, that we should discard the coarser

weapons of resistance for the finer, and threaten a moral resentment

instead of blows or lawsuits. It is quite true that we can best combat

what we regard as evil in another person of ordinary sensibility by

attacking the higher phases of his self rather than the lower. If a man

appears to be about to do something brutal or dishonest, we may either

encounter him on his present low plane of life by knocking him down or

calling a policeman, or we may try to work upon his higher consciousness

by giving him to understand that we feel sure a person of his

self-respect and good repute will not degrade himself, but that if

anything so improbable and untoward should occur, he must, of course,

expect the disappointment and contempt of those who before thought well

of him. In other words, we threaten, as courteously as possible, his

social self. This method is often much more efficient than the other, is

morally edifying instead of degrading, and is practised by men of

address who make no claim to unusual virtue.

This seems to be what is meant by non-resistance; but the name is

misleading. It _is_ resistance, and directed at what is believed to be

the enemy’s weakest point. As a matter of strategy it is an attack upon

his flank, aggression upon an unprotected part of his position. Its

justification, in the long run, is in its success. If we do not succeed

in making our way into the other man’s mind and changing his point of

view by substituting our own, the whole manœuvre falls flat, the injury

is done, the ill-doer is confirmed in his courses, and you would better

have knocked him down. It is good to appeal to the highest motives we

can arouse, and to exercise a good deal of faith as to what can be

aroused, but real non-resistance to what we believe to be wrong is mere

pusillanimity. There is perhaps no important sect or teacher that really

inculcates such a doctrine, the name non-resistance being given to

attacks upon the higher self under the somewhat crude impression that

resistance is not such unless it takes some obvious material form, and

probably all teachers would be found to vary their tactics somewhat

according to the sort of people with whom they are dealing. Although

Christ taught the turning of the other cheek to the smiter, and that the

coat should follow the cloak, it does not appear that he suggested to

those who were desecrating the Temple that they should double their

transactions, but, apparently regarding them as beyond the reach of

moral suasion, he “went into the Temple, and began to cast out them that

sold and bought in the Temple, and overthrew the tables of the

money-changers and the seats of them that sold doves.” It seems that he

even used a scourge on this occasion. I cannot see much in the question

regarding non-resistance beyond a vague use of terms and a difference of

opinion as to what kind of resistance is most effective in certain

cases.

It is easy and not uncommon to state too exclusively the pre-eminence of

affection in human ideals. No one, I suppose, believes that the life of

Fra Angelico’s angels, such as we see them in his “Last Judgment,”

circling on the flowery sward of Paradise, would long content any normal

human creature. If it appears beautiful and desirable at times, this is

perhaps because our world is one in which the supply of amity and peace

mostly falls short of the demand for them. Many of us have seen times of

heat and thirst when it seemed as if a bit of shade and a draught of

cold water would appease all earthly wants. But when we had the shade

and the water we presently began to think about something else. So with

these ideals of unbroken peace and affection. Even for those sensitive

spirits that most cherish them, they would hardly suffice as a

continuity. An indiscriminate and unvarying amity is, after all,

disgusting.

Human ideals and human nature must develop together, and we cannot

foresee what either may become; but for the present it would seem that

an honest and reasonable idealism must look rather to the organization

and control of all passions with reference to some conception of right,

than to the expulsion of some passions by others. I doubt whether any

healthy and productive love can exist which is not resentment on its

obverse side. How can we rightly care for anything without in some way

resenting attacks upon it?

Apparently, the higher function of hostility is to put down wrong; and

to fulfil this function it must be rationally controlled with a view to

ideals of justice. In so far as a man has a sound and active social

imagination, he will feel the need of this control, and will tend with

more or less energy, according to the vigor of his mind, to limit his

resentment to that which his judgment tells him is really unjust or

wrong. Imagination presents us with all sorts of conflicting views,

which reason, whose essence is organization, tries to arrange and

control in accordance with some unifying principle, some standard of

equity: moral principles result from the mind’s instinctive need to

achieve unity of view. All special impulses, and hostile feeling among

them, are brought to the bar of conscience and judged by such standards

as the mind has worked out. If declared right or justifiable, resentment

is endorsed and enforced by the will; we think of it as righteous and

perhaps take credit with ourselves for it. But if it appears grounded on

no broad and unifying principle, our larger thought disowns it, and

tends with such energy as it may have to ignore and suppress it. Thus we

overlook accidental injury, we control or avoid mere antipathy, but we

act upon indignation. The latter is enduring and powerful because

consistent with cool thought; while impulsive, unreasoning anger,

getting no re-enforcement from such thought, has little lasting force.

Suppose, for illustration, one goes with a request to some person in

authority, and meets a curt refusal. The first feeling is doubtless one

of blind, unthinking anger at the rebuff. Immediately after that the

mind busies itself more deeply with the matter, imagining motives,

ascribing feelings and the like; and anger takes a more bitter and

personal form, it rankles where at first it only stung. But if one is a

fairly reasonable man, accustomed to refer things to standards of right,

one presently grows calmer and, continuing the imaginative process in a

broader way, endeavors to put himself at the other person’s point of

view and see what justification, if any, there is for the latter’s

conduct. Possibly he is one subject to constant solicitation, with whom

coldness and abruptness are necessary to the despatch of business—and so

on. If the explanation seems insufficient, so that his rudeness still

appears to be mere insolence, our resentment against him lasts,

reappearing whenever we think of him, so that we are likely to thwart

him somehow if we get a chance, and justify our action to ourselves and

others on grounds of moral disapproval.

Or suppose one has to stand in line at the postoffice, with a crowd of

other people, waiting to get his mail. There are delay and discomfort to

be borne; but these he will take with composure because he sees that

they are a part of the necessary conditions of the situation, which all

must submit to alike. Suppose, however, that while patiently waiting his

turn he notices someone else, who has come in later, edging into the

line ahead of him. Then he will certainly be angry. The delay threatened

is only a matter of a few seconds; but here is a question of justice, a

case for indignation, a chance for anger to come forth with the sanction

of thought.

Another phase of the transformation of hostility by reason and

imagination, is that it tends to become more discriminating or selective

as regards its relation to the idea of the person against whom it is

directed. In a sense the higher hostility is less personal than the

lower; that is, in the sense that it is no longer aimed blindly at

persons as wholes, but distinguishes in some measure between phases or

tendencies of them that are obnoxious and others that are not. It is not

the mere thought of X’s countenance, or other symbol, that arouses

resentment, but the thought of him as exhibiting insincerity, or

arrogance, or whatever else it may be that we do not like; while we may

preserve a liking for him as exhibiting other traits. Generally

speaking, all persons have much in them which, if imagined, must appear

amiable; so that if we feel only animosity toward a man it must be

because we have apprehended him only in a partial aspect. An

undisciplined anger, like any other undisciplined emotion, always tends

to produce these partial and indiscriminate notions, because it

overwhelms symmetrical thought and permits us to see only that which

agrees with itself. But a more chastened sentiment allows a juster view,

so that it becomes conceivable that we should love our enemies as well

as antagonize the faults of our friends. A just parent or teacher will

resent the insubordinate behavior of a child or pupil without letting go

of affection, and the same principle holds good as regards criminals,

and all proper objects of hostility. The attitude of society toward its

delinquent members should be stern, yet sympathetic, like that of a

father toward a disobedient child.

It is the tendency of modern life, by educating the imagination and

rendering all sorts of people conceivable, to discredit the sweeping

conclusions of impulsive thought—as, for instance, that all who commit

violence or theft are hateful ill-doers, and nothing more—and to make us

feel the fundamental likeness of human nature wherever found. Resentment

against ill-doing should by no means disappear; but while continuing to

suppress wrong by whatever means proves most efficacious, we shall

perhaps see more and more clearly that the people who are guilty of it

are very much like ourselves, and are acting from motives to which we

also are subject.

It is often asserted or assumed that hostile feeling is in its very

nature obnoxious and painful to the human mind, and persists in spite of

us, as it were, because it is forced upon us by the competitive

conditions of existence. This view seems to me hardly sound. I should

rather say that the mental and social harmfulness of anger, in common

experience, is due not so much to its peculiar character as hostile

feeling, as to the fact that, like lust, it is so surcharged with

instinctive energy as to be difficult to control and limit to its proper

function; while, if not properly disciplined, it of course introduces

disorder and pain into the mental life.

To a person in robust condition, with plenty of energy to spare, a

thorough-going anger, far from being painful, is an expansive, I might

say glorious, experience, _while the fit is on and has full control_. A

man in a rage does not want to get out of it, but has a full sense of

life which he impulsively seeks to continue by repelling suggestions

tending to calm him. It is only when it has begun to pall upon him that

he is really willing to be appeased. This may be seen by observing the

behavior of impulsive children, and also of adults whose passions are

undisciplined.

An enduring hatred may also be a source of satisfaction to some minds,

though this I believe to be unusual in these days, and becoming more so.

One who reads Hazlitt’s powerful and sincere, though perhaps unhealthy,

essay on the Pleasure of Hating, will see that the thing is possible. In

most cases remorse and distress set in so soon as the fit of anger

begins to abate, and its destructive incompatibility with the

established order and harmony of the mind begins to be felt. There is a

conviction of sin, the pain of a shattered ideal, just as there is after

yielding to any other unchastened passion. The cause of the pain seems

to be not so much the peculiar character of the feeling as its

exorbitant intensity.

Any simple and violent passion is likely to be felt as painful and wrong

in its after-effects because it destroys that harmony or synthesis that

reason and conscience strive to produce; and this effect is probably

more and more felt as the race advances and mental life becomes more

complex. The conditions of civilization require of us so extensive and

continuous an expenditure of psychical force, that we no longer have the

superabundance of emotional energy that makes a violent outlet

agreeable. Habits and principles of self-control naturally arise along

with the increasing need for economy and rational guidance of emotion;

and whatever breaks through them causes exhaustion and remorse. Any

gross passion comes to be felt as “the expense of spirit in a waste of

shame.” Spasms of violent feeling properly belong with a somewhat

apathetic habit of life, whose accumulating energies they help to

dissipate, and are as much out of place to-day as the hard-drinking

habits of our Saxon ancestors.

The sort of men that most feel the need of hostility as a spur to

exertion are, I imagine, those of superabundant vitality and somewhat

sluggish temperament, like Goethe and Bismarck, both of whom declared

that it was essential to them. There is also a great deal of

old-fashioned personal hatred in remote and quiet places, like the

mountains of North Carolina, and probably among all classes who do not

much feel the stress of civilization. But to most of those who share

fully in the life of the time, intense personal animosities are painful

and destructive, and many fine spirits are ruined by failure to inhibit

them.

The kind of man most characteristic of these times, I take it, does not

allow himself to be drawn into the tangle of merely personal hatred,

but, cultivating a tolerance for all sorts of men, he yet maintains a

sober and determined antagonism toward all tendencies or purposes that

conflict with his true self, with whatever he has most intimately

appropriated and identified with his character. He is always courteous,

cherishes as much as possible those kindly sentiments which are not only

pleasant and soothing but do much to oil the machinery of his

enterprises, and by wasting no energy on futile passion is enabled to

think all the more clearly and act the more inflexibly when he finds

antagonism necessary. A man of the world of the modern type is hardly

ever dramatic in the style of Shakespeare’s heroes. He usually expresses

himself in the most economical manner possible, and if he has to

threaten, for instance, knows how to do it by a movement of the lips, or

the turn of a phrase in a polite note. If cruder and more violent

tactics are necessary, to impress vulgar minds, he is very likely to

depute this rough work to a subordinate. A foreman of track hands may

have to be a loud-voiced, strong-armed, palpably aggressive person; but

the president of the road is commonly quiet and mild-mannered.

The mind is greatly aided in the control of animosity by the existence

of ready-made and socially accepted standards of right. Suffering from

his own angry passions and from those of others, one looks out for some

criterion, some rule of what is just and fair among persons, which he

may hold himself and others to, and moderate antagonism by removing the

sense of peculiar injury. Opposition itself, within certain limits,

comes to be regarded as part of the reasonable order of things. In this

view the function of moral standards is the same as that of courts of

justice in grosser conflicts. All good citizens want the laws to be

definite and vigorously enforced, in order to avoid the uncertainty,

waste, and destruction of a lawless condition. In the same way

right-minded people want definite moral standards, enforced by general

opinion, in order to save the mental wear and tear of unguided feeling.

It is a great relief to a person harassed by hostile emotion to find a

point of view from which this emotion appears wrong or irrational, so

that he can proceed definitely and with the sanction of his reason to

put it down. The next best thing, perhaps, is to have the hostility

definitely approved by reason, so that he may indulge it without further

doubt. The unsettled condition is worst of all.

This control of hostility by a sense of common allegiance to rule is

well illustrated by athletic games. When properly conducted they proceed

upon a definite understanding of what is fair, and no lasting anger is

felt for any hurts inflicted, so long as this standard of fairness is

maintained. It is the same in war: soldiers do not necessarily feel any

anger at other soldiers who are trying to shoot them to death. That is

thought of as within the rules of the game. As Admiral Cervera’s chief

of staff is reported to have said to Admiral Sampson, “You know there is

nothing personal in this.” But if the white flag is used treacherously,

explosive bullets employed, or the moral standard otherwise

transgressed, there is hard feeling. It is very much the same with the

multiform conflicts of purpose in modern industrial life. It is not

clear that competition as such, apart from the question of fairness or

unfairness, has any tendency to increase hostility. Competition and the

clash of purposes are inseparable from activity, and are felt to be so.

Ill-feeling flourishes no more in an active, stirring state of society

than in a stagnant state. The trouble with our industrial relations is

not the mere extent of competition, but the partial lack of established

laws, rules, and customs, to determine what is right and fair in it.

This partial lack of standards is connected with the rapid changes in

industry and industrial relations among men, with which the development

of law and of moral criteria has by no means kept pace. Hence there

arises great uncertainty as to what some persons and classes may rightly

and fairly require of other persons and classes; and this uncertainty

lets loose angry imaginations.

It will be evident that I do not look upon affection, or anger, or any

other particular mode of feeling, as in itself good or bad, social or

anti-social, progressive or retrogressive. It seems to me that the

essentially good, social, or progressive thing, in this regard, is the

organization and discipline of all emotions by the aid of reason, in

harmony with a developing general life, which is summed up for us in

conscience. That this development of the general life is such as to tend

ultimately to do away with hostile feeling altogether, is not clear. The

actively good people, the just men, reformers, and prophets, not

excepting him who drove the money-changers from the Temple, have been

and are, for the most part, people who feel the spur of resentment; and

it is not evident that this can cease to be the case. The diversity of

human minds and endeavors seems to be an essential part of the general

plan of things, and shows no tendency to diminish. This diversity

involves a conflict of ideas and purposes, which, in those who take it

earnestly, is likely to occasion hostile feeling. This feeling should

become less wayward, violent, bitter, or personal, in a narrow sense,

and more disciplined, rational, discriminating, and quietly persistent.

That it ought to disappear is certainly not apparent.

Something similar to what has been said of anger will hold true of any

well-marked type of instinctive emotion. If we take fear, for instance,

and try to recall our experience of it from early childhood on, it seems

clear that, while the emotion itself may change but little, the ideas,

occasions, suggestions that excite it depend upon the state of our

intellectual and social development, and so undergo great alteration.

The feeling does not tend to disappear, but to become less violent and

spasmodic, more and more social as regards the objects that excite it,

and more and more subject, in the best minds, to the discipline of

reason.

The fears of little children[72] are largely excited by immediate

sensible experiences—darkness, solitude, sharp noises, and so on.

Sensitive persons often remain throughout life subject to irrational

fears of this sort, and it is well known that they play a conspicuous

part in hysteria, insanity, and other weak or morbid conditions. But for

the most part the healthy adult mind becomes accustomed and indifferent

to these simple phenomena, and transfers its emotional sensibility to

more complex interests. These interests are for the most part

sympathetic, involving our social rather than our material self—our

standing in the minds of other people, the well-being of those we care

for, and so on. Yet these fears—fear of standing alone, of losing one’s

place in the flow of human action and sympathy, fear for the character

and success of those near to us—have often the very quality of childish

fear. A man cast out of his regular occupation and secure place in the

system of the world feels a terror like that of the child in the dark;

just as impulsive, perhaps just as purposeless and paralyzing. The main

difference seems to be that the latter fear is stimulated by a complex

idea, implying a socially imaginative habit of mind.

Social fear, of a sort perhaps somewhat morbid, is vividly depicted by

Rousseau in the passage of his Confessions where he describes the

feeling that led him falsely to accuse a maid-servant of a theft which

he had himself committed. “When she appeared my heart was agonized, but

the presence of so many people was more powerful than my compunction. I

did not fear punishment, but I dreaded shame: I dreaded it more than

death, more than the crime, more than all the world. I would have

buried, hid myself in the centre of the earth: invincible shame bore

down every other sentiment; shame alone caused all my impudence, and in

proportion as I became criminal the fear of discovery rendered me

intrepid. I felt no dread but that of being detected, of being publicly

and to my face declared a thief, liar, and calumniator....”[73]

So also we might distinguish, as in the case of anger, a higher form of

social fear, one that is not narrowly personal, but relates to some

socially derived ideal of good or right. For instance, in a soldier the

terror of roaring guns and singing bullets would be a fear of the lowest

or animal type. Dread of the disgrace to follow running away would be a

social fear, yet not of the highest sort, because the thing dreaded is

not wrong but shame—a comparatively simple and non-rational idea. People

often do what they know is wrong under the influence of such fear, as

did Rousseau in the incident quoted above. But, supposing the soldier’s

highest ideal to be the success of his army and his country, a fear for

that, overcoming all lower and cruder fears—selfish fears as they would

ordinarily be called—would be moral or ethical.

CHAPTER VIII

EMULATION

CONFORMITY—NON-CONFORMITY—THE TWO VIEWED AS COMPLEMENTARY PHASES OF

LIFE—RIVALRY—HERO-WORSHIP.

It will be convenient to distinguish three sorts of

emulation—conformity, rivalry, and hero-worship.

Conformity may be defined as the endeavor to maintain a standard set by

a group. It is a voluntary imitation of prevalent modes of action,

distinguished from rivalry and other aggressive phases of emulation by

being comparatively passive, aiming to keep up rather than to excel, and

concerning itself for the most part with what is outward and formal. On

the other hand, it is distinguished from involuntary imitation by being

intentional instead of mechanical. Thus it is not conformity, for most

of us, to speak the English language, because we have practically no

choice in the matter, but we might choose to conform to particular

pronunciations or turns of speech used by those with whom we wish to

associate.

The ordinary motive to conformity is a sense, more or less vivid, of the

pains and inconveniences of non-conformity. Most people find it painful

to go to an evening company in any other than the customary dress; the

source of the pain appearing to be a vague sense of the depreciatory

curiosity which one imagines that he will excite. His social

self-feeling is hurt by an unfavorable view of himself that he

attributes to others. This example is typical of the way the group

coerces each of its members in all matters concerning which he has no

strong and definite private purpose. The world constrains us without any

definite intention to do so, merely through the impulse, common to all,

to despise peculiarity for which no reason is perceived. “Nothing in the

world more subtle,” says George Eliot, speaking of the decay of higher

aims in certain people, “than the process of their gradual change! In

the beginning they inhaled it unknowingly; you and I may have sent some

of our breath toward infecting them, when we uttered our conforming

falsities or drew our silly conclusions: or perhaps it came with the

vibrations from a woman’s glance.” “Solitude is fearsome and

heavy-hearted,” and non-conformity condemns us to it by causing _gêne_,

if not dislike, in others, and so interrupting that relaxation and

spontaneity of attitude that is required for the easy flow of sympathy

and communication. Thus it is hard to be at ease with one who is

conspicuously worse or better dressed than we are, or whose manners are

notably different; no matter how little store our philosophy may set by

such things. On the other hand, a likeness in small things that enables

them to be forgotten gives people a _prima facie_ at-homeness with each

other highly favorable to sympathy; and so we all wish to have it with

people we care for.

It would seem that the repression of non-conformity is a native impulse,

and that tolerance always requires some moral exertion. We all cherish

our habitual system of thought, and anything that breaks in upon it in a

seemingly wanton manner, is annoying to us and likely to cause

resentment. So our first tendency is to suppress the peculiar, and we

learn to endure it only when we must, either because it is shown to be

reasonable or because it proves refractory to our opposition. The

innovator is nearly as apt as anyone else to put down innovation in

others. Words denoting singularity usually carry some reproach with

them; and it would perhaps be found that the more settled the social

system is, the severer is the implied condemnation. In periods of

disorganization and change, such as ours is in many respects, people are

educated to comparative tolerance by unavoidable familiarity with

conflicting views—as religious toleration, for instance, is the outcome

of the continued spectacle of competing creeds.

Sir Henry Maine, in discussing the forces that controlled the legal

decisions of a Roman prætor, remarks that he “was kept within the

narrowest bounds by the prepossessions imbibed from early training and

by the strong restraints of professional opinion, restraints of which

the stringency can only be appreciated by those who have personally

experienced them.”[74] In the same way every profession, trade or

handicraft, every church, circle, fraternity or clique, has its more or

less definite standards, conformity to which it tends to impose on all

its members. It is not at all essential that there should be any

deliberate purpose to set up these standards, or any special machinery

for enforcing them. They spring up spontaneously, as it were, by an

unconscious process of assimilation, and are enforced by the mere

inertia of the minds constituting the group.

Thus every variant idea of conduct has to fight its way: as soon as

anyone attempts to do anything unexpected the world begins to cry, “Get

in the rut! Get in the rut! Get in the rut!” and shoves, stares, coaxes,

and sneers until he does so—or until he makes good his position, and so,

by altering the standard in a measure, establishes a new basis of

conformity. There are no people who are altogether non-conformers, or

who are completely tolerant of non-conformity in others. Mr. Lowell, who

wrote some of the most stirring lines in literature in defence of

non-conformity, was himself conventional and an upholder of conventions

in letters and social intercourse. Either to be exceptional or to

appreciate the exceptional requires a considerable expenditure of

energy, and no one can afford this in many directions. There are many

persons who take pains to keep their minds open; and there are groups,

countries, and periods which are comparatively favorable to

open-mindedness and variation; but conformity is always the rule and

non-conformity the exception.

Conformity is a sort of co-operation: one of its functions is to

economize energy. The standards which it presses upon the individual are

often elaborate and valuable products of cumulative thought and

experience, and whatever imperfections they may have they are, as a

whole, an indispensable foundation for life: it is inconceivable that

anyone should dispense with them. If I imitate the dress, the manners,

the household arrangements of other people, I save so much mental energy

for other purposes. It is best that each should originate where he is

specially fitted to do so, and follow others where they are better

qualified to lead. It is said with truth that conformity is a drag upon

genius; but it is equally true and important that its general action

upon human nature is elevating. We get by it the selected and

systematized outcome of the past, and to be brought up to its standards

is a brief recapitulation of social development: it sometimes levels

down but more generally levels up. It may be well for purposes of

incitement to goad our individuality by the abuse of conformity; but

statements made with this in view lack accuracy. It is good for the

young and aspiring to read Emerson’s praise of self-reliance, in order

that they may have courage to fight for their ideas; but we may also

sympathize with Goethe when he says that “nothing more exposes us to

madness than distinguishing us from others, and nothing more contributes

to maintaining our common-sense than living in the universal way with

multitudes of men.”[75]

There are two aspects of non-conformity: first, a rebellious impulse or

“contrary suggestion” leading to an avoidance of accepted standards in a

spirit of opposition, without necessary reference to any other

standards; and, second, an appeal from present and commonplace standards

to those that are comparatively remote and unusual. These two usually

work together. One is led to a mode of life different from that of the

people about him, partly by intrinsic contrariness, and partly by fixing

his imagination on the ideas and practices of other people whose mode of

life he finds more congenial.

But the essence of non-conformity as a personal attitude consists in

contrary suggestion or the spirit of opposition. People of natural

energy take pleasure in that enhanced feeling of self that comes from

consciously _not_ doing that which is suggested or enjoined upon them by

circumstances and by other persons. There is joy in the sense of

self-assertion: it is sweet to do one’s own things; and if others are

against him one feels sure they _are_ his own. To brave the disapproval

of men is tonic; it is like climbing along a mountain path in the teeth

of the wind; one feels himself as a cause, and knows the distinctive

efficacy of his being. Thus self-feeling which, if somewhat languid and

on the defensive, causes us to avoid peculiarity, may, when in a more

energetic condition, cause us to seek it; just as we rejoice at one time

to brave the cold, and at another to cower over the fire, according to

the vigor of our circulation.

This may easily be observed in vigorous children: each in his way will

be found to attach himself to methods of doing things which he regards

as peculiarly his own, and to delight in asserting these methods against

opposition. It is also the basis of some of the deepest and most

significant differences between races and individuals. Controlled by

intellect and purpose this passion for differentiation becomes

self-reliance, self-discipline, and immutable persistence in a private

aim: qualities which more than any others make the greater power of

superior persons and races. It is a source of enterprise, exploration,

and endurance in all kinds of undertakings, and of fierce defence of

private rights. How much of Anglo-Saxon history is rooted in the

intrinsic cantankerousness of the race! It is largely this that makes

the world-winning pioneer, who keeps pushing on because he wants a place

all to himself, and hates to be bothered by other people over whom he

has no control. On the frontier a common man defines himself better as a

cause. He looks round at his clearing, his cabin, his growing crops, his

wife, his children, his dogs, horses, and cattle, and says, _I did it:

they are mine_. All that he sees recalls the glorious sense of things

won by his own hand.

Who does not feel that it is a noble thing to stand alone, to steer due

west into an unknown universe, like Columbus, or, like Nansen, ground

the ship upon the ice-pack and drift for the North Pole? “Adhere to your

own act,” says Emerson, “and congratulate yourself if you have done

something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous

age.” We like that epigram, _Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa

Catoni_, because we like the thought that a man stood out alone against

the gods themselves, and set his back against the course of nature. The

“souls that stood alone,

While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone,”

are not to be thought of as victims of self-sacrifice. Many of them

rejoiced in just that isolation, and daring, and persistence; so that it

was not self-sacrifice but self-realization. Conflict is a necessity of

the active soul, and if a social order could be created from which it

were absent, that order would perish as uncongenial to human nature. “To

be a man is to be a non-conformer.”

I think that people go into all sorts of enterprises, for instance into

novel and unaccredited sorts of philanthropy, with a spirit of adventure

not far removed from the spirit that seeks the North Pole. It is neither

true nor wholesome to think of the “good” as actuated by motives

radically different in kind from those of ordinary human nature; and I

imagine the best of them are far from wishing to be thus thought of.

Undertakings of reform and philanthropy appeal to the mind in a double

aspect. There is, of course, the desire to accomplish some worthy end,

to effectuate some cherished sentiment which the world appears to

ignore, to benefit the oppressed, to advance human knowledge, or the

like. But behind that is the vague need of self-expression, of creation,

of a momentous experience, so that one may know that one has really

lived. And the finer imaginations are likely to find this career of

novelty and daring, not in the somewhat outworn paths of war and

exploration, but in new and precarious kinds of social activity. So one

may sometimes meet in social settlements and charity organization

bureaus the very sort of people that led the Crusades into Palestine. I

do not speak at random, but have several persons in mind who seem to me

to be of this sort.

In its second aspect non-conformity may be regarded as a remoter

conformity. The rebellion against social influence is only partial and

apparent; and the one who seems to be out of step with the procession is

really keeping time to another music. As Thoreau said, he hears a

different drummer. If a boy refuses the occupation his parents and

friends think best for him, and persists in working at something strange

and fantastic, like art or science, it is sure to be the case that his

most vivid life is not with those about him at all, but with the masters

he has known through books, or perhaps seen and heard for a few moments.

Environment, in the sense of social influence actually at work, is far

from the definite and obvious thing it is often assumed to be. Our real

environment consists of those images which are most present to our

thoughts, and in the case of a vigorous, growing mind, these are likely

to be something quite different from what is most present to the senses.

The group to which we give allegiance, and to whose standards we try to

conform, is determined by our own selective affinity, choosing among all

the personal influences accessible to us; and so far as we select with

any independence of our palpable companions, we have the appearance of

non-conformity.

All non-conformity that is affirmative or constructive must act by this

selection of remoter relations; opposition, by itself, being sterile,

and meaning nothing beyond personal peculiarity. There is, therefore, no

definite line between conformity and non-conformity; there is simply a

more or less characteristic and unusual way of selecting and combining

accessible influences. It is much the same question as that of invention

_versus_ imitation. As Professor Baldwin points out, there is no radical

separation between these two aspects of human thought and action. There

is no imitation that is absolutely mechanical and uninventive—a man

cannot repeat an act without putting something of his idiosyncrasy into

it—neither is there any invention that is not imitative in the sense

that it is made up of elements suggested by observation and experience.

What the mind does, in any case, is to reorganize and reproduce the

suggested materials in accordance with its own structure and tendency;

and we judge the result as imitative or inventive, original or

commonplace, according as it does or does not strike us as a new and

fruitful employment of the common material.[76]

A just view of the matter should embrace the whole of it at once, and

see conformity and non-conformity as normal and complementary phases of

human activity. In their quieter moods men have a pleasure in social

agreement and the easy flow of sympathy, which makes non-conformity

uncomfortable. But when their energy is full and demanding an outlet

through the instincts, it can only be appeased by something which gives

the feeling of self-assertion. They are agitated by a “creative

impatience,” an outburst of the primal need to act; like the Norsemen,

of whom Gibbon says: “Impatient of a bleak climate and narrow limits,

they started from the banquet, sounded their horn, ascended their

vessels, and explored every coast that promised either spoil or

settlement.”[77] In social intercourse this active spirit finds its

expression largely in resisting the will of others; and the spirit of

opposition and self-differentiation thus arising is the principal direct

stimulus to non-conformity. This spirit, however, has no power of

absolute creation, and is forced to seek for suggestions and materials

in the minds of others; so that the independence is only relative to the

more immediate and obvious environment, and never constitutes a real

revolt from the social order.

Naturally non-conformity is characteristic of the more energetic states

of the human mind. Men of great vigor are sure to be non-conformers in

some important respect; youth glories in non-conformity, while age

usually comes back to the general point of view. “Men are conservatives

when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are

conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are

sick or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their

conscience has been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read

poetry, they are radicals.”[78]

The rational attitude of the individual toward the question of

conformity or non-conformity in his own life, would seem to be: assert

your individuality in matters which you deem important; conform in those

you deem unimportant. To have a conspicuously individual way of doing

everything is impossible to a sane person, and to attempt it would be to

do one’s self a gratuitous injury, by closing the channels of sympathy

through which we partake of the life around us. We should save our

strength for matters in regard to which persistent conviction impels us

to insist upon our own way.

Society, like every living, advancing whole, requires a just union of

stability and change, uniformity and differentiation. Conformity is the

phase of stability and uniformity, while non-conformity is the phase of

differentiation and change. The latter cannot introduce anything wholly

new, but it can and does effect such a reorganization of existing

material as constantly to transform and renew human life.

I mean by rivalry a competitive striving urged on by the desire to win.

It resembles conformity in that the impelling idea is usually a sense of

what other people are doing and thinking, and especially of what they

are thinking of us: it differs from it chiefly in being more aggressive.

Conformity aims to keep up with the procession, rivalry to get ahead of

it. The former is moved by a sense of the pains and inconveniences of

differing from other people, the latter by an eagerness to compel their

admiration. Winning, to the social self, usually means conspicuous

success in making some desired impression upon other minds, as in

becoming distinguished for power, wealth, skill, culture, beneficence,

or the like.

On the other hand, rivalry may be distinguished from finer sorts of

emulation by being more simple, crude, and direct. It implies no very

subtle mental activity, no elaborate or refined ideal. If a spirited

horse hears another overtaking him from behind, he pricks up his ears,

quickens his steps, and does his best to keep ahead. And human rivalry

appears to have much of this instinctive element in it; to become aware

of life and striving going on about us seems to act immediately upon the

nerves, quickening an impulse to live and strive in like manner. An

eager person will not hear or read of vivid action of any sort without

feeling some impulse to get into it; just as he cannot mingle in a

hurrying, excited crowd without sharing in the excitement and hurry,

whether he knows what it is all about or not. The genesis of ambition is

often something as follows: one mingles with men, his self-feeling is

vaguely aroused, and he wishes to be something to them. He sees,

perhaps, that he cannot excel in just what they are doing, and so he

takes refuge in his imagination, thinking what he _can_ do which is

admirable, and determining to do it. Thus he goes home nursing secret

ambitions.

The motive of rivalry, then, is a strong sense that there is a race

going on, and an impulsive eagerness to be in it. It is rather imitative

than inventive; the idea being not so much to achieve an object for its

own sake, because it is reflectively judged to be worthy, as to get what

the rest are after. There is conformity in ideals combined with a thirst

for personal distinction. It has little tendency toward innovation,

notwithstanding the element of antagonism in it; but takes its color and

character from the prevalent social life, accepting and pursuing the

existing ideal of success, and whatever special quality it has depends

upon the quality of that ideal. There is, for instance, nothing so gross

or painful that it may not become an object of pursuit through

emulation. Charles Booth, who has studied so minutely the slums of

London, says that “among the poor, men drink on and on from a perverted

pride,” and among another class a similar sentiment leads women to

inflict surprising deformities of the trunk upon themselves.

Professor William James suggests that rivalry does nine-tenths of the

world’s work.[79] Certainly no motive is so generally powerful among

active, efficient men of the ordinary type, the type that keeps the ball

moving all over the world. Intellectual initiative, high and persistent

idealism, are rare. The great majority of able men are ambitious,

without having intrinsic traits that definitely direct their ambition to

any particular object. They feel their way about among the careers which

their time, their country, their early surroundings and training, make

accessible to them, and, selecting the one which seems to promise the

best chance of success, they throw themselves into the pursuit of the

things that conduce to that success. If the career is law, they strive

to win cases and gain wealth and prestige, accepting the moral code and

other standards that they find in actual use; and it is the same,

_mutatis mutandis_, in commerce, politics, the ministry, the various

handicrafts, and so on.

There is thus nothing morally distinctive about rivalry; it is harmful

or beneficent according to the objects and standards with reference to

which it acts. All depends upon the particular game in which one takes a

hand. It may be said in a broad way, however, that rivalry supplies a

stimulus wholesome and needful to the great majority of men, and that it

is, on the whole, a chief progressive force, utilizing the tremendous

power of ambition, and controlling it to the furtherance of ends that

are socially approved. The great mass of what we judge to be evil is of

a negative rather than a positive character, arising not from

misdirected ambition but from apathy or sensuality, from a falling short

of that active, social humanity which ambition implies.

By hero-worship is here meant an emulation that strives to imitate some

admired character, in a spirit not of rivalry or opposition, but of

loyal enthusiasm. It is higher than rivalry, in the sense that it

involves a superior grade of mental activity—though, of course, there is

no sharp line of separation between them. While the other is a rather

gross and simple impulse, common to all men and to the higher animals,

the hero-worshipper is an idealist, imaginative; the object that arouses

his enthusiasm and his endeavor does so because it bears a certain

relation to his aspirations, to his constructive thought. Hero-worship

is thus more selective, more significant of the special character and

tendencies of the individual, in every way more highly organized than

rivalry.

It has a great place in all active, aspiring lives, especially in the

plastic period of youth. We feed our characters, while they are forming,

upon the vision of admired models; an ardent sympathy dwells upon the

traits through which their personality is communicated to us—facial

expression, voice, significant movements, and so on. In this way those

tendencies in us that are toward them are literally fed; are stimulated,

organized, made habitual and familiar. As already pointed out, sympathy

appears to be an act of growth; and this is especially true of the sort

of sympathy we call hero-worship. All autobiographies which deal with

youth show that the early development of character is through a series

of admirations and enthusiasms, which pass away, to be sure, but leave

character the richer for their existence. They begin in the nursery,

flourish with great vigor in the school-yard, attain a passionate

intensity during adolescence, and though they abate rapidly in adult

life, do not altogether cease until the power of growth is lost. All

will find, I imagine, if they recall their own experience, that times of

mental progress were times when the mind found or created heroes to

worship, often owning allegiance to several at the same time, each

representing a particular need of development. The active tendencies of

the schoolboy lead to admiration of the strongest and boldest of his

companions; or perhaps, more imaginative, he fixes his thoughts on some

famous fighter or explorer; later it is possibly a hero of statesmanship

or literature who attracts him. Whatever the tendency, it is sure to

have its complementary hero. Even science often begins in hero-worship.

“This work,” says Darwin of Humboldt’s “Personal Narrative,” “stirred up

in me a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the

noble structure of Natural Science.”[80] We easily forget this varied

and impassioned idealism of early life; but “the thoughts of youth are

long, long thoughts,” and it is precisely then and in this way that the

most rapid development of character takes place. J. A. Symonds, speaking

of Professor Jowett’s early influence upon him says, “Obscurely but

vividly I felt my soul grow by his contact, as it had never grown

before;” and Goethe remarks that “vicinity to the master, like an

element, lifts one and bears him on.”

If youth is the period of hero-worship, so also is it true that

hero-worship, more than anything else, perhaps, gives one the sense of

youth. To admire, to expand one’s self, to forget the rut, to have a

sense of newness and life and hope, is to feel young at any time of

life. “Whilst we converse with what is above us we do not grow old but

grow young”; and that is what hero-worship means. To have no heroes is

to have no aspiration, to live on the momentum of the past, to be thrown

back upon routine, sensuality, and the narrow self.

As hero-worship becomes more imaginative, it merges insensibly into that

devotion to ideal persons that is called religious. It has often been

pointed out that the feeling men have toward a visible leader and master

like Lincoln, Lee, Napoleon, or Garibaldi, is psychologically much the

same thing as the worship of the ideal persons of religion. Hero-worship

is a kind of religion, and religion, in so far as it conceives persons,

is a kind of hero-worship. Both are expressions of that intrinsically

social or communicative nature of human thought and sentiment which was

insisted upon in a previous chapter. That the personality toward which

the feeling is directed is ideal evidently affords no fundamental

distinction. All persons are ideal, in a true sense, and those whom we

admire and reverence are peculiarly so. That is to say, the idea of a

person, whether his body be present to our senses or not, is

imaginative, a synthesis, an interpretation of many elements, resting

upon our whole experience of human life, not merely upon our

acquaintance with this particular person; and the more our admiration

and reverence are awakened the more actively ideal and imaginative does

our conception of the person become. Of course we never _see_ a person;

we see a few visible traits which stimulate our imaginations to the

construction of a personal idea in the mind. The ideal persons of

religion are not fundamentally different, psychologically or

sociologically, from other persons; they are personal ideas built up in

the mind out of the material at its disposal, and serving to appease its

need for a sort of intercourse that will give scope to reverence,

submission, trust, and self-expanding enthusiasm. So far as they are

present to thought and emotion, and so work upon life, they are real,

with that immediate social reality discussed in the third chapter. The

fact that they have attached to them no visible or tangible material

body, similar to that of other persons, is indeed an important fact, but

rather of physiological than of psychological or social interest.

Perhaps it is not going too far to say that the idea of God is

_specially_ mysterious only from a physiological point of view; mentally

and socially regarded it is of one sort with other personal ideas, no

less a verifiable fact, and no more or less inscrutable. It must be

obvious to anyone who reflects upon the matter, I should think, that our

conceptions of personality, from the simple and sensuous notions a

little child has of those about him, up to the noblest and fullest idea

of deity that man can achieve, are one in kind, as being imaginative

interpretations of experience, and form a series in which there are no

breaks, no gap between human and divine. All is human, and all, if you

please, divine.

If there are any who hold that nothing is real except what can be seen

and touched, they will necessarily forego the study of persons and of

society; because these things are essentially intangible and invisible.

The bodily presence furnishes important assistance in the forming of

personal ideas, but is not essential. I never saw Shakespeare, and have

no lively notion of how he looked. His reality, his presence to my mind,

consists in a characteristic impression made upon me by his recorded

words, an imaginative interpretation or inference from a book. In a

manner equally natural and simple the religious mind comes to the idea

of personal deity by a spontaneous interpretation of life as a whole.

The two ideas are equally real, equally incapable of verification _to

the senses_.

CHAPTER IX

LEADERSHIP OR PERSONAL ASCENDENCY

LEADERSHIP DEFINES AND ORGANIZES VAGUE TENDENCY—POWER AS BASED UPON

THE MENTAL STATE OF THE ONE SUBJECT TO IT—THE MENTAL TRAITS OF A

LEADER: SIGNIFICANCE AND BREADTH—WHY THE FAME AND POWER OF A MAN

OFTEN TRANSCEND HIS REAL CHARACTER—ASCENDENCY OF BELIEF AND

HOPE—MYSTERY—GOOD FAITH AND IMPOSTURE—DOES THE LEADER REALLY LEAD?

But how do we choose our heroes? What is it that gives leadership to

some and denies it to others? Can we make out anything like a

_rationale_ of personal ascendency? We can hardly hope for a complete

answer to these questions, which probe the very heart of life and

tendency, but at least the attempt to answer them, so far as possible,

will bring us into an interesting line of thought.

It is plain that the theory of ascendency involves the question of the

mind’s relative valuation of the suggestions coming to it from other

minds; leadership depending upon the efficacy of a personal impression

to awaken feeling, thought, action, and so to become a cause of life.

While there are some men who seem but to add one to the population,

there are others whom we cannot help thinking about; they lend arguments

to their neighbors’ creeds, so that the life of their contemporaries,

and perhaps of following generations, is notably different because they

have lived. The immediate reason for this difference is evidently that

in the one case there is something seminal or generative in the relation

between the personal impression a man makes and the mind that receives

it, which is lacking in the other case. If we could go farther than this

and discover what it is that makes certain suggestions seminal or

generative, we should throw much light on leadership, and through that

on all questions of social tendency.

We are born with what may be roughly described as a vaguely

differentiated mass of mental tendency, vast and potent, but unformed

and needing direction—_informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum_. This

instinctive material is believed to be the outcome of age-long social

development in the race, and hence to be, in a general way, expressive

of that development and functional in its continuance. The process of

evolution has established a probability that a man will find himself at

home in the world into which he comes, and prepared to share in its

activities. Besides the tendency to various sorts of emotion, we have

the thinking instinct, the intelligence, which seems to be fairly

distinct from emotion and whose function includes the co-ordination and

organization of other instinctive material with reference to the

situations which life offers.

At any particular stage of individual existence, these elements,

together with the suggestions from the world without, are found more or

less perfectly organized into a living, growing whole, a person, a man.

Obscurely locked within him, inscrutable to himself as to others, is the

soul of the whole past, his portion of the energy, the passion, the

tendency, of human life. Its existence creates a vague need to live, to

feel, to act; but he cannot fulfil this need, at least not in a normal

way, without incitement from outside to loosen and direct his

instinctive aptitude. There is explosive material stored up in him, but

it cannot go off unless the right spark reaches it, and that spark is

usually some sort of a personal suggestion, some living trait that sets

life free and turns restlessness into power.

It must be evident that we can look for no cut-and-dried theory of this

life-imparting force, no algebraic formula for leadership. We know but

little of the depths of human tendency; and those who know most are

possibly the poets, whose knowledge is little available for precise

uses. Moreover, the problem varies incalculably with sex, age, race,

inherited idiosyncrasy, and previous personal development. The general

notions of evolution, however, lead us to expect that what awakens life

and so gives ascendency will be something important or functional in the

past life of the race, something appealing to instincts which have

survived because they had a part to perform; and this, generally

speaking, appears to be the case.

The prime condition of ascendency is the presence of undirected energy

in the person over whom it is to be exercised; it is not so much forced

upon us from without as demanded from within. The mind, having energy,

must work, and requires a guide, a form of thought, to facilitate its

working. All views of life are fallacious which do not recognize the

fact that the primary need is the need to do. Every healthy organism

evolves energy, and this must have an outlet. In the human mind, during

its expanding period, the excess of life takes the form of a reaching

out beyond all present and familiar things after an unknown good; no

matter what the present and familiar may be, the fact that it is such is

enough to make it inadequate. So we have a vague onward impulse, which

is the unorganized material, the undifferentiated protoplasm, so to

speak, of all progress; and this, as we have seen, makes the eagerness

of hero-worship in the young, imaginative and aspiring. So long as our

minds and hearts are open and capable of progress, there are persons

that have a glamour for us, of whom we think with reverence and

aspiration; and although the glamour may pass from them and leave them

commonplace, it will have fixed itself somewhere else. In youth the

mind, eager, searching, forward looking, stands at what Professor

Baldwin calls the alter pole of the socius, peering forth in search of

new life. And the idealist at any age needs superiority in others and is

always in quest of it. “Dear to us are those who love us, ... but dearer

are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life; they

build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply

to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new

and unattempted performances.”[81] To cease to admire is a proof of

deterioration.

Most people will be able to recall vague yet intensely vivid personal

impressions that they have received from faces—perhaps from a single

glance of a countenance that they have never seen before or since—or

perhaps from a voice; and these impressions often remain and grow and

become an important factor in life. The explanation is perhaps something

like this: When we receive these mysterious influences we are usually in

a peculiarly impressionable state, with nervous energy itching to be

worked off. There is pressure in the obscure reservoirs of hereditary

passion. In some way, which we can hardly expect to define, this energy

is tapped, an instinct is disengaged, the personal suggestion conveyed

in the glance is felt as the symbol, the master-key that can unlock

hidden tendency. It is much the same as when electricity stored and

inert in a jar is loosed by a chance contact of wires that completes the

circuit; the mind holds fast the life-imparting suggestion; cannot, in

fact, let go of it.

“——all night long his face before her lived,

Dark-splendid, speaking in the silence, full

Of noble things, and held her from her sleep.”

It is true of races, as of individuals, that the more vitality and

onwardness they have, the more they need ideals and a leadership that

gives form to them. A strenuous people like the Anglo-Saxon must have

something to look forward and up to, since without faith of some sort

they must fall into dissipation or despair; they can never be content

with that calm and symmetrical enjoyment of the present which is thought

to have been characteristic of the ancient Greeks. To be sure it is

said, and no doubt with truth, that the people of Northern Europe are

less hero-worshippers than those of the South, in the sense that they

are less given to blind enthusiasm for popular idols; but this, I take

it, only means that the former, having more constructive power in

building up ideals from various personal sources, and more persistence

in adhering to them when thus built up, are more sober and independent

in their judgment of particular persons, and less liable to extravagant

admiration of the hero of the moment. But their idealism is all the more

potent for this, and at bottom is just as dependent upon personal

suggestion for its definition. Thus it is likely that all leadership

will be found to be such by virtue of defining the possibilities of the

mind. “If we survey the field of history,” says Professor William James,

“and ask what feature all great periods of revival, of expansion of the

human mind, display in common, we shall find, I think, simply this; that

each and all of them have said to the human being, ‘the inmost nature of

the reality is congenial to _powers_ which you possess’”;[82] and the

same principle evidently applies to personal leadership.

We are born to action; and whatever is capable of suggesting and guiding

action has power over us from the first. The attention of the new-born

child is fixed by whatever exercises the senses, through motion, noise,

touch, or color. Persons and animals interest him primarily because they

offer a greater amount and variety of sensible stimulus than other

objects. They move, talk, laugh, coax, fondle, bring food and so on. The

prestige they thus acquire over the child’s mind is shared with such

other stimulating phenomena as cars, engines, windmills, patches of

sunlight and bright-colored garments. A little later, when he begins to

acquire some control over his activities, he welcomes eagerly whatever

can participate in and so stimulate and guide them. The playthings he

cares for are those that go, or that he can do something with—carts,

fire-engines, blocks, and the like. Persons, especially those that share

his interests, maintain and increase their ascendency, and other

children, preferably a little older and of more varied resources than

himself, are particularly welcome. Among grown-ups he admires most those

who do something that he can understand, whom he can appreciate as

actors and producers—such as the carpenter, the gardener, the maid in

the kitchen. R. invented the happy word “thinger” to describe this sort

of people, and while performing similar feats would proudly proclaim

himself a thinger.

It will be observed that at this stage a child has learned to reflect

upon action and to discriminate that which is purposeful and effective

from mere motion; he has gained the notion of power. Himself constantly

trying to do things, he learns to admire those who can do things better

than himself, or who can suggest new things to do. His father sitting at

his desk probably seems an inert and unattractive phenomenon, but the

man who can make shavings or dig a deep hole is a hero; and the

seemingly perverse admiration which children at a later age show for

circus men and for the pirates and desperadoes they read about, is to be

explained in a similar manner. What they want is _evident_ power. The

scholar may possibly be as worthy of admiration as the acrobat or the

policeman; but the boy of ten will seldom see the matter in that light.

Thus the idea of power and the types of personality which, as standing

for that idea, have ascendency over us, are a function of our own

changing character. At one stage of their growth nearly all imaginative

boys look upon some famous soldier as the ideal man. He holds this place

as symbol and focus for the aggressive, contending, dominating impulses

of vigorous boyhood; to admire and sympathize with him is to gratify,

imaginatively, these impulses. In this country some notable speaker and

party leader often succeeds the soldier as a boyish ideal; his career is

almost equally dominating and splendid, and, in time of peace, not quite

so remote from reasonable aspiration. In later life these simple ideals

are likely to yield somewhat to others of a more special character,

depending upon the particular pursuit into which one’s energies are

directed. Every occupation which is followed with enthusiasm has its

heroes, men who stand for the idea of power or efficient action as

understood by persons of a particular training and habit. The world of

commerce and industry is full of hero-worship, and men who have made

great fortunes are admired, not unjustly, for the personal prowess such

success implies; while people of a finer intellectual development have

their notion of power correspondingly refined, and to them the artist,

the poet, the man of science, the philanthropist, may stand for the

highest sort of successful action.

It should be observed, however, that the simpler and more dramatic or

visually imaginable kinds of power have a permanent advantage as regards

general ascendency. Only a few can appreciate the power of Darwin, and

those few only when the higher faculties of their minds are fully awake;

there is nothing dramatic, nothing appealing to the visual imagination,

in his secluded career. But we can all _see_ Grant or Nelson or Moltke

at the head-quarters of their armies, or on the decks of their ships,

and hear the roar of their cannons. They hold one by the eye and by the

swelling of an emotion felt to be common to a vast multitude of people.

There is always something of the intoxication of the crowd in the

submission to this sort of ascendency. However alone our bodies may be,

our imaginations are in the throng; and for my part whenever I think of

any occasion when a man played a great part before the eyes of mankind,

I feel a thrill of irrational enthusiasm. I should imagine, for

instance, that scarcely anyone could read such a thing as “Sheridan’s

Ride” without strong feeling. He witnesses the disorder, uncertainty,

and dismay of the losing battle, the anxious officers trying to stay the

retreat, and longing for the commander who has always led to victory.

Then he follows the ride from “Winchester twenty miles away,” and shares

the enthusiasm of the army when the valiant and beloved leader rides

forth upon the field at last, renewing every heart by his presence and

making victory out of defeat. In comparison with this other kinds of

power seem obscure and separate. It is the drama of visible courage,

danger, and success, and the sense of being one of a throng to behold

it, that makes the difference.

This need of a dramatic or visually imaginable presentation of power is

no doubt more imperative in the childlike peoples of Southern Europe

than it is in the sedater and more abstractly imaginative Teutons; but

it is strong in every people, and is shared by the most intellectual

classes in their emotional moods. Consequently these heroes of the

popular imagination, especially those of war, are enabled to serve as

the instigators of a common emotion in great masses of people, and thus

to produce in large groups a sense of comradeship and solidarity. The

admiration and worship of such heroes is probably the chief feeling that

people have in common in all early stages of civilization, and the main

bond of social groups. Even in our own time this is more the case than

is understood. It was easy to see, during the Spanish-American War, that

the eager interest of the whole American people in the military

operations, and the general and enthusiastic admiration of every trait

of heroism, was bringing about a fresh sense of community throughout the

country and so renewing and consolidating the collective life of the

nation.

If we ask what are the mental traits that distinguish a leader, the only

answer seems to be that he must, in one way or another, be a great deal

of a man, or at least appear to be. He must stand for something to which

men incline, and so take his place by right as a focus of their thought.

Evidently he must be the best of his kind available. It is impossible

that he should stand forth as an archetype, unless he is conceived as

superior, in some respect, to all others within range of the

imagination. Nothing that is seen to be second-rate can be an ideal; if

a character does not bound the horizon at some point we will look over

it to what we can see beyond. The object of admiration may be Cæsar

Borgia, or Napoleon, or Jesse James the train-robber, but he must be

typical, must stand for something. No matter how bad the leader may be,

he will always be found to owe his leadership to something strong,

affirmative, and superior, something that appeals to onward instinct.

To be a great deal of a man, and hence a leader, involves, on the one

hand, a significant individuality, and, on the other, breadth of

sympathy, the two being different phases of personal calibre, rather

than separate traits.

It is because a man cannot stand for anything except as he has a

significant individuality, that self-reliance is so essential a trait in

leadership: except as a person trusts and cherishes his own special

tendency, different from that of other people and usually opposed by

them in its inception, he can never develop anything of peculiar value.

He has to free himself from the domination of purposes already defined

and urged upon him by others, and bring up something fresh out of the

vague under-world of subconsciousness; and this means an intense self, a

militant, gloating “I.” Emerson’s essay on self-reliance only formulates

what has always been the creed of significant persons.

On the other hand, success in unfolding a special tendency and giving

vogue to it, depends upon being in touch, through sympathy, with the

current of human life. All leadership takes place through the

communication of ideas to the minds of others, and unless the ideas are

so presented as to be congenial to those other minds, they will

evidently be rejected. It is because the novelty is not alien to us, but

is seen to be ourself in a fresh guise, that we welcome it.

It has frequently been noticed that personal ascendency is not

necessarily dependent upon any palpable deed in which power is

manifested, but that there is often a conviction of power and an

expectation of success that go before the deed and control the minds of

men without apparent reason. There is something fascinating about this

immediate and seemingly causeless personal efficacy, and many writers of

insight lay great stress upon it. Emerson, for example, is fond of

pointing out that the highest sort of greatness is self-evident, without

particular works. Most men of executive force possess something of this

direct ascendency, and some, like Napoleon, Cromwell, Bismarck, and

Andrew Jackson, have had it in pre-eminent measure. It is not confined

to any class, however, but exists in an infinite variety of kinds and

degrees; and men of thought may have it as well as men of action. Dante,

Milton, Goethe, and their like, bear the authority to dominate the minds

of others like a visible mantle upon their shoulders, inspiring a sense

of reverence and a tendency to believe and follow in all the

impressionable people they meet. Such men are only striking examples of

what we are all familiar with in daily life, most persons of decided

character having something imposing about them at times. Indeed, there

is hardly anyone so insignificant that he does not seem imposing to

someone at some time.

Notwithstanding the mystery that is often made of this, it appears to be

simply a matter of impulsive personal judgment, an impression of power

and a sense of yielding due to interpretation of the visible or audible

symbols of personality, discussed in a previous chapter. Another may

impress us with his power, and so exercise ascendency over us, either by

grossly performing the act, or by exhibiting traits of personality which

convince our imaginations that he can and will do the act if he wishes

to. It is in this latter way, through imaginative inference, that people

mostly work upon us in ordinary social intercourse. It would puzzle us,

in many cases, to tell just how we know that a man is determined,

dauntless, magnanimous, intrinsically powerful, or the reverse. Of

course reputation and past record count for much; but we judge readily

enough without them, and if, like Orlando in “As You Like It,” he “looks

successfully,” we believe in him. The imagination is a sort of

clearing-house through which great forces operate by convenient symbols

and with a minimum of trouble.

The man of action who, like Napoleon, can dominate the minds of others

in a crisis, must have the general traits of leadership developed with

special reference to the promptness of their action. His individual

significance must take the form of a palpable decision and

self-confidence; and breadth of sympathy becomes a quick tact to grasp

the mental state of those with whom he deals, so that he may know how to

plant the dominating suggestion. Into the vagueness and confusion that

most of us feel in the face of a strange situation, such a man injects a

clearcut idea. There is a definiteness about him which makes us feel

that he will not leave us drifting, but will set a course, will

substitute action for doubt, and give our energies an outlet. Again, his

aggressive confidence is transmitted by suggestion, and acts directly

upon our minds as a sanction of his leadership. And if he adds to this

the tact to awaken no opposition, to make us feel that he is of our

sort, that his suggestions are quite in our line, in a word that we are

safe in his hands; he can hardly be resisted.

In face-to-face relations, then, the natural leader is one who always

has the appearance of being master of the situation. He includes other

people and extends beyond them, and so is in a position to point out

what they must do next. Intellectually his suggestion seems to embrace

what is best in the views of others, and to embody the inevitable

conclusion; it is the timely, the fit, and so the prevalent. Emotionally

his belief is the strongest force present, and so draws other beliefs

into it. Yet, while he imposes himself upon others, he feels the other

selves as part of the situation, and so adapts himself to them that no

opposition is awakened; or possibly he may take the violent method, and

browbeat and humiliate a weak mind: there are various ways of

establishing superiority, but in one way or another the consummate

leader always accomplishes it.

Take Bismarck as an example of almost irresistible personal ascendency

in face-to-face relations. He had the advantage, which, however, many

men of equal power have done without, of an imposing bulk and stature;

but much more than this were the mental and moral traits which made him

appear the natural master in an assembly of the chief diplomats of

Europe. “No idea can be formed,” says M. de Blowitz,[83] “of the

ascendency exercised by the German Chancellor over the eminent

diplomatists attending the Congress. Prince Gortchakoff alone, eclipsed

by his rival’s greatness, tried to struggle against him.” His “great and

scornful pride,” the absolute, contemptuous assurance of superiority

which was evident in every pose, tone, and gesture, accompanied, as is

possible only to one perfectly sure of himself, by a frankness,

good-humor, and cordial insight into others which seemed to make them

one with himself, participators in his domination; together with a

penetrating intelligence, a unique and striking way of expressing

himself, and a perfect clearness of purpose at all times, were among the

elements of the effect he produced. He conciliated those whom he thought

it worth while to conciliate, and browbeat, ignored, or ridiculed the

rest. There was nothing a rival could say or do but Bismarck, if he

chose, would say or do something which made it appear a failure.

General Grant was a man whose personal presence had none of the splendor

of Prince Bismarck, and who even appeared insignificant to the

undiscerning. It is related that when he went to take command of his

first regiment soon after the outbreak of the Civil War, the officer

whom he was to succeed paid no attention to him at first, and would not

believe that he was Grant until he showed his papers. An early

acquaintance said of him, “He hadn’t the push of a business man.” “He

was always a gentleman, and everybody loved him, for he was so gentle

and considerate; but we didn’t see what he could do in the world.”[84]

Yet over the finer sort of men he exercised a great ascendency, and no

commander was more willingly obeyed by his subordinates, or inspired

more general confidence. In his way he manifested the essential traits

of decision, self-confidence, and tact in great measure. He never

appeared dubious, nervous, or unsettled; and though he often talked over

his plans with trusted officers, he only once, I believe, summoned a

council of war, and then rejected its decision. He was nearly or quite

alone in his faith in the plan by which Vicksburg was taken, and it is

well known that General Sherman, convinced that it would fail, addressed

him a formal remonstrance, which Grant quietly put in his pocket and

later returned to its author. “His pride in his own mature opinion,”

says General Schofield, “was very great; in that he was as far as

possible from being a modest man. This absolute confidence in his own

judgment upon any subject he had mastered, and the moral courage to take

upon himself alone the highest responsibility, and to demand full

authority and freedom to act according to his own judgment, without

interference from anybody, added to his accurate estimate of his own

ability, and his clear perception of the necessity for undivided

authority and responsibility in the conduct of military operations, and

in all that concerns the efficiency of armies in time of war,

constituted the foundation of that very great character.”[85] He was

also a man of great tact and insight. He always felt the personal

situation; divining the character and aims of his antagonists, and

making his own officers feel that he understood them and appreciated

whatever in them was worthy.

In spite of the fact that a boastful spirit is attributed to Americans,

the complete renunciation of external display so noticeable in General

Grant is congenial to the American mind, and characteristic of a large

proportion of our most successful and admired men. Undoubtedly our

typical hero is the man who is capable of anything, but thinks it

unbecoming to obtrude the fact. Possibly it is our self-reliant,

democratic mode of life, which, since it offers a constant and varied

test of the realities, as distinct from the appearances, gives rise to a

contempt of the latter, and of those arts of pretence which impose upon

a less sophisticated people. The truth about us is so accessible that

cant becomes comparatively transparent and ridiculous.[86]

There is no better phenomenon in which to observe personal ascendency

than public speaking. When a man takes the floor in an assembly, all

eyes are fixed upon him, all imaginations set to work to divine his

personality and significance. If he looks like a true and steadfast man,

of a spirit kindred with our own, we incline to him before he speaks,

and believe that what he says will be congenial and right. We have all,

probably, seen one arise in the midst of an audience strange to him, and

by his mere attitude and expression of countenance create a subtle sense

of community and expectation of consent. Another, on the contrary, will

at once impress us as self-conceited, insincere, over-excited, cold,

narrow, or in some other way out of touch with us, and not likely to say

anything that will suit us. As our first speaker proceeds, he continues

to create a sense that he feels the situation; we are at home and

comfortable with him, because he seems to be of our sort, having similar

views and not likely to lead us wrong; it is like the ease and

relaxation that one feels among old friends. There can be no perfect

eloquence that does not create this sense of personal congeniality. But

this deference to our character and mood is only the basis for exerting

power over us; he is what we are, but is much more; is decided where we

were vacillating, clear where we were vague, warm where we were cold. He

offers something affirmative and onward, and gives it the momentum of

his own belief. A man may lack everything but tact and conviction and

still be a forcible speaker; but without these nothing will avail.

“Speak only what you do know and believe, and are personally in it, and

are answerable for every word.” In comparison with these traits of mind

and character, fluency, grace, logical order, and the like, are merely

the decorative surface of oratory, which is well enough in its

subordinate place, but can easily be dispensed with. Bismarck was not

the less a great orator because he spoke “with difficulty and an

appearance of struggle,” and Cromwell’s rude eloquence would hardly have

been improved by lessons in elocution.

Burke is an example of a man who appears to have had all the attributes

of a great speaker except tact, and was conspicuously contrasted in this

respect with Fox, whose genial nature never failed to keep touch with

the situation. A man whose rising makes people think of going to dinner

is not distinctively a great orator, even though his speeches are an

immortal contribution to literature. The well-known anecdote of the

dagger illustrates the unhappy results of losing touch with the

situation. In the midst of one of his great discourses on the French

Revolution, intending to impress upon his hearers the bloody character

of that movement, Burke drew from his bosom a dagger and cast it on the

floor. It so happened, however, that the Members of Parliament present

were not just then in the mood to be duly impressed by this exhibition,

which produced only astonishment and ridicule. Fox could never have done

a thing of this sort. With all Burke’s greatness, it would seem that

there must have been something narrow, strenuous, and at times even

repellent, in his personality and manner, some lack of ready

fellow-feeling, allowing him to lose that sense of the situation without

which there can hardly be any face-to-face ascendency.

The ascendency which an author exercises over us by means of the written

page is the same in essence as that of the man of action or the orator.

The medium of communication is different; visible or audible traits give

place to subtler indications. There is also more time for reflection,

and reader or writer can choose the mood most fit to exert power or to

feel it; so that there is no need for that constant preparedness and

aggressiveness of voice and manner which the man of action requires. But

these are, after all, incidental differences; and the underlying traits

of personality, the essential relationship between leader and follower,

are much the same as in the other cases. The reader should feel that the

author’s mind and purpose are congenial with his own, though in the

present direction they go farther, that the thought communicated is not

at all alien, but so truly his that it offers an opportunity to expand

to a wider circle, and become a completer edition of himself. In short,

if an author is to establish and maintain the power to interest us and,

in his province, to lead our thought, he must exhibit personal

significance and tact, in a form appropriate to this mode of expression.

He must have a humanity so broad that, in certain of our moods at least,

it gives a sense of congeniality and at-homeness. He must also make a

novel and characteristic impression of some sort, a fresh and authentic

contribution to our life; and must, moreover, be wholly himself, “stand

united with his thought,” have that “truth to its type of the given

force” of which Walter Pater speaks. He must possess belief in

something, and simplicity and boldness in expressing it.

Take Darwin again for example, all the better because it is sometimes

imagined that personality is unimportant in scientific writing. Probably

few thoughtful and open-minded persons can read the “Origin of Species”

without becoming Darwinists, yielding willingly, for the time at least,

to his ascendency, and feeling him as a master. If we consider the

traits that give him this authority, it will be found that they are of

the same general nature as those already pointed out. As we read his

chapters, and begin to build him up in our imaginations out of the

subtle suggestions of style, we find ourselves thinking of him as, first

of all, a true and simple man, a patient, sagacious seeker after the

real. This makes us, so far as we are also simple seekers after the

real, feel at home with him, forget suspicion, and incline to believe as

he believes, even if we fail to understand his reasons—though no man

leaves us less excuse for such failure. His aim is our aim—the truth,

and as he is far more competent to achieve it in this field than we are,

both because of natural aptitude and a lifetime of special research, we

readily yield him the reins, the more so because he never for an instant

demands it, but seems to appeal solely to facts.

How many writers are there, even of much ability, who fail, primarily

and irretrievably, because they do not make this favorable personal

impression; because we divine something insincere, something impatient,

some private aim that is not truth, which keeps us uncomfortably on our

guard and makes us reluctant to follow them even when they appear most

incontrovertible. Mr. Huxley suggested that Darwin harmed his case by

excessive and unnecessary deference to the suggestions of his opponents;

but it may well be that in the long run, and with the highest tribunal,

this trait has added to his power. Many men have been convinced by the

character of Darwin, by his obvious disinterestedness and lack of all

controversial bias, who would never have followed Huxley. I have had

occasion to notice that there is no way of making converts to the idea

of evolution so effectual as to set people reading the “Origin of

Species.” Spencerism comes and goes, but Darwinism is an abiding

condition.

Darwin’s intellectual significance no one will question; and his

self-confidence or faith was equally remarkable, and not at all

inconsistent with his modesty. In his case it seems a faith in truth

itself, so wholly is the self we find in his books identified with the

striving after truth. As an act of faith his twenty years of collecting

and brooding over the facts bearing upon the principle he had divined,

was an exploit of the same nature as that of Columbus, sailing westward

for months into an unknown ocean, to a goal which no one else could see.

And with what simple confidence does he take his stand upon the truth

thus won, and apply it to the geological history of the globe, or the

rise of the human body and mind. A good illustration of his faith is his

assertion, in the face of ridicule, that the existence of an orchid with

a narrow neck eleven inches long proved the existence of a moth with a

tongue of equal length. The moth, at that time unknown, was subsequently

discovered.[87]

To illustrate the same principles in a wholly different phase of

thought, we might take Charles Lamb. Lamb, too, attracts us first of all

by a human and congenial personality. We feel that in the kinds of

sentiment with which he deals he is at home and adequate, is ourselves

and more than we, with a deeper pathos, a richer, more audacious humor,

a truer sensibility. He, too, enlarges life by access to novel and

acceptable modes of being; and he is always boldly and simply himself.

It is a poor notion of Lamb that does not recognize that he was, in his

way, a man of character, conviction, and faith.

A similar analysis might be applied to great writers of other

sorts—poets, historians, and moralists; also to painters, sculptors,

actors, singers, to every potent personality after its kind. While there

is infinite variety in leadership—according to the characters of the

persons concerned, the points at which they come in contact, the means

of communication between them, and so on—there is, nevertheless, a

likeness of principle everywhere present. There is no such radical and

complete divergence of the conditions of power in the various fields of

activity as is sometimes imagined. While there are great differences,

they may be looked upon as specific rather than generic. We may always

expect to find a human nature sufficiently broad and sound—at least in

those phases most apparent in the special means of expression chosen—to

be felt as representative; also some timely contribution added to the

range of thought or feeling, and faith in or loyalty to this peculiar

contribution.

It is a very natural result of the principles already noted that the

fame and power of a man often transcend the man himself; that is to say,

the personal idea associated by the world with a particular name and

presence has often little basis in the mind behind that name and

presence, as it appears to cool and impartial study. The reason is that

the function of the great and famous man is to be a symbol, and the real

question in other minds is not so much, What are you? as, What can I

believe that you are? What can you help me to feel and be? How far can I

use you as a symbol in the development of my instinctive tendency? The

scientific historian may insist on asking, What are you? because the

instinct he is trying to gratify is the need to make things consistent

to the intelligence. But few persons have this need strongly developed,

in comparison with those of a more emotional character; and so most will

care more for the other questions. The scientific point of view can

never be that of the most of mankind, and science, it seems to me, can

hardly be more than the critic and chastener of popular faith, not its

leader.

Thus we may say of all famous and admired characters that, as personal

ideas, they partake of the nature of gods, in that the thought

entertained of them is a constructive effort of the idealizing

imagination seeking to create a personal symbol of its own tendency.

Perhaps there is no more striking illustration of this than that offered

by the mediæval history of the papacy. It is notorious that the idea of

the pope, as it was entertained by the religious world, and the pope

himself, as he appeared to his intimates, were things having for the

most part no close relation to each other. The visible pope was often

and for long periods at a time a depraved or insignificant man; but

during these very periods the ideal pope, the pope of Europe’s thought,

might and often did flourish and grow in temporal and spiritual power.

The former was only a symbol for the better definition of what the world

needed to believe, a lay figure for garments woven by the co-operative

imagination of religious men. The world needed to believe in a spiritual

authority as a young girl needs to be in love, and it took up with the

papacy as the most available framework for that belief, just as the

young girl is likely to give her love to the least repugnant of those

who solicit it. The same is true in a large measure of the other great

mediæval authority, the emperor, as Mr. Bryce so clearly shows in his

history of the Holy Roman Empire; and it holds true in some degree of

all those clothed with royalty or other great offices. Fame may or may

not represent what men were; but it always represents what humanity

needs them to have been.

It is also true that when there is a real personal superiority,

ascendency is seldom confined to the traits in which this is manifested,

but, once established in regard to these traits, it tends to envelop the

leader as a whole, and to produce allegiance to him as a concrete

person. This comes, of course, from the difficulty of breaking up and

sifting that which presents itself to the senses, and through them to

the mind, as a single living whole. And as the faults and weaknesses of

a great man are commonly much easier to imitate than his excellences, it

often happens, as in the case of Michelangelo, that the former are much

more conspicuous in his followers than the latter.

Another phase of the same truth is the ascendency that persons of belief

and hope always exercise as against those who may be superior in every

other respect, but who lack these traits. The onward and aggressive

portion of the world, the people who do things, the young and all having

surplus energy, need to hope and strive for an imaginative object, and

they will follow no one who does not encourage this tendency. The first

requisite of a leader is, not to be right, but to lead, to show a way.

The idealist’s programme of political or economic reform may be

impracticable, absurd, demonstrably ridiculous; but it can never be

successfully opposed merely by pointing out that this is the case. A

negative opposition cannot be wholly effectual: there must be a

competing idealism; something must be offered that is not only less

objectionable but more desirable, that affords occupation to progressive

instinct. This holds true, for instance, in the case of teachers. One

may sometimes observe two men of whom one has a sounder judgment, a

clearer head, a more steadfast character, and is more a master of his

subject, than the other; yet is hopelessly inferior in influence,

because the other has a streak of contagious idealism which he lacks.

One has all the virtues except hope; the other has that and all the

power. It has been well said that when a man ceases to learn—to be open

and forward looking—he should also cease to teach.

It would be easy to multiply illustrations of this simple but important

truth. All vigorous minds, I think, love books and persons that are

mentally enfranchising and onward-looking, that seem to overthrow the

high board fences of conventional thought and show a distance with

purple hills; while it would be possible to mention powerful minds that

have quickly lost influence by giving too much the impression of

finality, as if they thought their system was the last. They only build

another board fence a little beyond the old one. Perhaps the most

admirable and original thing about Emerson is the invincible openness

and renewal that seem to be in him, and some of us find his best

expression in that address on the “Method of Nature” in which, even more

than elsewhere, he makes us feel that what is achieved is ever

transitory, and that there is everything to expect from the future. In

like manner, to take perhaps the most remarkable example of all, the

early Christians found in their belief organized hope, in contrast to

the organized _ennui_ of the Roman system of thought, and this, it would

seem, must have been its most direct and potent appeal to most

minds.[88]

It is also because of this ideal and imaginative character in personal

ascendency that mystery enters so largely into it. Our allegiance is

accompanied by a mental enlargement and renewal through generative

suggestions; we are passing from the familiar to the strange, are being

drawn we know not whither by forces never before experienced; the very

essence of the matter is novelty, insecurity, and that excitement in the

presence of dim possibilities that constitutes mystery.

It has often been remarked that to one in love the beloved person

appears as a mystery, enveloped, as it were, in a sort of purple cloud.

This is doubtless because the lover is undergoing strange alteration in

his own mind; fresh vague passions are rising into consciousness out of

the dark storehouse of hereditary instinct; he is cast loose from his

old anchorage and does not know whither he is driven. The consequent

feeling of a power and a strangeness upon him he associates, of course,

with the person—commonplace enough, perhaps, to others—who is the symbol

and occasion of the experience. Goethe seems to mean something of this

sort when he uses the expression _das ewig Weibliche_ to suggest the

general mystery and allurement of new life.

And it is much the same no matter what sort of ascendency is exercised

over us; there is always excitement and a feeling of newness and

uncertainty, imagination is awakened and busies itself with the

fascinating personality; his slightest word or action is eagerly

interpreted and works upon us. In short, mystery and idealism are so

inseparable that a sense of power in others seems to involve a sense of

their inscrutability; and, on the other hand, so soon as a person

becomes plain, he ceases to stimulate the imagination; we have seen all

around him, so that he no longer appears an open door to new life, but

has begun to be commonplace and stale.

It is even true that inscrutability in itself, having perhaps nothing

important back of it, plays a considerable part in personal ascendency.

The hero is always a product of constructive imagination; and just as

some imaginative painters find that the too detailed observation of

sensible objects cumbers the inner vision and impedes production, so the

hero-worshipper is likely at times to reject altogether the persons he

knows in favor of some sort of mask or lay figure, whose very blankness

or inertness insures to it the great advantage that it cannot actively

repudiate the qualities attributed to it: it offers _carte blanche_ to

the imagination. As already suggested, the vital question in ascendency

is not, primarily, What are you? but, What do you enable me to be? What

self-developing ideas do you enable me to form? and the power of mere

inscrutability arises from the fact that it gives a vague stimulus to

thought and then leaves it to work out the details to suit itself. To

recur to the matter of falling in love: the young girl who, like

Gwendolen in “Daniel Deronda,” or Isabel in the “Portrait of a Lady,”

fixes her passion upon some self-contained and to her inscrutable

person, in preference to others who are worthier but less mysterious, is

a common character in life as well as in fiction.

Many other illustrations of the same principle might be given. Thus the

fact, instances of which are collected by Mr. Tylor in his work on

“Primitive Culture,” that the insane, the idiotic, and the epileptic are

reverenced by primitive peoples, may be interpreted in a similar

manner.[89] Those who are mentally abnormal present in a striking form

the inscrutable in personality; they seem to be men, but are not such

men as we; our imaginations are alarmed and baffled, so that it is not

unnatural that before science has shown us definite relations between

these persons and ourselves, they should serve as one of the points

about which crystallize our imaginations of unknown power. In the same

way a strange and somewhat impassive physiognomy is often, perhaps, an

advantage to an orator, or leader of any sort, because it helps to fix

the eye and fascinate the mind. Such a countenance as that of Savonarola

may have counted for much toward the effect he produced. Another

instance of the prestige of the inscrutable is the fascination of

silence, when power is imagined to lie behind it. The very name of

William the Silent gives one a sort of thrill, whether he knows anything

of that distinguished character or not. One seems to see a man darkly

potent, mysteriously dispensing with the ordinary channel of

self-assertion, and attaining his ends without evident means. It is the

same with Von Moltke, “silent in seven languages,” whose genius humbled

France and Austria in two brief campaigns. And General Grant’s

taciturnity undoubtedly fascinated the imagination of the people—after

his earlier successes had shown that there was really something in

him—and helped to secure to him a trust and authority much beyond that

of any other of the Federal generals. It is the same with personal

reserve in every form: one who always appears to be his own master and

does not too readily reveal his deeper feelings, is so much the more

likely to create an impression of power. He is formidable because

incalculable. And accordingly we see that many people deliberately

assume, or try to assume, an appearance of inscrutability,

“And do a wilful stillness entertain,

With purpose to be dressed in an opinion

Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;”

Disraeli, it is said, “was a mystery man by instinct and policy,” and we

all know others in our own circle of acquaintances.

So with the expression of personality in literature. A book which is

perfectly clear at the first cursory reading is by that fact condemned

as commonplace. If there were anything vital in it, it would appear at

least a little strange, and would not be fully understood until it had

been for some time inwardly digested. At the end of that time it would

have done its best service for us and its ascendency would have waned.

It is always thus, I imagine, with writers who strongly move us; there

is first mystery and a sense of unexplored life, then a period of

assimilative excitement, and after that chastened affection, or perhaps

revulsion or distrust. A person of mature years and ripe development,

who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and

renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete

as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious

students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they

are capable of the growth that it accompanies. It was a maxim of Goethe

that where there is no mystery there is no power; and something of the

perennial vitality of his writings may be attributed to the fact that he

did not trouble himself too much with the question whether people would

understand him, but set down his inmost experiences as adequately as he

could, and left the rest to time. The same may be said of Browning, and

of many other great writers.

Something similar holds true of power in plastic art. The sort of

mystery most proper and legitimate in art, however, is not an

intellectual mystery—though some artists have had a great deal of that,

like Leonardo, who “conquered by the magnetism of an incalculable

personality”[90]—but rather a sensuous mystery, that is to say a vague

and subtle appeal to recondite sources of sensuous impression, an

awakening of hitherto unconscious capacity for harmonious sensuous life,

like the feeling we get from the first mild weather in the spring. In

this way, it seems to me, there is an effect of mystery, of congenial

strangeness, in all powerful art. Probably everyone would recognize this

as true of music, even if all do not feel its applicability to painting,

sculpture and architecture.

The well-known fact that mystery is inseparable from higher religious

idealism may be regarded as a larger expression of this same necessity

of associating inscrutability with personal power. If the imagination

cannot be content with the definite in lesser instances, it evidently

cannot when it comes to form the completest image of personality that it

can embrace.

Although ascendency depends upon what we think about a man rather than

what he is, it is nevertheless true that an impression of his reality

and good faith is of the first importance, and this impression can

hardly outlast close scrutiny unless it corresponds to the fact. Hence,

as a rule, the man who is to exercise enduring power over others must

believe in that for which he stands. Such belief operates as a potent

suggestion upon the minds of others.

“While thus he spake, his eye, dwelling on mine,

Drew me, with power upon me, till I grew

One with him, to believe as he believed.”[91]

If we divine a discrepancy between a man’s words and his character, the

whole impression of him becomes broken and painful; he revolts the

imagination by his lack of unity, and even the good in him is hardly

accepted. Nothing, therefore, is more fatal to ascendency than perceived

insincerity or doubt, and in immediate intercourse it is hard to conceal

them. When Luther came to Rome and saw what kind of a man the Pope was,

the papacy was shaken.

How far it is possible for a man to work upon others through a false

idea of himself depends upon a variety of circumstances. As already

pointed out, the man himself may be a mere incident with no definite

relation to the idea of him, the latter being a separate product of the

imagination. This can hardly be except where there is no immediate

contact between leader and follower, and partly explains why authority,

especially if it covers intrinsic personal weakness, has always a

tendency to surround itself with forms and artificial mystery, whose

object is to prevent familiar contact and so give the imagination a

chance to idealize. Among a self-reliant, practical people like ours,

with much shrewdness and little traditional reverence, the power of

forms is diminished; but it is always great. The discipline of armies

and navies, for instance, very distinctly recognizes the necessity of

those forms which separate superior from inferior, and so help to

establish an unscrutinized ascendency in the former. In the same way

manners, as Professor Ross remarks in his work on “Social Control,”[92]

are largely used by men of the world as a means of self-concealment, and

this self-concealment serves, among other purposes, that of preserving a

sort of ascendency over the unsophisticated.

As regards intentional imposture, it may be said in general that all men

are subject to be duped in matters of which they have no working

knowledge and which appeal strongly to the emotions. The application of

this principle to quack medicine, to commercial swindles, and to the

ever-reappearing impostures relating to supposed communication with

spirits, is too plain to be enlarged upon. While it is an advantage,

even to a charlatan, to believe in himself, the susceptibility of a

large part of us to be duped by quacks of one sort or another is obvious

enough, and shows that the work of free institutions in developing

shrewdness is by no means complete.

Probably a close and candid consideration of the matter would lead to

the conclusion that everyone is something of an impostor, that we all

pose more or less, under the impulse to produce a desired impression

upon others. As social and imaginative beings we must set store by our

appearance; and it is hardly possible to do so without in some degree

adapting that appearance to the impression we wish to make. It is only

when this adaptation takes the form of deliberate and injurious deceit

that much fault can be found with it. “We all,” says Stevenson in his

essay on Pepys, “whether we write or speak, must somewhat drape

ourselves when we address our fellows; at a given moment we apprehend

our character and acts by some particular side; we are merry with one,

grave with another, as befits the nature and demands of the relation.”

If we never tried to seem a little better than we are, how could we

improve or “train ourselves from the outside inward”? And the same

impulse to show the world a better or idealized aspect of ourselves

finds an organized expression in the various professions and classes,

each of which has to some extent a cant or pose, which its members

assume unconsciously, for the most part, but which has the effect of a

conspiracy to work upon the credulity of the rest of the world. There is

a cant not only of theology and of philanthropy, but also of law,

medicine, teaching, even of science—perhaps especially of science, just

now, since the more a particular kind of merit is recognized and

admired, the more it is likely to be assumed by the unworthy. As

theology goes down and science comes up, the affectation of

disinterestedness and of exactness in method tends to supplant the

affectation of piety.