Events of the mind as well as of travel may be worth remembering.
Columbus, high on a peak of Darien, saw an unexpected sight--never to
be forgotten. Of another kind, as far as surprise was concerned, though
infinitely less important in other respects, was my first reading of a
passage of Pascal, which more than any other revealed to me a new world
of human life. The passage was the well-known exclamation:--
"What an enigma is man? What a strange, chaotic and contradictory being?
Judge of all things, feeble earth-worm, depository of the Truth, mass of
uncertainty, glory and butt of the universe, incomprehensible monster!
In truth, what is man in the midst of Nature? A cypher in respect to the
infinite; all, in comparison with nonentity: a mean betwixt nothing and
all."
Everybody knows that not only in different nations, but in the same
nation, mankind present a strange variety of qualities and passions.
The English are outspoken, the Scotch reticent, the Irish uncertain, the
American alert, the French ceremonial. Even our English counties have
their special ways of action. London is confident, Birmingham dogged,
Manchester resolute, New-castle-on-Tyne has greater modesty and greater
pride than any other place. Yes; every one agrees with Pascal that man
is a bewildering creature. He is proud and abject, generous and mean,
defiant and craven, standing up for inflexible truth, and lying in his
daily life. As Byron says, "Man is half dust, half deity." If we go far
enough in our search we find people of all qualities. Everybody sees
these characteristics of countries and classes. Everybody recognises
these conflicting elements of character in a race; but what amazed me
was to perceive that they are to be found in _each_ person in varying
proportion and force--they are all there. The varieties of the race are
to be found in the same individual. No man who understands this
ever looks upon society as he did before. Not knowing this fact, not
calculating upon it, error, distrust, disappointment, estrangement, grow
up needlessly.
Twice within the public recollection, two political parties in England
have been formed, and made furious by a common ignorance. During the
great Slave War in America, the Southern planter was held up as a
gentleman of polished manners, of cultivated tastes, a paternal master
and courteous host By others he was described as selfish, sensual,
tyrannical, with whom any guest who betrayed sympathy with slaves had an
unpleasant time. Both accounts were true. The same model gentleman who
showered upon you courtly attentions would tar and feather you if he
found you display emotion when you heard the shriek of the slave under
the whip. Later, Parliament, the press, and the Church were divided upon
the character of the Turk. One party said he was tolerant, picturesque,
abounding in concessions and hospitality. The other party described him
as subtle, evasive, treacherous, vicious, and cruel. No one seemed to
recognise that all the while he was both these things. He was an
adept in personal deference, generous in professions, evasive and
treacherous--in short, "Abdul the Damned." To those from whom the Sultan
had anything to hope, his graciousness was superb--to those at his mercy
he was rapacious and murderous.
The Circassians will offer their daughters to the Turk--they send
their virgin beauty into the market of lust, and then fight for the
purchasers. The Hindoos seem a gentle, unresisting, rice-minded people;
yet have such capacity of heroic and vigilant reticence, that though we
have been masters of India for one hundred and fifty years, it is said
by experienced officials, we do not know the real mind of a single man.
The Zulus have savage instincts and habits; but they are honest, speak
the truth, and despise a man who is angry or excited.
Thiers, the great French statesman, had trust in individuals, but
despised the masses. Yet the masses pulled down the Bastile, where only
gentlemen were imprisoned and not themselves. The masses were moved by a
generous dislike of oppression as strongly as Thiers himself.
President Washington, looking only at the corruption of classes he came
in contact with, predicted evil to the future of American society. Yet,
one hundred years after, a latent nobleness of sentiment appeared, which
gave a million of lives in order that black men with large feet, as was
scornfully said, should be free.
Because oppression had made, for years, assassination frequent in
Italy, many thought every man carried a stiletto, and did not know that
Italians are more patient and cooler-headed on great occasions than
Englishmen or Frenchmen.
The Irish do not conceal that they are our enemies, and ruin every
English movement in which they mingle, yet who have such brightness,
drollery of imagination as they? Or who will stand by a friend of their
country at the peril of their lives without hesitation as they do?
The Scotch display in contest a sort of divine ferocity, such as we read
of in the Old Testament. Their battle song at Flodden ran thus:--
"Burn their women, lean and ugly,
Burn their children, great and small,
In the hut and in the palace,
Prince and peasant--burn them all.
Plunge them in the swelling torrents
With their gear and with their goods;
Spare--while breath remains--no Saxon,
Drown them in the roaring floods."
The Irish could not excel this rage of hell. Yet the same race gave us
Burns and Sir Walter Scott, which no seer would have predicted or any
would believe. The Scotch have deliberate generosity. Though narrow in
piety they are broad in politics and have veracity in their bones.
It concerns us to notice that in every _individual_ there is the same
variety of qualities which exist in the race. Not to understand this is
to misunderstand everybody with whom we come in contact. Take the
case of a man in whom personal ambition predominates. That implies
the existence of other qualities which may be even estimable, though
subordinated to ends of power. William, the Norman Conqueror, had a
gracious manner to any who lent themselves to further his ends; but, as
Tennyson tells us, he was "stark as Death to those who crossed him."
The first Napoleon gave thrones to generals who would occupy them in his
interest, or as his instruments. The third Napoleon was very courteous
even to workmen, so long as he believed they would be on his side in
the streets; but their throats were not safe in the corridor outside his
audience chamber, if he distrusted them.
This unexpected blandishment confused the strong brain of John Arthur
Roebuck, who, under the influence of Bonapartean courtesy, forgot that
he had become Emperor by perjury and murder. A man caring above all
things for power will give anything to acquire it or hold it. If any one
will help him even to plunder others, he will share the plunder with a
liberal hand among his confederates, who proclaim him as a most amiable,
generous, and disinterested gentleman. To them he is so. The political
world and private life also abounds in men who, like Byron's captain,
was the "best-mannered gentleman who ever scuttled a ship or cut a
throat."
There are very few who say as Byron elsewhere wrote:--
"I wish men to be free,
From Kings or mobs--from you or me."
The point of importance is that in judging a man we should accustom
ourselves to see all about him, and, while we hate the evil, not shut
our eyes to what there may be of good in the same person.
For objects of popularity men will encounter peril in promoting measures
of public utility, and though they care more for themselves than for the
public, the public profit by their ambition. Provided it is understood
that these advocates are not to be depended upon any longer than it
answers their purpose, nobody is discouraged when they take up with
something else, which better serves their ends.
Men like Mr. Gladstone have a passion for conscience in politics; or,
like Mr. Bright, have a passion for justice in public affairs; or,
like Mr. Mill, have a passion for truth; or, like Mr. Cobden, who had
a passion for national prosperity founded on freedom and peace--will
encounter labour and obloquy with courage, and regard applause only as
a happy accident, caring mainly for the consciousness of duty done.
However, this class of men are not numerous, but command honour when
known.
Men of the average sort very much resemble fishes, except that they are
less quiet and not so graceful in their movements. There is the Pholas
Dactylus, which resembles a small, animated sausage with a pudding head.
His plan of life is to bore a perfectly tubular passage in the soft sand
rock on the sea-side, and lie there with his cunning head at the mouth
of his dwelling and snap up the smaller creatures who wander heedlessly
by. Sometimes a near relative has made a dwelling-place at right angles
to the direction in which he has elected to make his residence. He does
not consult the rights or convenience of any one, but bores straight
through his father or his mother-in-law. There are many persons who
do the same thing. There is the subtle and picturesque devil fish, who
hides himself in the sedge and opens his mouth like a railway tunnel.
With the fishing-rod which Nature attaches to his nose, the end of which
is contrived like a bait, he switches the bright water until fish run
forward, when he draws it cleverly up, and the foolish, impetuous, and
unobservant creatures rush down his cavernous and treacherous throat He
offers a bait, not to feed them, but to feed himself. If people had
only eyes to see, there are devil fish about in the sedges of daily
life--political, clerical, and social. There is the octopus, with its
long, aimless arms, as silent and lifeless as seaweed. It lies about as
idle, as soft, as flexible, and as easy as error, or intemperance, or
dishonesty. But let any edible thing approach it, and every limb starts
into energy, every fibre is alive, every muscle contracts, and the thing
seized dies in its inextricable and iron arms. People abound of the
octopus species, and it is prudent to avoid them. However, the bad are
not so many as are supposed. Yet, when we consider that, upon a moderate
calculation, a fool a day is born--and doubtless a knave a day to keep
him company--there must be some dubious people about.
A common mistake is that of taking offence at some unpleasant quality,
and never looking to see whether there be not others for which we may
tolerate and even respect a man. A person is often judged by a single
quality, and sometimes by a single word. Persons who have lived long
years in amity take offence at one expression. It may be uttered in
passion; it may be spoken in mere lightness of heart, with no intention
and no idea of offending--yet it enters into the foolish blood of those
who hear it, and poisons the mind evermore. Nevertheless every man who
reflects knows that those are fortunate and even miraculously skilful
people, who can always say exactly what they intend to say, and no more.
What resource of language--what insight of the minds of others--what
mastery of phrases--what subtlety of discrimination--what perspicuity
of statement must he possess who can express his every idea with such
unerring accuracy that no word shall be redundant, or deficient, or
ambiguous; and that another shall understand the speaker precisely as he
understands himself! Yet by a chance phrase what friendships have been
severed--what enmity has arisen--what estrangements, even in households,
have occurred from these small and incidental causes? All memory of the
tenderness, the kindness, the patient and generous service of years
is often obliterated by a single word! The error people make is--that
everything said is intended. Yet out of the many qualities every man
has, and by which any man may be moved, a single passion may go mad in
a mind unwatchful. Not only hatred or anger, but love will go mad and
commit murder, which is often but the insanity of a minute. Yet nobody
remembers that all are liable to insanity of speech.
What a wonderful thing is perfection! It must be very rare. Yet some
people are always looking for it in others who never offer any example
of it in themselves. It is not, however, to be had anywhere. All we are
entitled to look for is that the good in any individual shall in some
general way predominate over the bad. We have need to be thankful if we
find this. The late George Peabody was not a mean man, though he would
stand in the rain at Charing Cross, waiting for a cheap omnibus to the
City. There was a threepenny one waiting, but one with a twopenny fare
would come up soon--Mr. Peabody would wait for it Making money was the
habit of his mind, and he made it in the street as well as the office,
and having made it, gave it away with a more than royal hand.
One Sunday I rode in a Miles Platting tram car, amid decorous,
well-dressed chapel-going people--several of them young and active. A
child fell out of the tram, whose mother was too feeble to follow it. No
one moved, save a woman of repulsive expression, with whom any one might
suppose her neighbours had a bad time. She seemed the least desirable
person to know of all the passengers; yet this woman, on seeing the
child lying in the road, at once leapt out of the tram, brought the
child back and put it tenderly into its mother's arms. Intrepid humanity
may dwell in a very rough exterior.
There goes a man with a hard, forbidding face, and a headachy
Evangelical complexion. Like the man mentioned in the last paper, he is
not an alluring person to know--those at his fireside have a dreary time
of it. His children have joyless Sundays. He is a street preacher.
His voice is harsh and painful. He howls "glad tidings" at the street
corner. He is wanting in the first elements of reverence--those of
modesty and taste. Yet this same man has kindness and generosity in his
heart After his hard day's work is done he will give the evening,
which others spend in pleasure, to try and save some casual soul in the
street.
Though we continually forget it, we know that men are full of mixed
qualities and unequal passions. Ignorance of this renders one of the
noblest passages of Shakespeare dangerous if misapplied:
"To thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
But what is a man's "own self"? It all lies there. Tell the liar, the
thief, the forger, or the ruffian to be true to himself, and any one
knows what will follow. Polonius knew the heart of Laertes, and to him
he could say, "to thine own self be true." We must be sure of the nature
of him whom we advise to follow himself.*
* Cicero appears to have thought of this when he said:
"Every roan ought carefully to follow out his peculiar
character, provided it is only peculiar, and not vicious,"
What is or what can be the object of education but to strengthen by
precept, habit and environment the better qualities of human nature;
and to divert, repress, or subordinate where we cannot extinguish
hereditary, unethical tendencies? Though we deny--or do not steadily
see--that nations as well as individuals have capacities for good
as well as evil, we admit it when we attempt to create international
influences, which shall promote civilisation.
If any would avoid the disappointment of ignorance and the alarms of
the foolish, let him learn to look with unamazed expectancy at what will
appear on the ocean of Society. Do not look in men for the qualities you
want to find, or for qualities you imagine they ought to have, but look
with unexpectant eyes for what you can find. Do not expect perfection,
but a few good points only, and be glad if you find them, and be
tolerant of what is absent. Of him of this way of thinking it may be
said, as was said of Charles Lamb: "He did not merely love his friends
in spite of their errors, he loved them errors and all." Whoever remains
under the delusion that nations and men possess only special qualities,
and not all qualities in different stages of development, will hate
them foolishly, praise them without reason, and will never know men.
But whoever understands the trend of things in this ever-changing,
uncontrollable world, where
"Our fate comes to us from afar,
Where others made us what we are,"
will utter the prayer of Sadi, the Persian poet: "O God! have pity on
the wicked, for Thou hast done everything for the good in having made
them good." A prayer worth remembering.