PART III.--ASSOCIATION.

The association of clergymen with ladies in works of charity affords

continual opportunities for the exercise of clerical influence over women.

A partnership in good works is set up which establishes interesting and

cordial relations, and when the lady has accomplished some charitable

purpose she remembers for long afterwards the clergyman without whose

active assistance her project might have fallen to the ground. She sees in

the clergyman a reflection of her own goodness, and she feels grateful to

him for lending his masculine sense and larger experience to the

realization of her ideas. There are other cases of a different nature in

which the self-esteem of the lady is deeply gratified when she is selected

by the clergyman as being more capable of devoted effort in a sacred cause

than women of inferior piety and strength of mind. This kind of clerical

selection is believed to be very influential in furthering clerical

marriages. The lady is told that she will serve the highest of all causes

by lending a willing ear to her admirer. Every reader will remember how

thoroughly this idea is worked out in "Jane Eyre," where St. John urges

Jane to marry him on the plain ground that she would be a valuable

fellow-worker with a missionary. Charlotte Brontë was, indeed, so strongly

impressed with this aspect of clerical influence that she injured the best

and strongest of her novels by an almost wearisome development of that

episode.

Clerical influence is immensely aided by the possession of leisure.

Without underrating the self-devotion of hard-working clergymen (which is

all the more honorable to them that they might take life more easily if

they chose), we see a wide distinction, in point of industry, between the

average clergyman and the average solicitor, for example. The clergyman

has leisure to pay calls, to accept many invitations, and to talk in full

detail about the interests that he has in common with his female friends.

The solicitor is kept to his office by strictly professional work

requiring very close application and allowing no liberty of mind.

Much might be said about the effect of clerical leisure on clerical

manners. Without leisure it is difficult to have such quiet and pleasant

manners as the clergy generally have. Very busy men generally seem

preoccupied with some idea of their own which is not what you are talking

about, but a leisurely man will give hospitality to your thought. A busy

man wants to get away, and fidgets you; a man of leisure dwells with you,

for the time, completely. Ladies are exquisitely sensitive to these

differences, and besides, they are generally themselves persons of

leisure. Overworked people often confound leisure with indolence, which is

a great mistake. Leisure is highly favorable to intelligence and good

manners; indolence is stupid, from its dislike to mental effort, and

ill-bred, from the habit of inattention.

The feeling of women towards custom draws them strongly to the clergy,

because a priesthood is the instinctive upholder of ancient customs and

ceremonies, and steadily maintains external decorum. Women are naturally

more attracted by custom than we are. A few men have an affectionate

regard for the sanctities of usage, but most men only submit to them from

an idea that they are generally helpful to the "maintenance of order;" and

if women could be supposed absent from a nation for a time, it is probable

that external observances of all kinds would be greatly relaxed. Women do

not merely submit passively to custom; they uphold it actively and

energetically, with a degree of faith in the perfect reasonableness of it

which gives them great decision in its defence. It seems to them the

ultimate reason from which there is no appeal. Now, in the life of every

organized Church there is much to gratify this instinct, especially in

those which have been long established. The recurrence of holy seasons,

the customary repetition of certain forms of words, the observance at

stated intervals of the same ceremonies, the adherence to certain

prescribed decencies or splendors of dress, the reservation of sacred days

on which labor is suspended, give to the religious life a charm of

customariness which is deeply gratifying to good, order-loving women. It

is said that every poet has something feminine in his nature; and it is

certainly observable that poets, like women, are tenderly affected by the

recurrence of holy seasons, and the observance of fixed religious rites. I

will only allude to Keble's "Christian Year," because in this instance it

might be objected that the poet was secondary to the Christian; but the

reader will find instances of the same sentiment in Tennyson, as, for

example, in the profoundly affecting allusions to the return of Christmas

in "In Memoriam." I could not name another occupation so closely and

visibly bound up with custom as the clerical profession, but for the sake

of contrast I may mention one or two others that are completely

disconnected from it. The profession of painting is an example, and so is

that of literature. An artist, a writer, has simply nothing whatever to do

with custom, except as a private man. He may be an excellent and a famous

workman without knowing Sunday from week-day or Easter from Lent. A man of

science is equally unconnected with traditional observances.

It may be a question whether a celibate or a married clergy has the

greater influence over women.

There are two sides to this question. The Church of Rome is, from the

worldly point of view, the most astute body of men who have ever leagued

themselves together in a corporation; and that Church has decided for

celibacy, rejecting thereby all the advantages to be derived from rich

marriages and good connections. In a celibate church the priest has a

position of secure dignity and independence. It is known from the first

that he will not marry, so there is no idle and damaging gossip about his

supposed aspirations after fortune, or tender feelings towards beauty.

Women can treat him with greater confidence than if he were a possible

suitor, and then can confess to him, which is felt to be difficult with a

married or a marriageable clergy. By being decidedly celibate the clergy

avoid the possible loss of dignity which might result from allying

themselves with families in a low social position. They are simply

priests, and escape all other classification. A married man is, as it

were, made responsible for the decent appearance, the good manners, and

the proper conduct of three different sets of people. There is the family

he springs from, there is his wife's family, and, lastly, there is the

family in his own house. Any one of these may drag a man down socially

with almost irresistible force. The celibate priest is only affected by

the family he springs from, and is generally at a distance from that. He

escapes the invasion of his house by a wife's relations, who might

possibly be vulgar, and, above all, he escapes the permanent degradation

of a coarse and ill-dressed family of his own. No doubt, from the

Christian point of view, poverty is as honorable as wealth; but from the

worldly point of view its visible imperfections are mean, despicable, and

even ridiculous. In the early days of English Protestants the liberty to

marry was ruinous to the social position of the clergy. They generally

espoused servant-girls or "a lady's maid whose character had been blown

upon, and who was therefore forced to give up all hope of catching the

steward."[17] Queen Elizabeth issued "special orders that no clergyman

should presume to marry a servant-girl without the consent of the master

or mistress." "One of the lessons most earnestly inculcated on every girl

of honorable family was to give no encouragement to a lover in orders; and

if any young lady forgot this precept she was almost as much disgraced as

by an illicit amour." The cause of these low marriages was simply poverty,

and it is needless to add that they increased the evil. "As children

multiplied and grew, the household of the priest became more and more

beggarly. Holes appeared more and more plainly in the thatch of his

parsonage and in his single cassock. His boys followed the plough, and his

girls went out to service."

When clergymen can maintain appearances they gain one advantage from

marriage which increases their influence with women. The clergyman's wife

is almost herself in holy orders, and his daughter often takes an equally

keen interest in ecclesiastical matters. These "clergywomen," as they have

been called, are valuable allies, through whom much may be done that

cannot be effected directly. This is the only advantage on the side of

marriage, and it is but relative; for a celibate clergy has also its

female allies who are scarcely less devoted; and in the Church of Rome

there are great organized associations of women entirely under the control

of ecclesiastics. Again, there is a lay element in a clergyman's family

which brings the world into his own house, to the detriment of its

religious character. The sons of the clergy are often anything but

clerical in feeling. They are often strongly laic, and even sceptical, by

a natural reaction from ecclesiasticism. On the whole, therefore, it seems

certain that an unmarried clergy more easily maintains both its own

dignity and the distinction between itself and the laity.

Auricular confession is so well known as a means of influencing women that

I need scarcely do more than mention it; but there is one characteristic

of it which is little understood by Protestants. They fancy (judging from

Protestant feelings of antagonism) that confession must be felt as a

tyranny. A Roman Catholic woman does not feel it to be an infliction that

the Church imposes, but a relief that she affords. Women are not naturally

silent sufferers. They like to talk about their anxieties and interests,

especially to a patient and sympathetic listener of the other sex who will

give them valuable advice. There is reason to believe that a good deal of

informal confession is done by Protestant ladies; in the Church of Rome it

is more systematic and leads to a formal absolution. The subject which the

speaker has to talk about is that most interesting of all subjects, self.

In any other place than a confessional to talk about self at any length is

an error; in the confessional it is a virtue. The truth is that pious

Roman Catholic women find happiness in the confessional and try the

patience of the priests by minute accounts of trifling or imaginary sins.

No doubt confession places an immense power in the hands of the Church,

but at an incalculable cost of patience. It is not felt to weigh unfairly

on the laity, because the priest who to-day has forgiven your faults will

to-morrow kneel in penitence and ask forgiveness for his own. I do not see

in the confessional so much an oppressive institution as a convenience for

both parties. The woman gets what she wants,--an opportunity of talking

confidentially about herself; and the priest gets what he wants,--an

opportunity of learning the secrets of the household.

Nothing has so powerfully awakened the jealousy of laymen as this

institution of the confessional. The reasons have been so fully treated by

Michelet and others, and are in fact so obvious, that I need not repeat

them.

The dislike for priests that is felt by many Continental laymen is

increased by a cause that helps to win the confidence of women. "Observe,"

the laymen say, "with what art the priest dresses so as to make women feel

that he is without sex, in order that they may confess to him more

willingly. He removes every trace of hair from his face, his dress is half

feminine, he hides his legs in petticoats, his shoulders under a tippet,

and in the higher ranks he wears jewelry and silk and lace. A woman would

never confess to a man dressed as we are, so the wolf puts on sheep's

clothing."

Where confession is not the rule the layman's jealousy is less acrid and

pungent in its expression, but it often manifests itself in milder forms.

The pen that so clearly delineated the Rev. Charles Honeyman was impelled

by a layman's natural and pardonable jealousy. A feeling of this kind is

often strong in laymen of mature years. They will say to you in

confidence, "Here is a man about the age of one of my sons, who knows no

more concerning the mysteries of life and death than I do, who gets what

he thinks he knows out of a book which is as accessible to me as it is to

him, and yet who assumes a superiority over me which would only be

justifiable if I were ignorant and he enlightened. He calls me one of his

sheep. I am not a sheep relatively to him. I am at least his equal in

knowledge, and greatly his superior in experience. Nobody but a parson

would venture to compare me to an animal (such a stupid animal too!) and

himself to that animal's master. His one real and effective superiority is

that he has all the women on his side."

You poor, doubting, hesitating layman, not half so convinced as the ladies

of your family, who and what are you in the presence of a man who comes

clothed with the authority of the Church? If you simply repeat what he

says, you are a mere echo, a feeble repetition of a great original, like

the copy of a famous picture. If you try to take refuge in philosophic

indifference, in silent patience, you will be blamed for moral and

religious inertia. If you venture to oppose and discuss, you will be the

bad man against the good man, and as sure of condemnation as a murderer

when the judge is putting on the black cap. There is no resource for you

but one, and that does not offer a very cheering or hopeful prospect. By

the exercise of angelic patience, and of all the other virtues that have

been preached by good men from Socrates downwards, you may in twenty or

thirty years acquire some credit for a sort of inferior goodness of your

own,--a pinchbeck goodness, better than nothing, but not in any way

comparable to the pure golden goodness of the priest; and when you come to

die, the best that can be hoped for your disembodied soul will be mercy,

clemency, indulgence; not approbation, welcome, or reward.

ESSAY XIV.

WHY WE ARE APPARENTLY BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS.

It has happened to me on more than one occasion to have to examine papers

left by ladies belonging to the last generation, who had lived in the

manner most esteemed and respected by the general opinion of their time,

and who might, without much risk of error, be taken for almost perfect

models of English gentlewomen as they existed before the present

scientific age. The papers left by these ladies consisted either of

memoranda of their private thoughts, or of thoughts by others which seemed

to have had an especial interest for them. I found that all these papers

arranged themselves naturally and inevitably under two heads: either they

concerned family interests and affections, or they were distinctly

religious in character, like the religious meditations we find in books of

devotion.

There may be nothing extraordinary in this. Thousands of other ladies may

have left religious memoranda; but consider what a preponderance of

religious ideas is implied when written thoughts are entirely confined to

them! The ladies in question lived in the first half of the nineteenth

century, a period of great intellectual ferment, of the most important

political and social changes, and of wonderful material progress; but

they did not seem to have taken any real interest in these movements. The

Bible and the commentaries of the clergy satisfied not only their

spiritual but also their intellectual needs. They seem to have desired no

knowledge of the universe, or of the probable origin and future of the

human race, which the Bible did not supply. They seem to have cared for no

example of human character and conduct other than the scriptural examples.

This restfulness in Biblical history and philosophy, this substitution of

the Bible for the world as a subject of study and contemplation, this

absence of desire to penetrate the secrets of the world itself, this want

of aspiration after any ideal more recent than the earlier ages of

Christianity, permitted a much more constant and uninterrupted dwelling

with what are considered to be religious ideas than is possible to any

active and inquiring mind of the present day. Let it be supposed, for

example, that a person to whom the Bible was everything desired

information about the origin of the globe, and of life upon it; he would

refer to the Book of Genesis as the only authority, and this reference

would have the character of a religious act, and he would get credit for

piety on account of it; whilst a modern scientific student would refer to

some great modern paleontologist, and his reference would not have the

character of a religious act, nor bring him any credit for piety; yet the

prompting curiosity, the desire to know about the remote past, would be

exactly the same in both cases. And I think it may be easily shown that if

the modern scientific student appears to be less religious than others

think he ought to be, it is often because he possesses and uses more

abundant sources of information than those which were accessible to the

ancient Jews. It is not his fault if knowledge has increased; he cannot be

blamed if he goes where information is most copious and most exact; yet

his preference for such information gives an unsanctified aspect to his

studies. The study of the most ancient knowledge wears a religious aspect,

but the study of modern knowledge appears to be non-religious.

Again, when we come to the cultivation of the idealizing faculties, of the

faculties which do not seek information merely, but some kind of

perfection, we find that the very complexity of modern life, and the

diversity of the ideal pleasures and perfections that we modern men

desire, have a constant tendency to take us outside of strictly religious

ideals. As long as the writings which are held to be sacred supply all

that our idealizing faculties need, so long will our imaginative powers

exercise themselves in what is considered to be a religious manner, and we

shall get credit for piety; but when our minds imagine what the sacred

writers could not or did not conceive, and when we seek help for our

imaginative faculty in profane writers, we appear to be less religious. So

it is with the desire to study and imitate high examples of conduct and

character. There is no nobler or more fruitful instinct in man than a

desire like this, which is possible only to those who are at once humble

and aspiring. An ancient Jew who had this noble instinct could satisfy it

by reading the sacred books of the Hebrews, and so his aspiration appeared

to be wholly religious. It is not so with an active-minded young

Englishman of the present day. He cannot find the most inspiriting models

amongst the ancient Hebrews, for the reason that their life was altogether

so much simpler and more primitive than ours. They had nothing that can

seriously be called science; they had not any organized industry; they had

little art, and hardly any secular literature, so that in these directions

they offer us no examples to follow. Our great inspiriting examples in

these directions are to be found either in the Renaissance or in recent

times, and therefore in profane biography. From this it follows that an

active modern mind seems to study and follow non-religious examples, and

so to differ widely, and for the worse, from the simpler minds of old

time, who were satisfied with the examples they found in their Bibles.

This appearance is misleading; it is merely on the surface; for if we go

deeper and do not let ourselves be deceived by the words "sacred" and

"profane," we shall find that when a simple mind chooses a model from a

primitive people, and a cultivated one chooses a model from an advanced

people, and from the most advanced class in it, they are both really doing

the same thing, namely, seeking ideal help of the kind which is best for

each. Both of them are pursuing the same object,--a mental discipline and

elevation which may be comprised under the general term _virtue_; the only

difference being that one is studying examples of virtue in the history of

the ancient Jews, whilst the other finds examples of virtue more to his

own special purpose in the lives of energetic Englishmen, Frenchmen, or

Germans.

A hundred such examples might be mentioned, for every occupation worth

following has its own saints and heroes; but I will confine myself to two.

The first shall be a French gentleman of the eighteenth century, to whom

life offered in the richest profusion everything that can tempt a man to

what is considered an excusable and even a respectable form of idleness.

He had an independent fortune, excellent health, a good social position,

and easy access to the most lively, the most entertaining, the most

amiable society that ever was, namely, that of the intelligent French

nobility before the Revolution. There is no merit in renouncing what we do

not enjoy; but he enjoyed all pleasant things, and yet renounced them for

a higher and a harder life. At the age of thirty-two he retired to the

country, made a rule of early rising and kept it, sallied forth from his

house every morning at five, went and shut himself up in an old tower with

a piece of bread and a glass of water for his breakfast, worked altogether

eleven or twelve hours a day in two sittings, and went to bed at nine.

This for eight months in the year, regularly, the remaining four being

employed in scientific and administrative work at the Jardin des Plantes.

He went on working in this way for forty years, and in the whole course of

that time never let pass an ill-considered page or an ill-constructed

sentence, but always did his best, and tried to make himself able to do

better.

Such was the great life of Buffon; and in our own time another great life

has come to its close, inferior to that of Buffon only in this, that as it

did not begin in luxury, the first renunciation was not so difficult to

make. Yet, however austere his beginnings, it is not a light or easy thing

for a man to become the greatest intellectual worker of his time, so that

one of his days (including eight hours of steady nocturnal labor) was

equivalent to two or more of our days. No man of his time in Europe had so

vast a knowledge of literature and science in combination; yet this

knowledge was accompanied by perfect modesty and by a complete

indifference to vulgar distinctions and vain successes. For many years he

was the butt of coarse and malignant misrepresentation on the part of

enemies who easily made him odious to a shallow society; but he bore it

with perfect dignity, and retained unimpaired the tolerance and charity of

his nature. His way of living was plain and frugal; he even contented

himself with narrow dwellings, though the want of space must have

occasioned frequent inconvenience to a man of his pursuits. He

scrupulously fulfilled his domestic duties, and made use of his medical

education in ministering gratuitously to the poor. Such was his courage

that when already advanced in life he undertook a gigantic task, requiring

twenty years of incessant labor; and such were his industry and

perseverance that he brought it to a splendidly successful issue. At

length, after a long life of duty and patience, after bearing calumny and

ridicule, he was called to endure another kind of suffering,--that of

incessant physical pain. This he bore with perfect fortitude, retaining to

the last his mental serenity, his interest in learning, and a high-minded

patriotic thoughtfulness for his country and its future, finding means in

the midst of suffering to dictate long letters to his fellow-citizens on

political subjects, which, in their calm wisdom, stood in the strongest

possible contrast to the violent party writing of the hour.

Such was the great life of Littré; and now consider whether he who studies

lives like these, and wins virtue from their austere example, does not

occupy his thoughts with what would have been considered religious

aspirations, if these two men, instead of being Frenchmen of the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, had happened to be ancient Jews. If

it had been possible for so primitive a nation as the Jewish to produce

men of such steady industry and so large a culture, we should have read

the story of their lives in the Jewish sacred books, and then it would

have been a part of the popular religion to study them, whereas now the

study of such biography is held to be non-religious, if not (at least in

the case of Littré) positively irreligious. Yet surely when we think of

the virtues which made these lives so fruitful, our minds are occupied in

a kind of religious thought; for are we not thinking of temperance,

self-discipline, diligence, perseverance, patience, charity, courage,

hope? Were not these men distinguished by their aspiration after higher

perfection, by a constant desire to use their talents well, and by a

vigilant care in the employment of their time? And are not these virtues

and these aspirations held to be parts of a civilized man's religion, and

the best parts?

The necessity for an intellectual expansion beyond the limits of the Bible

was felt very strongly at the time of the Renaissance, and found ample

satisfaction in the study of the Greek and Latin classics. There are many

reasons why women appear to be more religious than men; and one of them is

because women study only one collection of ancient writings, whilst men

have been accustomed to study three; consequently that which women study

(if such a word is applicable to devotional, uncritical reading) occupies

their minds far more exclusively than it occupies the mind of a classical

scholar. But, though the intellectual energies of men were for a time

satisfied with classical literature, they came at length to look outside

of that as their fathers had looked outside of the Bible. Classical

literature was itself a kind of religion, having its own sacred books; and

it had also its heretics,--the students of nature,--who found nature more

interesting than the opinions of the Greeks and Romans. Then came the

second great expansion of the human mind, in the midst of which we

ourselves are living. The Renaissance opened for it a world of mental

activity which had the inappreciable intellectual advantage of lying well

outside of the popular beliefs and ideas, so that cultivated men found in

it an escape from the pressure of the uneducated; but the new scientific

expansion offers us a region governed by laws of a kind peculiar to

itself, which protect those who conform to them against every assailant.

It is a region in which authority is unknown, for, however illustrious any

great man may appear in it, every statement that he makes is subject to

verification. Here the knowledge of ancient writers is continually

superseded by the better and more accurate knowledge of their successors;

so that whereas in religion and learning the most ancient writings are the

most esteemed, in science it is often the most recent, and even these have

no authority which may not be called in question freely by any student.

The new scientific culture is thus encouraging a habit of mind different

from old habits, and which in our time has caused such a degree of

separation that the most important and the most interesting of all topics

are those upon which we scarcely dare to venture for fear of being

misunderstood.

If I had to condense in a short space the various reasons why we are

apparently becoming less religious, I should say that it is because

knowledge and feeling, embodied or expressed in the sciences and arts, are

now too fully and too variously developed to remain within the limits of

what is considered sacred knowledge or religious emotion. It was possible

for them to remain well within those limits in ancient times, and it is

still possible for a mind of very limited activity and range to dwell

almost entirely in what was known or felt at the time of Christ; but this

is not possible for an energetic and inquiring mind, and the consequence

is that the energetic mind will seem to the other, by contrast, to be

negligent of holy things, and too much occupied with purely secular

interests and concerns. A great misunderstanding arises from this, which

has often had a lamentable effect on intercourse between relations and

friends. Pious ladies, to whom theological writings appear to contain

almost everything that it is desirable to know, often look with secret

misgiving or suspicion on young men of vigorous intellect who cannot rest

satisfied with the old knowledge, and what such ladies vaguely hear of the

speculations of the famous scientific leaders inspires them with profound

alarm. They think that we are becoming less religious because theological

writings do not occupy the same space in our time and thoughts as they do

in theirs; whereas, if such a matter could be put to any kind of positive

test, it would probably be found that we know more, even of their own

theology, than they do, and that, instead of being indifferent to the

great problems of the universe, we have given to such problems an amount

of careful thought far surpassing, in mental effort, their own simple

acquiescence. The opinions of a thoughtful and studious man in the present

day have never been lightly come by; and if he is supposed to be less

religious than his father or his grandfather it may be that his religion

is different from theirs, without being either less earnest or less

enlightened. There is, however, one point of immense importance on which I

believe that we really are becoming less religious, indeed on that point

we seem to be rapidly abandoning the religious principle altogether; but

the subject is of too much consequence to be treated at the end of an

Essay.

ESSAY XV.

HOW WE ARE REALLY BECOMING LESS RELIGIOUS.

The reader may remember how, after the long and unsuccessful siege of

Syracuse, the Athenian general Nikias, seeing his discouraged troops ill

with the fever from the marshes, determined to raise the siege; and that,

when his soldiers were preparing to retreat, and striking their tents for

the march, there occurred an eclipse of the moon. Nikias, in his anxiety

to know what the gods meant by this with reference to him and his army, at

once consulted a soothsayer, who told him that he would incur the Divine

anger if he did not remain where he was for three times nine days. He

remained, doing nothing, allowing his troops to perish and his ships to be

shut up by a line of the enemy's vessels chained together across the

entrance of the port. At length the three times nine days came to an end,

and what was left of the Athenian army had to get out of a situation that

had become infinitely more difficult during its inaction. The ships tried

to get out in vain; the army was able to retreat by land, but only to be

harassed by the enemy, and finally placed in such distress that it was

compelled to surrender. Most of the remnant died miserably in the old

quarries of Syracuse.

The conduct of Nikias throughout these events was in the highest degree

religious. He was fully convinced that the gods concerned themselves about

him and his doings, that they were watching over him, and that the eclipse

was a communication from them not to be neglected without a breach of

religious duty. He, therefore, in the spirit of the most perfect religious

faith, which we are compelled to admire for its sincerity and

thoroughness, shut his eyes resolutely to all the visible facts of a

situation more disastrous every day, and attended only to the invisible

action of the invisible gods, of which nothing could be really known by

him. For twenty-seven days he went on quietly sacrificing his soldiers to

his faith, and only moved at last when he believed that the gods allowed

it.

In contrast with this, let us ask what we think of an eclipse ourselves,

and how far any religious emotion, determinant of action or of inaction,

is connected with the phenomenon in our experience. We know, in the first

place, that eclipses belong to the natural order, and we do not feel

either grateful to the supernatural powers, or ungrateful, with regard to

them. Even the idea that eclipses demonstrate the power of God is hardly

likely to occur to us, for we constantly see terrestrial objects eclipsed

by cast shadows; and the mere falling of a shadow is to us only the

natural interruption of light by the intervention of any opaque object. In

the true theory of eclipses there is absolutely no ground whatever for

religious emotion, and accordingly the phenomenon is now entirely

disconnected from religious ideas. The consequence is that where the

Athenian general had a strong motive for religious emotion, a motive so

strong that he sacrificed his army to the supposed will of Heaven, a

modern general in the same situation would feel no emotion and make no

sacrifice.

If this process stopped at eclipses the result would be of little

importance, as eclipses of the celestial bodies are not frequently

visible, and to lose the opportunity of emotion which they present is not

a very sensible loss. But so far is the process from stopping at eclipses,

that exactly the same process is going on with regard to thousands of

other phenomena which are one by one, yet with increasing rapidity,

ceasing to be regarded as special manifestations of Divine will, and

beginning to be regarded as a part of that order of nature with which, to

quote Professor Huxley's significant language, "nothing interferes." Every

one of these transferrences from supernatural government to natural order

deprives the religious sentiment of one special cause or motive for its

own peculiar kind of emotion, so that we are becoming less and less

accustomed to such emotion (as the opportunities for it become less

frequent), and more and more accustomed to accept events and phenomena of

all kinds as in that order of nature "with which nothing interferes."

This single mental conception of the unfailing regularity of nature is

doing more in our time to affect the religious condition of thoughtful

people than could be effected by many less comprehensive conceptions.

It has often been said, not untruly, that merely negative arguments have

little permanent influence over the opinions of men, and that institutions

which have been temporarily overthrown by negation will shortly be set up

again, and flourish in their old vigor, unless something positive can be

found to supply their place. But here is a doctrine of a most positive

kind. "The order of nature is invariably according to regular sequences."

It is a doctrine which cannot be proved, for we cannot follow all the

changes which have ever taken place in the universe; but, although

incapable of demonstration, it may be accepted until something happens to

disprove it; and it _is_ accepted, with the most absolute faith, by a

constantly increasing number of adherents.

To show how this doctrine acts in diminishing religious emotion by taking

away the opportunity for it, let me narrate an incident which really

occurred on a French line of railway in the winter of 1882. The line, on

which I had travelled a few days before, passes between a river and a

hill. The river has a rocky bed and is torrential in winter; the hill is

densely covered with a pine forest coming down to the side of the line.

The year 1882 had been the rainiest known in France for two centuries, and

the roots of the trees on the edge of this pine forest had been much

loosened by the rain. In consequence of this, two large pine-trees fell

across the railway early one morning, and soon afterwards a train

approached the spot by the dim light of early dawn. There was a curve just

before the engine reached the trees, and it had come rapidly for several

miles down a decline. The driver reversed his steam, the engine and tender

leaped over the trees, and then went over the embankment to a place within

six feet of the rapid river. The carriages remained on the line, but were

much broken. Nobody was killed; nobody was seriously injured. The

remarkable escape of the passengers was accounted for as follows by the

religious people in the neighborhood. There happened to be a priest in the

train, and at the time when the shock took place he made what is called "a

pious ejaculation." This, it was said, had saved the lives of the

passengers. In the ages of faith this explanation would have been received

without question; but the notion of natural sequences--Professor Huxley's

"order with which nothing interferes"--had obtained such firm hold on the

minds of the townsmen generally that they said the priest was trying to

make ecclesiastical capital out of an occurrence easily explicable by

natural causes. They saw nothing supernatural either in the production of

the accident or its comparative harmlessness. The trickling of much water

had denuded the roots of the trees, which fell because they could not

stand with insufficient roothold; the lives of the passengers were saved

because they did not happen to be in the most shattered carriage; and the

men on the engine escaped because they fell on soft ground, made softer

still by the rain. It was probable, too, they said, that if any beneficent

supernatural interference had taken place it would have maintained the

trees in an erect position, by preventive miracle, and so spared the

slight injuries which really were inflicted, and which, though treated

very lightly by others because there were neither deaths nor amputations,

still caused suffering to those who had to bear them.

Now if we go a little farther into the effects of this accident on the

minds of the people who shared in it, or whose friends had been imperilled

by it, we shall see very plainly the effect of the modern belief in the

regularity of natural sequences. Those who believed in supernatural

intervention would offer thanksgivings when they got home, and probably go

through some special religious thanksgiving services for many days

afterwards; those who believed in the regularity of natural sequences

would simply feel glad to have escaped, without any especial sense of

gratitude to supernatural powers. So much for the effect as far as

thanksgiving is concerned; but there is another side of the matter at

least equally important from the religious point of view,--that of prayer.

The believers in supernatural interference would probably, in all their

future railway journeys, pray to be supernaturally protected in case of

accident, as they had been in 1882; but the believers in the regularity of

natural sequences would only hope that no trees had fallen across the

line, and feel more than usually anxious after long seasons of rainy

weather. Can there be a doubt that the priest's opinion, that he had won

safety by a pious ejaculation, was highly favorable to his religious

activity afterwards, whilst the opinion of the believers in "the natural

order with which nothing interferes" was unfavorable both to prayer and

thanksgiving in connection with railway travelling?

Examples of this kind might easily be multiplied, for there is hardly any

enterprise that men undertake, however apparently unimportant, which

cannot be regarded both from the points of view of naturalism and

supernaturalism; and in every case the naturalist manner of regarding the

enterprise leads men to study the probable influence of natural causes,

whilst the supernaturalist opinion leads them to propitiate supernatural

powers. Now, although some new sense may come to be attached to the word

"religion" in future ages, so that it may come to mean scientific

thoroughness, intellectual ingenuousness, or some other virtue that may be

possessed by a pure naturalist, the word has always been understood, down

to the present time, to imply a constant dependence upon the supernatural;

and when I say that we are becoming less religious, I mean that from our

increasing tendency to refer everything to natural causes the notion of

the supernatural is much less frequently present in our minds than it was

in the minds of our forefathers. Even the clergy themselves seem to be

following the laity towards the belief in natural law, at least so far as

matter is concerned. The Bishop of Melbourne, in 1882, declined to order

prayers for rain, and gave his reason honestly, which was that material

phenomena were under the control of natural law, and would not be changed

in answer to prayer. The Bishop added that prayer should be confined to

spiritual blessings. Without disputing the soundness of this opinion, we

cannot help perceiving that if it were generally received it would put an

end to one half of the religious activity of the human race; for half the

prayers and half the thanksgivings addressed to the supernatural powers

are for material benefits only. It is possible that, in the future,

religious people will cease to pray for health, but take practical

precautions to preserve it; that they will cease to pray for prosperity,

but study the natural laws which govern the wealth of nations; that they

will no longer pray for the national fleets and armies, but see that they

are well supplied and intelligently commanded. All this and much more is

possible; but when it comes to pass the world will be less religious than

it was when men believed that every pestilence, every famine, every

defeat, was a chastisement specially, directly, and intentionally

inflicted by an angry Deity. Even now, what an immense step has been made

in this direction! In the fearful description of the pestilence at

Florence, given with so much detail by Boccaccio, he speaks of "l'ira di

Dio a punire la iniquità degli uomini con quella pestilenza;" and he

specially implies that those who sought to avoid the plague by going to

healthier places in the country deceived themselves in supposing that the

wrath of God would not follow them whithersoever they went. That is the

old belief expressing itself in prayers and humiliations. It is still

recognized officially. If the plague could occur in a town on the whole so

well cared for as modern London, the language of Boccaccio would still be

used in the official public prayers; but the active-minded practical

citizens would be thinking how to destroy the germs, how to purify air and

water. An instance of this divergence occurred after the Egyptian war of

1882. The Archbishop of York, after the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, ordered

thanksgivings to be offered in the churches, on the ground that God was in

Sir Garnet Wolseley's camp and fought with him against the Egyptians,

which was a survival of the antique idea that national deities fought

with the national armies. On this a Member of Parliament, Mr. George

Palmer, said to his constituents in a public meeting at Reading, "At the

same time I cannot agree with the prayers that have been made in churches.

Though I respect the consciences of other men, I must say that it was not

by Divine interference, but from the stuff of which our army was made and

our great ironclads, that victory was achieved." I do not quote this

opinion for any originality in itself, as there have always been men who

held that victory was a necessary result of superior military efficiency,

but I quote it as a valuable test of the change in general opinion. It is

possible that such views may have been expressed in private in all ages of

the world; but I doubt if in any age preceding ours a public man, at the

very time when he was cultivating the good graces of his electors, would

have refused to the national Deity a special share in a military triumph.

To an audience imbrued with the old conception of incessant supernatural

interferences, the doctrine that a victory was a natural result would have

sounded impious; and such an audience, if any one had ventured to say what

Mr. Palmer said, would have received him with a burst of indignation. But

Mr. Palmer knew the tendencies of the present age, and was quite correct

in thinking that he might safely express his views. His hearers were not

indignant, they were not even grave and silent, as Englishmen are when

they simply disapprove, but they listened willingly, and marked their

approbation by laughter and cheers. Even a clergyman may hold Mr.

Palmer's opinion. Soon after his speech at Reading the Rev. H. R. Haweis

said the same thing in the pulpit. "Few people," he said, "really doubt

that we have conquered the Egyptians, not because we were in the right and

they were in the wrong, but because we had the heaviest hand." The

preacher went on to say that the idea of God fighting on one side more

than another in particular battles seemed to him to be a Pagan or at most

a Jewish one. How different was the old sentiment as expressed by Macaulay

in the stirring ballad of Ivry! "We of the religion" had no doubt about

the Divine interference in the battle,

"For our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave,

And mocked the counsel of the wise, and the valor of the brave;

Then glory to his holy name from whom all glories are,

And glory to our Sovereign Lord, King Henry of Navarre!"

The way in which the great mental movement of our age towards a more

complete recognition of natural order is affecting human intercourse may

be defined in a few words. If the movement were at an equal rate of

advance for all civilized people they would be perfectly agreed amongst

themselves at any one point of time, as it would be settled which events

were natural in their origin and which were due to the interposition of

Divine or diabolical agency. Living people would differ in opinion from

their predecessors, but they would not differ from each other. The change,

however, though visible and important, is not by any means uniform, so

that a guest sitting at dinner may have on his right hand a lady who sees

supernatural interferences in many things, and on his left a student of

science who is firmly convinced that there are no supernatural

interferences in the present, and that there never have been any in the

past. Private opinion, out of which public opinion slowly and gradually

forms itself, is in our time in a state of complete anarchy, because two

opposite doctrines are held loosely, and one or the other is taken up as

it happens to seem appropriate. The interpositions of Providence are

recognized or rejected according to political or personal bias. The French

Imperialists saw the Divine vengeance in the death of Gambetta, whilst in

their view the death of Napoleon III. was the natural termination of his

disease, and that of the Prince Imperial a simple accident, due to the

carelessness of his English companions. Personal bias shows itself in the

belief, often held by men occupying positions of importance, that they are

necessary, at least for a time, to fulfil the intentions of Providence.

Napoleon III. said in a moment of emotion, "So long as I am needed I am

invulnerable; but when my hour comes I shall be broken like glass!" Even

in private life a man will sometimes think, "I am so necessary to my wife

and family that Providence will not remove me," though every newspaper

reports the deaths of fathers who leave their families destitute.

Sometimes men believe that Providence takes the same view of their

enterprises that they themselves take; and when a great enterprise is

drawing near to its termination they feel assured that supernatural power

will protect them till it is quite concluded, but they believe that the

enterprises of other men are exposed to all the natural risks. When Mr.

Gifford Palgrave was wrecked in the sea of Oman, he was for some time in

an open boat, and thus describes his situation: "All depended on the

steerage, and on the balance and support afforded by the oars, and even

more still on the Providence of Him who made the deep; nor indeed could I

get myself to think that He had brought me thus far to let me drown just

at the end of my journey, and in so very unsatisfactory a way too; for had

we then gone down, what news of the event off Sowadah would ever have

reached home, or when?--so that altogether I felt confident of getting

somehow or other on shore, though by what means I did not exactly know."

Here the writer thinks of his own enterprise as deserving Divine

solicitude, but does not attach the same importance to the humbler

enterprises of the six passengers who went down with the vessel. I cannot

help thinking, too, of the poor passenger Ibraheem, who swam to the boat

and begged so piteously to be taken in, when a sailor "loosened his grasp

by main force and flung him back into the sea, where he disappeared

forever." Neither can I forget the four who imprudently plunged from the

boat and perished. We may well believe that these lost ones would have

been unable to write such a delightful and instructive book as Mr.

Palgrave's "Travels in Arabia," yet they must have had their own humble

interests in life, their own little objects and enterprises.

The calculation that Providence would spare a traveller towards the close

of a long journey may be mistaken, but it is pious; it affords an

opportunity for the exercise of devout emotion which the scientific

thinker would miss. If Mr. Herbert Spencer had been placed in the same

situation he would, no doubt, have felt the most perfect confidence that

the order of nature would not be disturbed, that even in such a turmoil of

winds and waters the laws of buoyancy and stability would be observed in

every motion of the boat to the millionth of an inch; but he would not

have considered himself likely to escape death on account of the important

nature of his undertakings. Mr. Spencer's way of judging the situation as

one of equal peril for himself and his humble companions would have been

more reasonable, but at the same time he would have lost that opportunity

for special and personal gratitude which Mr. Palgrave enjoyed when he

believed himself to be supernaturally protected. The curious inconsistency

of the common French expression, "C'est un hasard providentiel" is another

example of the present state of thought on the question. A Frenchman is

upset from a carriage, breaks no bones, and stands up, exclaiming, as he

dusts himself, "It was un hasard vraiment providentiel that I was not

lamed for life." It is plain that if his escape was providential it could

not be accidental at the same time, yet in spite of the obvious

inconsistency of his expression there is piety in his choice of an

adjective.

The distinction, as it has usually been understood hitherto, between

religious and non-religious explanations of what happens, is that the

religious person believes that events happen by supernatural direction,

and he is only thinking religiously so long as he thinks in that manner;

whilst the non-religious theory is that events happen by natural sequence,

and so long as a person thinks in this manner, his mind is acting

non-religiously, whatever may be his religious profession. "To study the

universe as it is manifested to us; to ascertain by patient inquiry the

order of the manifestations; to discover that the manifestations are

connected with one another after regular ways in time and space; and,

after repeated failures, to give up as futile the attempt to understand

the power manifested, is condemned as irreligious. And meanwhile the

character of religious is claimed by those who figure to themselves a

Creator moved by motives like their own; who conceive themselves as seeing

through His designs, and who even speak of Him as though He laid plans to

outwit the Devil!"

Yes, this is a true account of the way in which the words irreligious and

religious have always been used and there does not appear to be any

necessity for altering their signification. Every event which is

transferred, in human opinion, from supernatural to natural action is

transferred from the domain of religion to that of science; and it is

because such transferrences have been so frequent in our time that we are

becoming so much less religious than our forefathers were. In how many

things is the modern man perfectly irreligious! He is so in everything

that relates to applied science, to steam, telegraphy, photography,

metallurgy, agriculture, manufactures. He has not the slightest belief in

spiritual intervention, either for or against him, in these material

processes. He is beginning to be equally irreligious in government.

Modern politicians have been accused of thinking that God cannot govern,

but that is not a true account of their opinion. What they really think is

that government is an application of science to the direction of national

life, in which no invisible powers will either thwart a ruler in that

which he does wisely, or shield him from the evil consequences of his

errors.

But though we are less religious than our ancestors because we believe

less in the interferences of the supernatural, do we deserve censure for

our way of understanding the world? Certainly not. Was Nikias a proper

object of praise because the eclipse seen by him at Syracuse seemed a

warning from the gods; and was Wolseley a proper object of blame because

the comet seen by him on the Egyptian plain was without a Divine message?

Both these opinions are quite outside of merit, although the older opinion

was in the highest degree religious, and the later one is not religious in

the least. Such changes simply indicate a gradual revolution in man's

conception of the universe, which is the result of more accurate

knowledge. So why not accept the fact, why not admit that we have really

become less religious? Possibly we have a compensation, a gain equivalent

to our loss. If the gods do not speak to us by signs in the heavens; if

the entrails of victims and the flight of birds no longer tell us when to

march to battle and where to remain inactive in our tents; if the oracle

is silent at Delos, and the ark lost to Jerusalem; if we are pilgrims to

no shrine; if we drink of no sacred fountain and plunge into no holy

stream; if all the special sanctities once reverenced by humanity are

unable any longer to awaken our dead enthusiasm, have we gained nothing in

exchange for the many religious excitements that we have lost? Yes, we

have gained a keener interest in the natural order, and a knowledge of it

at once more accurate and more extensive, a gain that Greek and Jew might

well have envied us, and which a few of their keener spirits most ardently

desired. Our passion for natural knowledge is not a devout emotion, and

therefore it is not religious; but it is a noble and a fruitful passion

nevertheless, and by it our eyes are opened. The good Saint Bernard had

his own saintly qualities; but for us the qualities of a De Saussure are

not without their worth. Saint Bernard, in the perfection of ancient

piety, travelling a whole day by the lake of Geneva without seeing it, too

much absorbed by devout meditation to perceive anything terrestrial, was

blinded by his piety, and might with equal profit have stayed in his

monastic cell. De Saussure was a man of our own time. Never, in his

writings, do you meet with any allusion to supernatural interferences

(except once or twice in pity for popular superstitions); but fancy De

Saussure passing the lake of Geneva, or any other work of nature, without

seeing it! His life was spent in the continual study of the natural world;

and this study was to him so vigorous an exercise for the mind, and so

strict a discipline, that he found in it a means of moral and even of

physical improvement. There is no trace in his writings of what is called

devout emotion, but the bright light of intelligent admiration illumines

every page; and when he came to die, if he could not look back, like

Saint Bernard, upon what is especially supposed to be a religious life, he

could look back upon many years wisely and well spent in the study of that

nature of which Saint Bernard scarcely knew more than the mule that

carried him.

ESSAY XVI.

ON AN UNRECOGNIZED FORM OF UNTRUTH.

In the art of painting there are two opposite ways of dealing with natural

color. It may be intensified, or it may be translated by tints of inferior

chromatic force. In either case the picture may be perfectly harmonious,

provided only that the same principle of interpretation be consistently

followed throughout.

The first time that I became acquainted with the first of these two

methods of interpretation was in my youth, when I met with a Scottish

painter who has since become eminent in his art. He was painting studies

from nature; and I noticed that whenever in the natural object there was a

trace of dull gold, as in some lichen, he made it a brighter gold, and

whenever there was a little rusty red he made it a more vivid red. So it

was with every other tint. His eye seemed to become excited by every hue,

and he translated it by one of greater intensity and power.

Now that is a kind of exaggeration which is very commonly recognized as a

departure from the sober truth. People complain that the sky is too blue,

the fields too green, and so on.

Afterwards I saw French painters at work, and I noticed that they (in

those days) interpreted natural color by an intentional lowering of the

chromatic force. When they had to deal with the splendors of autumnal

woods against a blue sky they interpreted the azure by a blue-gray, and

the flaming gold by a dull russet. They even refused themselves the more

quiet brightness of an ordinary wheat-field, and translated the yellow of

the wheat by an earthy brown.

Unlike falsehood by exaggeration, this other kind of falsehood (by

diminution) is very seldom recognized as a departure from the truth. Such

coloring as this French coloring excited but few protests, and indeed was

often praised for being "modest" and "subdued."

Both systems are equally permissible in the fine arts, if consistently

followed, because in art the unity and harmony of the work are of greater

importance than the exact imitation of nature. It is not as an art-critic

that I should have any fault to find with a well-understood and thoroughly

consistent conventionalism in the interpretation of nature; but the two

kinds of falsity we have noticed are constantly found in action outside of

the fine arts, and yet only one of them is recognized in its true

character, the other being esteemed as a proof of modesty and moderation.

The general opinion, in our own country, condemns falsehood by

exaggeration, but it does not blame falsehood by diminution. Overstatement

is regarded as a vice, and understatement as a sort of modest virtue,

whilst in fact they are both untruthful, exactly in the degree of their

departure from perfect accuracy.

If a man states his income as being larger than it really is, if he adopts

a degree of ostentation which (though he may be able to pay for it)

conveys the idea of more ample means than he really possesses, and if we

find out afterwards what his income actually is, we condemn him as an

untruthful person; but lying by diminution with reference to money matters

is looked upon simply as modesty.

I remember a most respectable English family who had this modesty in

perfection. It was their great pleasure to represent themselves as being

much less rich than they really were. Whenever they heard of anybody with

moderate or even narrow means, they pretended to think that he had quite

an ample income. If you mentioned a man with a family, struggling on a

pittance, they would say he was "very comfortably provided for," and if

you spoke of another whose expenses were the ordinary expenses of

gentlemen, they wondered by what inventions of extravagance he could get

through so much money. They themselves pretended to spend much less than

they really spent, and they always affected astonishment when they heard

how much it cost other people to live exactly in their own way. They

considered that this was modesty; but was it not just as untruthful as the

commoner vice of assuming a style more showy than the means warrant?

In France and Italy the departure from the truth is almost invariably in

the direction of overstatement, unless the speaker has some distinct

purpose to serve by adopting the opposite method, as when he desires to

depreciate the importance of an enemy. In England people habitually

understate, and the remarkable thing is that they believe themselves to be

strictly truthful in doing so. The word "lying" is too harsh a term to be

applied either to the English or the Continental habit in this matter; but

it is quite fair to say that both of them miss the truth, one in falling

short of it, the other in going beyond it.

An English family has seen the Alps for the first time. A young lady says

Switzerland is "nice;" a young gentleman has decided that it is "jolly."

This is what the habit of understatement may bring us down to,--absolute

inadequacy. The Alps are not "nice," and they are not "jolly;" far more

powerful adjectives are only the precise truth in this instance. The Alps

are stupendous, overwhelming, magnificent, sublime. A Frenchman in similar

circumstances will be embarrassed, not by any timidity about using a

sufficiently forcible expression, but because he is eager to exaggerate;

and one scarcely knows how to exaggerate the tremendous grandeur of the

finest Alpine scenery. He will have recourse to eloquent phraseology, to

loudness of voice, and finally, when he feels that these are still

inadequate, he will employ energetic gesture. I met a Frenchman who tried

to make me comprehend how many English people there were at Cannes in

winter. "Il y en a--des Anglais--il y en a,"--then he hesitated, whilst

seeking for an adequate expression. At last, throwing out both his arms,

he cried, "_Il y en a plus qu'en Angleterre!_"

The English love of understatement is even more visible in moral than in

material things. If an Englishman has to describe any person or action

that is particularly admirable on moral grounds, he will generally

renounce the attempt to be true, and substitute for the high and

inspiring truth some quiet little conventional expression that will

deliver him from what he most dreads,--the appearance of any noble

enthusiasm. It does not occur to him that this inadequacy, this

insufficiency of expression, is one of the forms of untruth; that to

describe noble and admirable conduct in commonplace and non-appreciative

language is to pay tribute of a kind especially acceptable to the Father

of Lies. If we suppose the existence of a modern Mephistopheles watching

the people of our own time and pleased with every kind of moral evil, we

may readily imagine how gratified he must be to observe the moral

indifference which uses exactly the same terms for ordinary and heroic

virtue, which never rises with the occasion, and which always seems to

take it for granted that there are neither noble natures nor high purposes

in the world. The dead mediocrity of common talk, too timid and too

indolent for any expression equivalent either to the glory of external

nature or the intellectual and moral grandeur of great and excellent men,

has driven many of our best minds from conversation into literature,

because in literature it is not thought extraordinary for a man to express

himself with a degree of force and clearness equivalent to the energy of

his feelings, the accuracy of his knowledge, and the importance of his

subject. The habit of using inadequate expression in conversation has led

to the strange result that if an Englishman has any power of thought, any

living interest in the great problems of human destiny, you will know

hardly anything of the real action of his mind unless he becomes an

author. He dares not express any high feelings in conversation, because

he dreads what Stuart Mill called the "sneering depreciation" of them; and

if such feelings are strong enough in him to make expression an imperative

want, he has to utter them on paper. By a strange result of

conventionalism, a man is admired for using language of the utmost

clearness and force in literature, whilst if he talked as vigorously as he

wrote (except, perhaps, in extreme privacy and even secrecy with one or

two confidential companions) he would be looked upon as scarcely

civilized. This may be one of the reasons why English literature,

including the periodical, is so abundant in quantity and so full of

energy. It is a mental outlet, a _dérivatif_.

The kind of untruthfulness which may be called _untruthfulness by

inadequacy_ causes many strong and earnest minds to keep aloof from

general society, which seems to them insipid. They find frank and clear

expression in books, they find it even in newspapers and reviews, but they

do not find it in social intercourse. This deficiency drives many of the

more intelligent of our countrymen into the strange and perfectly

unnatural position of receiving ideas almost exclusively through the

medium of print, and of communicating them only by writing. I remember an

Englishman of great learning and ability who lived almost entirely in that

manner. He received his ideas through books and the learned journals, and

whenever any thought occurred to him he wrote it immediately on a slip of

paper. In society he was extremely absent, and when he spoke it was in an

apologetic and timidly suggestive manner, as if he were always afraid

that what he had to say might not be interesting to the hearer, or might

even appear objectionable, and as if he were quite ready to withdraw it.

He was far too anxious to be well-behaved ever to venture on any forcible

expression of opinion or to utter any noble sentiment; and yet his

convictions on all important subjects were very serious, and had been

arrived at after deep thought, and he was capable of real elevation of

mind. His writings are the strongest possible contrast to his oral

expression of himself. They are bold in opinion, very clear and decided in

statement, and full of well-ascertained knowledge.

ESSAY XVII.

ON A REMARKABLE ENGLISH PECULIARITY.

In De Tocqueville's admirable book on "Democracy in America" there is an

interesting chapter on the behavior of Englishmen to each other when they

meet in a foreign country:--

"Two Englishmen meet by chance at the antipodes; they are surrounded

by foreigners whose language and mode of life are hardly known to

them.

"These two men begin by studying each other very curiously and with a

kind of secret uneasiness; they then turn away, or, if they meet, they

are careful to speak only with a constrained and absent air, and to

say things of little importance.

"And yet they know nothing of each other; they have never met, and

suppose each other to be perfectly honorable. Why, then, do they take

such pains to avoid intercourse?"

De Tocqueville was a very close observer, and I hardly know a single

instance in which his faculty of observation shows itself in greater

perfection. In his terse style of writing every word tells; and even in my

translation, unavoidably inferior to the original, you actually see the

two Englishmen and the minute details of their behavior.

Let me now introduce the reader to a little scene at a foreign _table

d'hôte_, as described with great skill and truth by a well-known English

novelist, Miss Betham-Edwards:--

"The time, September; the scene, a _table d'hôte_ dinner in a

much-frequented French town. For the most part nothing can be more

prosaic than these daily assemblies of English tourists bound for

Switzerland and the South, and a slight sprinkling of foreigners, the

two elements seldom or never blending; a visitant from another planet

might, indeed, suppose that between English and French-speaking people

lay such a gulf as divides the blond New Englander from the swarth

African, so icy the distance, so unbroken the reserve. Nor is there

anything like cordiality between the English themselves. Our imaginary

visitant from Jupiter would here find matter for wonder also, and

would ask himself the reason of this freezing reticence among the

English fellowship. What deadly feud of blood, caste, or religion

could thus keep them apart? Whilst the little knot of Gallic

travellers at the farther end of the table straightway fall into

friendliest talk, the long rows of Britons of both sexes and all ages

speak only in subdued voices and to the members of their own family."

Next, let me give an account of a personal experience in a Parisian hotel.

It was a little, unpretending establishment that I liked for its quiet and

for the honest cookery. There was a _table d'hôte_, frequented by a few

French people, generally from the provinces, and once there came some

English visitors who had found out the merits of the little place. It

happened that I had been on the Continent a long time without revisiting

England, so when my fellow-countrymen arrived I had foolish feelings of

pleasure on finding myself amongst them, and spoke to them in our common

English tongue. The effect of this bold experiment was extremely curious,

and to me, at the time, almost inexplicable, as I had forgotten that

chapter by De Tocqueville. The new-comers were two or three young men and

one in middle life. The young men seemed to be reserved more from timidity

than pride. They were quite startled and frightened when spoken to, and

made answer with grave brevity, as if apprehensive of committing

themselves to some compromising statement. With an audacity acquired by

habits of intercourse with foreigners, I spoke to the older Englishman.

His way of putting me down would have been a charming study for a

novelist. His manner resembled nothing so much as that of a dignified

English minister,--Mr. Gladstone for example, when he is questioned in the

House by some young and presumptuous member of the Opposition. A few brief

words were vouchsafed to me, accompanied by an expression of countenance

which, if not positively stern, was intentionally divested of everything

like interest or sympathy. It then began to dawn upon me that perhaps this

Englishman was conscious of some august social superiority; that he might

even know a lord; and I thought, "If he does really know a lord we are

very likely to hear his lordship's name." My expectation was not fulfilled

to the letter, but it was quite fulfilled in spirit; for in talking to a

Frenchman (for me to hear) our Englishman shortly boasted that he knew an

English duchess, giving her name and place of abode. "One day when I was

at ---- House I said to the Duchess of ----," and he repeated what he had

said to Her Grace; but it would have no interest for the reader, as it

probably had none for the great lady herself. Shade of Thackeray! why

wast thou not there to add a paragraph to the "Book of Snobs"?

The next day came another Englishman of about fifty, who distinguished

himself in another way. He did not know a duchess, or, if he did, we were

not informed of his good fortune; but he assumed a wonderful air of

superiority to his temporary surroundings, that filled me, I must say,

with the deepest respect and awe. The impression he desired to produce was

that he had never before been in so poor a little place, and that our

society was far beneath what he was accustomed to. He criticised things

disdainfully, and when I ventured to speak to him he condescended, it is

true, to enter into conversation, but in a manner that seemed to say, "Who

and what are you that you dare to speak to a gentleman like me, who am, as

you must perceive, a person of wealth and consideration?"

This account of our English visitors is certainly not exaggerated by any

excessive sensitiveness on my part. Paris is not the Desert; and one who

has known it for thirty years is not dependent for society on a chance

arrival from beyond the sea. For me these Englishmen were but actors in a

play, and perhaps they afforded me more amusement with their own peculiar

manners than if they had been pleasant and amiable. One result, however,

was inevitable. I had been full of kindly feeling towards my

fellow-countrymen when they came, but this soon gave place to

indifference; and their departure was rather a relief. When they had left

Paris, there arrived a rich French widow from the south with her son and

a priest, who seemed to be tutor and chaplain. The three lived at our

_table d'hôte_; and we found them most agreeable, always ready to take

their share in conversation, and, although far too well-bred to commit the

slightest infraction of the best French social usages, either through

ignorance or carelessness, they were at the same time perfectly open and

easy in their manners. They set up no pretensions, they gave themselves no

airs, and when they returned to their own southern sunshine we felt their

departure as a loss.

The foreign idea of social intercourse under such conditions (that is, of

intercourse between strangers who are thrown together accidentally) is

simply that it is better to pass an hour agreeably than in dreary

isolation. People may not have much to say that is of any profound

interest, but they enjoy the free play of the mind; and it sometimes

happens, in touching on all sorts of subjects, that unexpected lights are

thrown upon them. Some of the most interesting conversations I have ever

heard have taken place at foreign _tables d'hôte_, between people who had

probably never met before and who would separate forever in a week. If by

accident they meet again, such acquaintances recognize each other by a

bow, but there is none of that intrusiveness which the Englishman so

greatly dreads.

Besides these transient acquaintanceships which, however brief, are by no

means without their value to one's experience and culture, the foreign way

of understanding a _table d'hôte_ includes the daily and habitual meeting

of regular subscribers, a meeting looked forward to with pleasure as a

break in the labors of the day, or a mental refreshment when they are

over. Nothing affords such relief from the pressure of work as a free and

animated conversation on other subjects. Of this more permanent kind of

_table d'hôte_, Mr. Lewes gave a lively description in his biography of

Goethe:--

"The English student, clerk, or bachelor, who dines at an

eating-house, chop-house, or hotel, goes there simply to get his

dinner, and perhaps look at the 'Times.' Of the other diners he knows

nothing, cares little. It is rare that a word is interchanged between

him and his neighbor. Quite otherwise in Germany. There the same

society is generally to be found at the same table. The _table d'hôte_

is composed of a circle of _habitués_, varied by occasional visitors

who in time become, perhaps, members of the circle. _Even with

strangers conversation is freely interchanged_; and in a little while

friendships are formed over these dinner-tables, according as natural

tastes and likings assimilate, which, extending beyond the mere hour

of dinner, are carried into the current of life. Germans do not rise

so hastily from the table as we, for time with them is not so

precious; life is not so crowded; time can be found for quiet

after-dinner talk. The cigars and coffee, which appear before the

cloth is removed, keep the company together; and in that state of

suffused comfort which quiet digestion creates, they hear without

anger the opinions of antagonists."

In this account of German habits we see the repast made use of as an

opportunity for human intercourse, which the Englishman avoids except with

persons already known to him or known to a private host. The reader has

noticed the line I have italicized,--"Even with strangers conversation is

freely interchanged." The consequence is that the stranger does not feel

himself to be isolated, and if he is not an Englishman he does not take

offence at being treated like an intelligent human being, but readily

accepts the welcome that is offered to him.

The English peculiarity in this respect does not, however, consist so much

in avoiding intercourse with foreigners as in shunning other English

people. It is true that in the description of a _table d'hôte_ by Miss

Betham-Edwards, the English and foreign elements are represented as

separated by an icy distance, and the description is strikingly accurate;

but this shyness and timidity as regards foreigners may be sufficiently

accounted for by want of skill and ease in speaking their language. Most

English people of education know a little French and German, but few speak

those languages freely, fluently, and correctly. When it does happen that

an Englishman has mastered a foreign tongue, he will generally talk more

readily and unreservedly with a foreigner than with one of his own

countrymen. This is the notable thing, that if English people do not

really dislike and distrust one another, if there is not really "a deadly

feud of blood, caste, or religion" to separate them, they expose

themselves to the accusation of John Stuart Mill, that "everybody acts as

if everybody else was either an enemy or a bore."

This English avoidance of English people is so remarkable and exceptional

a characteristic that it could not but greatly interest and exercise so

observant a mind as that of De Tocqueville. We have seen how accurately he

noticed it; how exactly the conduct of shy Englishmen had fixed itself in

his memory. Let us now see how he accounted for it.

Is it a mark of aristocracy? Is it because our race is more aristocratic

than other races?

De Tocqueville's theory was, that it is _not_ the mark of an aristocratic

society, because, in a society classed by birth, although people of

different castes hold little communication with each other, they talk

easily when they meet, without either fearing or desiring social fusion.

"Their intercourse is not founded on equality, but it is free from

constraint."

This view of the subject is confirmed by all that I know, through personal

tradition, of the really aristocratic time in France that preceded the

Revolution. The old-fashioned facility and directness of communication

between ranks that were separated by wide social distances would surprise

and almost scandalize a modern aspirant to false aristocracy, who has

assumed the _de_, and makes up in _morgue_ what is wanting to him in

antiquity of descent. I believe, too, that when England was a far more

aristocratic country than it is at present, manners were less distant and

not so cold and suspicious.

If the blame is not to be laid on the spirit of aristocracy, what is the

real cause of the indisputable fact that an Englishman avoids an

Englishman? De Tocqueville believed that the cause was to be found in the

uncertainty of a transition state from aristocratic to plutocratic ideas;

that there is still the notion of a strict classification; and yet that

this classification is no longer determined by blood, but by money, which

has taken its place, so that although the ranks exist still, as if the

country were really aristocratic, it is not easy to see clearly, and at

the first glance, who occupies them. Hence there is a _guerre sourde_

between all the citizens. Some try by a thousand artifices to edge their

way in reality or apparently amongst those above them; others fight

without ceasing to repel the usurpers of their rights; or rather, the same

person does both; and whilst he struggles to introduce himself into the

upper region he perpetually endeavors to put down aspirants who are still

beneath him.

"The pride of aristocracy," said De Tocqueville, "being still very great

with the English, and the limits of aristocracy having become doubtful,

every one fears that he may be surprised at any moment into undesirable

familiarity. Not being able to judge at first sight of the social position

of those they meet, the English prudently avoid contact. They fear, in

rendering little services, to form in spite of themselves an ill-assorted

friendship; they dread receiving attention from others; and they withdraw

themselves from the indiscreet gratitude of an unknown fellow-countryman

as carefully as they would avoid his hatred."

This, no doubt, is the true explanation, but something may be added to it.

An Englishman dreads acquaintances from the apprehension that they may end

by coming to his house; a Frenchman is perfectly at his ease on that point

by reason of the greater discretion of French habits. It is perfectly

understood, in France, that you may meet a man at a _café_ for years, and

talk to him with the utmost freedom, and yet he will not come near your

private residence unless you ask him; and when he meets you in the street

he will not stop you, but will simply lift his hat,--a customary

salutation from all who know your name, which does not compromise you in

any way. It might perhaps be an exaggeration to say that in France there

is absolutely no struggling after a higher social position by means of

acquaintances, but there is certainly very little of it. The great

majority of French people live in the most serene indifference as regards

those who are a little above them socially. They hardly even know their

titles; and when they do know them they do not care about them in the

least.[18]

It may not be surprising that the conduct of Americans should differ from

that of Englishmen, as Americans have no titles; but if they have not

titles they have vast inequalities of wealth, and Englishmen can be

repellent without titles. Yet, in spite of pecuniary differences between

Americans, and notwithstanding the English blood in their veins, they do

not avoid one another. "If they meet by accident," says De Tocqueville,

"they neither seek nor avoid one another; their way of meeting is natural,

frank, and open; it is evident that they hope or fear scarcely anything

from each other, and that they neither try to exhibit nor to conceal the

station they occupy. If their manner is often cold and serious, it is

never either haughty or stiff; and when they do not speak it is because

they are not in the humor for conversation, and not because they believe

it their interest to be silent. In a foreign country two Americans are

friends at once, simply because they are Americans. They are separated by

no prejudice, and their common country draws them together. In the case of

two Englishmen the same blood is not enough; there must be also identity

of rank."

The English habit strikes foreigners by contrast, and it strikes

Englishmen in the same way when they have lived much in foreign countries.

Charles Lever had lived abroad, and was evidently as much struck by this

as De Tocqueville himself. Many readers will remember his brilliant story,

"That Boy of Norcott's," and how the young hero, after finding himself

delightfully at ease with a society of noble Hungarians, at the Schloss

Hunyadi, is suddenly chilled and alarmed by the intelligence that an

English lord is expected. "When they shall see," he says, "how my titled

countryman will treat me,--the distance at which he will hold me, and the

measured firmness with which he will repel, not my familiarities, for I

should not dare them, _but simply the ease of my manner_,--the foreigners

will be driven to regard me as some ignoble upstart who has no pretension

whatever to be amongst them."

Lever also noted that a foreigner would have had a better chance of civil

treatment than an Englishman. "In my father's house I had often had

occasion to remark that while Englishmen freely admitted the advances of a

foreigner and accepted his acquaintance with a courteous readiness, with

each other they maintained a cold and studied reserve, as though no

difference of place or circumstance was to obliterate that insular code

which defines class, and limits each man to the exact rank he belongs to."

These readings and experiences, and many others too long to quote or

narrate, have led me to the conclusion that it is scarcely possible to

attempt any other manner with English people than that which the very

peculiar and exceptional state of national feeling appears to authorize.

The reason is that in the present state of feeling the innovator is almost

sure to be misunderstood. He may be perfectly contented with his own

social position; his mind may be utterly devoid of any desire to raise

himself in society; the extent of his present wishes may be to wile away

the tedium of a journey or a repast with a little intelligent

conversation; yet if he breaks down the barrier of English reserve he is

likely to be taken for a pushing and intrusive person who is eager to lift

himself in the world. Every friendly expression on his part, even in a

look or the tone of his voice, "simply the ease of his manner," may be

repelled as an impertinence. In the face of such a probable

misinterpretation one feels that it is hardly possible to be too distant

or too cold. When two men meet it is the colder and more reserved man who

always has the advantage. He is the rock; the other is the wave that comes

against the rock and falls shattered at its foot.

It would be wrong to conclude this Essay without a word of reference to

the exceptional Englishman who can pass an hour intelligently with a

stranger, and is not constantly preoccupied with the idea that the

stranger is plotting how to make some ulterior use of him. Such Englishmen

are usually men of ripe experience, who have travelled much and seen much

of the world, so that they have lost our insular distrust. I have met with

a few of them,--they are not very numerous,--and I wish that I could meet

the same fellow-countrymen by some happy accident again. There is nothing

stranger in life than those very short friendships that are formed in an

hour between two people born to understand each other, and cut short

forever the next day, or the next week, by an inevitable separation.[19]

ESSAY XVIII.

OF GENTEEL IGNORANCE.

All virtue has its negative as well as its positive side, and every ideal

includes not having as well as having. Gentility, for those who aspire to

it and value it, is an ideal condition of humanity, a superior state which

is maintained by selection amongst the things that life offers to a man

who has the power to choose. He is judged by his selection. The genteel

person selects in his own way, not only amongst things that can be seen

and handled, such as the material adjuncts of a high state of

civilization, but also amongst the things of the mind, including all the

varieties of knowledge.

That a selection of this kind should be one of the marks of gentility is

in itself no more than a natural consequence of the idealizing process as

we see it continually exercised in the fine arts. Every work of fine art

is a result of selection. The artist does not give us the natural truth as

it is, but he purposely omits very much of it, and alters that which he

recognizes. The genteel person is himself a work of art, and, as such,

contains only partial truth.

This is the central fact about gentility, that it is a narrow ideal,

impoverishing the mind by the rejection of truth as much as it adorns it

by elegance; and it is for this reason that gentility is disliked and

refused by all powerful and inquiring intellects. They look upon it as a

mental condition with which they have nothing to do, and they pursue their

labors without the slightest deference or condescension to it. They may,

however, profitably study it as one of the states of human life, and a

state towards which a certain portion of humanity, aided by wealth,

appears to tend inevitably.

The misfortune of the genteel mind is that it is carried by its own

idealism so far away from the truth of nature that it becomes divorced

from fact and unable to see the movement of the actual world; so that

genteel people, with their narrow and erroneous ideas, are sure to find

themselves thrust aside by men of robust intelligence, who are not

genteel, but who have a stronger grip upon reality. There is,

consequently, a pathetic element in gentility, with its fallacious hopes,

its certain disappointments, so easily foreseen by all whom it has not

blinded, and its immense, its amazing, its ever invincible ignorance.

There is not a country in Europe more favorable than France for the study

of the genteel condition of mind. There you have it in its perfection in

the class _qui n'a rien appris et rien oublié_, and in the numerous

aspirants to social position who desire to mix themselves and become

confounded with that class. It has been in the highest degree fashionable,

since the establishment of the Republic, to be ignorant of the real course

of events. In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, genteel

people either really believed or universally professed to believe during

the life-time of the Count de Chambord, that his restoration was not only

probable but imminent. No belief could have been more destitute of

foundation in fact; and if genteel people had not been compelled by

gentility to shut their eyes against what was obvious to everybody else,

they might have ascertained the truth with the utmost facility. The truth

was simply this, that the country was going away further and further from

divine right every day, and from every sort of real monarchy, or one-man

government, and was becoming more and more attached to representative

institutions and an elective system everywhere; and what made this truth

glaringly evident was not only the steadily increasing number of

republican elections, but the repeated return to power of the very

ministers whom the party of divine right most bitterly execrated. The same

class of genteel French people affected to believe that the end of the

temporal power of the Papacy by the foundation of the Italian kingdom was

but a temporary crisis, probably of short duration; though the process

which had brought the Papacy to nothing as a temporal sovereignty had been

slow, gradual, and natural,--the progressive enfeeblement of a theocracy

unable to defend itself against its own subjects, and dependent on foreign

soldiers for every hour of its artificial survival. Such is genteel

ignorance in political matters. It is a polite shutting of the eyes

against all facts and tendencies that are disagreeable to people of

fashion. It is unpleasant to people of fashion to be told that the France

of the future is more likely to be governed by men of business than by

kings and cardinals; it is disagreeable to them to hear that the Pope is

not to do what he likes with the Roman people; and so, to please them, we

are to pretend that we do not understand the course of recent history,

which is obvious to everybody who thinks. The course of events has always

proved the blindness of the genteel world, its incapacity to understand

the present and forecast the future; yet still it goes on in the old way,

shutting its eyes resolutely against surrounding facts, and making

predictions that are sure to be falsified by the event. Such a state of

mind is unintelligent to the last degree, but then it is genteel; and

there is always, in every country, a large class of persons who would

rather be gentlemanly than wise.

In religion, genteel ignorance is not less remarkable than in politics.

Here the mark of gentility is to ignore the unfashionable churches, and

generally to underestimate all those forces of opinion that are not on the

side of the particular form of orthodoxy which is professed by the upper

class. In France it is one of the marks of high breeding not to know

anything about Protestantism. The fact that there are such people as

Protestants is admitted, and it is believed that some of them are decent

and respectable people in their line of life, who may follow an erroneous

religion with an assiduity praiseworthy in itself, but the nature of their

opinions is not known, and it is thought better not to inquire into them.

In England the gentry know hardly anything about Dissenters. As to the

organization of dissenting communities, nobody ever hears of any of them

having bishops, and so it is supposed that they must have some sort of

democratic system. Genteel knowledge of dissenting faith and practice is

confined to a very few points,--that Unitarians do not believe in the

Trinity, that Baptists have some unusual practice about baptism, and that

Methodists are fond of singing hymns. This is all, and more than enough;

as it is inconceivable that an aristocratic person can have anything to do

with Dissent, unless he wants the Nonconformist vote in politics. If

Dissenters are to be spoken of at all, it should be in a condescending

tone, as good people in their way, who may be decent members of the middle

and lower classes, of some use in withstanding the tide of infidelity.

I remember a lady who condemned some eminent man as an atheist, on which I

ventured to object that he was a deist only. "It is exactly the same

thing," she replied. Being at that time young and argumentative, I

maintained that there existed a distinction: that a deist believed in God,

and an atheist had not that belief. "That is of no consequence," she

rejoined; "what concerns us is that we should know as little as possible

about such people." When this dialogue took place the lady seemed to me

unreasonable and unjust, but now I perceive that she was genteel. She

desired to keep her soul pure from the knowledge which gentility did not

recognize; she wanted to know nothing about the shades and colors of

heresy.

There is a delightful touch of determined ignorance in the answer of the

Russian prelates to Mr. William Palmer, who went to Russia in 1840 with a

view to bring about a recognition of Anglicanism by Oriental orthodoxy.

In substance, according to Cardinal Newman, it amounted to this: "We know

of no true Church besides our own. We are the only Church in the world.

The Latins are heretics, or all but heretics; you are worse; _we do not

even know your name_." It would be difficult to excel this last touch; it

is the perfection of uncontaminated orthodoxy, of the pure Russian

religious _comme il faut_. We, the holy, the undefiled, the separate from

heretics and from those lost ones, worse than heretics, into whose

aberrations we never inquire, "_we do not even know your name_."

Of all examples of genteel ignorance, there are none more frequent than

the ignorance of those necessities which are occasioned by a limited

income. I am not, at present, alluding to downright poverty. It is genteel

to be aware that the poor exist; it is genteel, even, to have poor people

of one's own to pet and patronize; and it is pleasant to be kind to such

poor people when they receive our kindness in a properly submissive

spirit, with a due sense of the immense distance between us, and read the

tracts we give them, and listen respectfully to our advice. It is genteel

to have to do with poor people in this way, and even to know something

about them; the real genteel ignorance consists in not recognizing the

existence of those impediments that are familiar to people of limited

means. "I cannot understand," said an English lady, "why people complain

about the difficulties of housekeeping. Such difficulties may almost

always be included under one head,--insufficiency of servants; people have

only to take more servants, and the difficulties disappear." Of course

the cost of maintaining a troup of domestics is too trifling to be taken

into consideration. A French lady, in my hearing, asked what fortune had

such a family. The answer was simple and decided, they had no fortune at

all. "No fortune at all! then how can they possibly live? How can people

live who have no fortune?" This lady's genteel ignorance was enlightened

by the explanation that when there is no fortune in a family it is

generally supported by the labor of one or more of its members. "I cannot

understand," said a rich Englishman to one of my friends, "why men are so

imprudent as to allow themselves to sink into money embarrassments. There

is a simple rule that I follow myself, and that I have always found a

great safeguard,--it is, _never to let one's balance at the banker's fall

below five thousand pounds_. By strictly adhering to this rule one is

always sure to be able to meet any unexpected and immediate necessity."

Why, indeed, do we not all follow a rule so evidently wise? It may be

especially recommended to struggling professional men with large families.

If only they can be persuaded to act upon it they will find it an

unspeakable relief from anxiety, and the present volume will not have been

penned in vain.

Genteel ignorance of pecuniary difficulties is conspicuous in the case of

amusements. It is supposed, if you are inclined to amuse yourself in a

certain limited way, that you are stupid for not doing it on a much more

expensive scale. Charles Lever wrote a charming paper for one of the early

numbers of the "Cornhill Magazine," in which he gave an account of the

dangers and difficulties he had encountered in riding and boating, simply

because he had set limits to his expenditure on those pastimes, an economy

that seemed unaccountably foolish to his genteel acquaintances. "Lever

will ride such screws! Why won't he give a proper price for a horse? It's

the stupidest thing in the world to be under-horsed; and bad economy

besides." These remarks, Lever said, were not sarcasms on his skill or

sneers at his horsemanship, but they were far worse, they were harsh

judgments on himself expressed in a manner that made reply impossible. So

with his boating. Lever had a passion for boating, for that real boating

which is perfectly distinct from yachting and incomparably less costly;

but richer acquaintances insisted on the superior advantages of the more

expensive amusement. "These cockle-shells, sir, must go over; they have no

bearings, they lee over, and there you are,--you fill and go down. Have a

good decked boat,--I should say five-and-thirty or forty tons; _get a

clever skipper and a lively crew_." Is not this exactly like the lady who

thought people stupid for not having an adequate establishment of

servants?

Another form of genteel ignorance consists in being so completely blinded

by conventionalism as not to be able to perceive the essential identity of

two modes of life or habits of action when one of them happens to be in

what is called "good form," whilst the other is not accepted by polite

society. My own tastes and pursuits have often led me to do things for the

sake of study or pleasure which in reality differ but very slightly from

what genteel people often do; yet, at the same time, this slight

difference is sufficient to prevent them from seeing any resemblance

whatever between my practice and theirs. When a young man, I found a

wooden hut extremely convenient for painting from nature, and when at a

distance from other lodging I slept in it. This was unfashionable; and

genteel people expressed much wonder at it, being especially surprised

that I could be so imprudent as to risk health by sleeping in a little

wooden house. Conventionalism made them perfectly ignorant of the fact

that they occasionally slept in little wooden houses themselves. A railway

carriage is simply a wooden hut on wheels, generally very ill-ventilated,

and presenting the alternative of foul air or a strong draught, with

vibration that makes sleep difficult to some and to others absolutely

impossible. I have passed many nights in those public wooden huts on

wheels, but have never slept in them so pleasantly as in my own private

one.[20] Genteel people also use wooden dwellings that float on water. A

yacht's cabin is nothing but a hut of a peculiar shape with its own

special inconveniences. On land a hut will remain steady; at sea it

inclines in every direction, and is tossed about like Gulliver's large

box. An Italian nobleman who liked travel, but had no taste for dirty

Southern inns, had four vans that formed a square at night, with a little

courtyard in the middle that was covered with canvas and served as a

spacious dining-room. The arrangement was excellent, but he was

considered hopelessly eccentric; yet how slight was the difference between

his vans and a train of saloon carriages for the railway! He simply had

saloon carriages that were adapted for common roads.

It is difficult to see what advantage there can be in genteel ignorance to

compensate for its evident disadvantages. Not to be acquainted with

unfashionable opinions, not to be able to imagine unfashionable

necessities, not to be able to perceive the real likeness between

fashionable and unfashionable modes of life on account of some external

and superficial difference, is like living in a house with closed

shutters. Surely a man, or a woman either, might have as good manners, and

be as highly civilized in all respects, with accurate notions of things as

with a head full of illusions. To understand the world as it really is, to

see the direction in which humanity is travelling, ought to be the purpose

of every strong and healthy intellect, even though such knowledge may take

it out of gentility altogether.

The effect of genteel ignorance on human intercourse is such a deduction

from the interest of it that men of ability often avoid genteel society

altogether, and either devote themselves to solitary labors, cheered

principally by the companionship of books, or else keep to intimate

friends of their own order. In Continental countries the public

drinking-places are often frequented by men of culture, not because they

want to drink, but because they can talk freely about what they think and

what they know without being paralyzed by the determined ignorance of the

genteel. In England, no doubt, there is more information; and yet Stuart

Mill said that "general society as now carried on in England is so insipid

an affair, even to the persons who make it what it is, that it is kept up

for any reason rather than the pleasure it affords. All serious discussion

on matters in which opinions differ being considered ill-bred, and the

national deficiency in liveliness and sociability having prevented the

cultivation of the art of talking agreeably on trifles, the sole

attraction of what is called society to those who are not at the top of

the tree is the hope of being aided to climb a little higher. To a person

of any but a very common order in thought or feeling, such society, unless

he has personal objects to serve by it, must be supremely unattractive;

and most people in the present day of any really high class of intellect

make their contact with it so slight and at such long intervals as to be

almost considered as retiring from it altogether." The loss here is

distinctly to the genteel persons themselves. They may not feel it, they

may be completely insensible of it, but by making society insipid they

eliminate from it the very men who might have been its most valuable

elements, and who, whether working in solitude or living with a few

congenial spirits, are really the salt of the earth.

ESSAY XIX.

PATRIOTIC IGNORANCE.

Patriotic ignorance is maintained by the satisfaction that we feel in

ignoring what is favorable to another nation. It is a voluntary closing of

the mind against the disagreeable truth that another nation may be on

certain points equal to our own, or even, though inferior, in some degree

comparable to our own.

The effect of patriotic ignorance as concerning human intercourse is to

place any one who knows the exact truth in the unpleasant dilemma of

having either to correct mistakes which are strongly preferred to truth,

or else to give assent to them against his sense of justice. International

intercourse is made almost impossible by patriotic ignorance, except

amongst a few highly cultivated persons who are superior to it. Nothing is

more difficult than to speak about one's own country with foreigners who

are perpetually putting forward the errors which they have imbibed all

their lives, and to which they cling with such tenacity that it seems as

if those errors were, in some mysterious way, essential to their mental

comfort and well-being. If, on the other hand, we have any really intimate

knowledge of a foreign country, gained by long residence in it and

studious observation of the inhabitants, then we find a corresponding

difficulty in talking reasonably about it and them with our own

countrymen, because they, too, have their patriotic ignorance which they

prize and value as foreigners value theirs.

At the risk of turning this Essay into a string of anecdotes, I intend to

give a few examples of patriotic ignorance, in order to show to what an

astonishing degree of perfection it may attain. When we fully understand

this we shall also understand how those who possess such a treasure should

be anxious for its preservation. Their anxiety is the more reasonable that

in these days there is a difficulty in keeping things when they are easily

injured by light.

A French lady who possessed this treasure in its perfection gave, in my

hearing, as a reason why French people seldom visited England, that there

were no works of art there, no collections, no architecture, nothing to

gratify the artistic sense or the intelligence; and that it was only

people specially interested in trade and manufactures who went to England,

as the country had nothing to show but factories and industrial products.

On hearing this statement, there suddenly passed before my mind's eye a

rapid vision of the great works of architecture, sculpture, and painting

that I had seen in England, and a confused recollection of many minor

examples of these arts not quite unworthy of a studious man's attention.

It is impossible to contradict a lady; and any statement of the simple

truth would, in this instance, have been a direct and crushing

contradiction. I ventured on a faint remonstrance, but without effect; and

my fair enemy triumphed. There were no works of art in England. Thus she

settled the question.

This little incident led me to take note of French ideas about England

with reference to patriotic ignorance; and I discovered that there existed

a very general belief that there was no intellectual light of any kind in

England. Paris was the light of the world, and only so far as Parisian

rays might penetrate the mental fog of the British Islands was there a

chance of its becoming even faintly luminous. It was settled that the

speciality of England was trade and manufacture, that we were all of us

either merchants or cotton-spinners, and I discovered that we had no

learned societies, no British Museum, no Royal Academy of Arts.

An English painter, who for many years had exhibited on the line of the

Royal Academy, happened to be mentioned in my presence and in that of a

French artist. I was asked by some French people who knew him personally

whether the English painter had a good professional standing. I answered

that he had a fair though not a brilliant reputation; meanwhile the French

artist showed signs of uneasiness, and at length exploded with a vigorous

protest against the inadmissible idea that a painter could be anything

whatever who was not known at the French _Salon_. "Il n'est pas connu au

Salon de Paris, donc, il n'existe pas--il n'existe pas. Les réputations

dans les beaux-arts se font au Salon de Paris et pas ailleurs." This

Frenchman had no conception whatever of the simple fact that artistic

reputations are made in every capital of the civilized world. That was a

truth which his patriotism could not tolerate for a moment.

A French gentleman expressed his surprise that I did not have my books

translated into French, "because," said he, "no literary reputation can be

considered established until it has received the consecration of Parisian

approval." To his unfeigned astonishment I answered that London and not

Paris was the capital city of English literature, and that English authors

had not yet fallen so low as to care for the opinion of critics ignorant

of their language.

I then asked myself why this intense French patriotic ignorance should

continue so persistently; and the answer appeared to be that there was

something profoundly agreeable to French patriotic sentiment in the belief

that England had no place in the artistic and intellectual world. Until

quite recently the very existence of an English school of painting was

denied by all patriotic Frenchmen, and English art was rigorously excluded

from the Louvre.[21] Even now a French writer upon art can scarcely

mention English painting without treating it _de haut en bas_, as if his

Gallic nationality gave him a natural right to treat uncivilized islanders

with lofty disdain or condescending patronage.

My next example has no reference to literature or the fine arts. A young

French gentleman of superior education and manners, and with the instincts

of a sportsman, said in my hearing, "There is no game in England." His

tone was that of a man who utters a truth universally acknowledged.

It might be a matter of little consequence, as touching our national

pride, whether there was game in England or not. I have no doubt that some

philosophers would consider, and perhaps with reason, that the

non-existence of game, where it can only be maintained by an army of

keepers and a penal code of its own, would be the sign of an advancing

social state; but my young Frenchman was not much of a philosopher, and no

doubt he considered the non-existence of game in England a mark of

inferiority to France. There is something in the masculine mind, inherited

perhaps from ancestors who lived by the chase, which makes it look upon an

abundance of wild things that can be shot at, or run after with horses and

dogs, as a reason for the greatest pride and glorification. On reflection,

it will be found that there is more in the matter than at first sight

appears. As there is no game in England, of course there are no sportsmen

in that country. The absence of game means the absence of shooters and

huntsmen, and consequently an inferiority in manly exercises to the

French, thousands of whom take shooting licenses and enjoy the

invigorating excitement of the chase. For this reason it is agreeable to

French patriotic sentiment to be perfectly certain that there is no game

in England. When I inquired what reason my young friend had for holding

his conviction on the subject, he told me that in a country like England,

so full of trade and manufactures, there could not be any room for game.

One of the most popular of French songs is that charming one by Pierre

Dupont in praise of his vine. Every Frenchman who knows anything knows

that song, and believes that he also knows the tune. The consequence is

that when one of them begins to sing it his companions join in the refrain

or chorus, which is as follows:--

"Bons Français, quand je vois mon verre

Plein de ce vin couleur de feu

Je songe en remerciant Dieu

Qu'ils n'en ont pas dans l'Angleterre!"

The singers repeat "qu'ils n'en ont pas," and besides this the whole of

the last line is repeated with triumphant emphasis.

We need not feel hurt by this little outburst of patriotism. There is no

real hatred of England at the bottom of it, only a little "malice" of a

harmless kind, and the song is sometimes sung good-humoredly in the

presence of Englishmen. It is, however, really connected with patriotic

ignorance. The common French belief is that as vines are not grown in

England, we have no wine in our cellars, so that English people hardly

know the taste of wine; and this belief is too pleasing to the French mind

to be readily abandoned by those who hold it. They feel that it enhances

the delightfulness of every glass they drink. The case is precisely the

same with fruit. The French enjoy plenty of excellent fruit, and they

enjoy it all the more heartily from a firm conviction that there is no

fruit of any kind in England. "Pas un fruit," said a countryman of Pierre

Dupont in writing about our unfavored island, "pas un fruit ne mûrit dans

ce pays." What, not even a gooseberry? Were the plums, pears,

strawberries, apples, apricots, that we consumed in omnivorous boyhood

every one of them unripe? It is lamentable to think how miserably the

English live. They have no game, no wine, no fruit (it appears to be

doubtful, too, whether they have any vegetables), and they dwell in a

perpetual fog where sunshine is totally unknown. It is believed, also,

that there is no landscape-beauty in England,--nothing but a green field

with a hedge, and then another green field with another hedge, till you

come to the bare chalk cliffs and the dreary northern sea. The English

have no Devonshire, no valley of the Severn, no country of the Lakes. The

Thames is a foul ditch, without a trace of natural beauty anywhere.[22]

It would be easy to give many more examples of the patriotism of our

neighbors, but perhaps for the sake of variety it may be desirable to turn

the glass in the opposite direction and see what English patriotism has to

say about France. We shall find the same principle at work, the same

determination to believe that the foreign country is totally destitute of

many things on which we greatly pride ourselves. I do not know that there

is any reason to be proud of having mountains, as they are excessively

inconvenient objects that greatly impede agriculture and communication;

however, in some parts of Great Britain it is considered, somehow, a glory

for a nation to have mountains; and there used to be a firm belief that

French landscape was almost destitute of mountainous grandeur. There were

the Highlands of Scotland, but who had ever heard of the Highlands of

France? Was not France a wearisome, tame country that unfortunately had to

be traversed before one could get to Switzerland and Italy? Nobody seemed

to have any conception that France was rich in mountain scenery of the

very grandest kind. Switzerland was understood to be the place for

mountains, and there was a settled but erroneous conviction that Mont

Blanc was situated in that country. As for the Grand-Pelvoux, the Pointe

des Écrins, the Mont Olan, the Pic d'Arsine, and the Trois Ellions, nobody

had ever heard of them. If you had told any average Scotchman that the

most famous Bens would be lost and nameless in the mountainous departments

of France, the news would have greatly surprised him. He would have been

astonished to hear that the area of mountainous France exceeded the area

of Scotland, and that the height of its loftiest summits attained three

times the elevation of Ben Nevis.

It may be excusable to feel proud of mountains, as they are noble objects

in spite of their inconvenience, but it seems less reasonable to be

patriotic about hedges, which make us pay dearly for any beauty they may

possess by hiding the perspective of the land. A hedge six feet high

easily masks as many miles of distance. However, there is a pride in

English hedges, accompanied by a belief that there are no such things in

France. The truth is that regions of large extent are divided by hedges in

France as they are in England Another belief is that there is little or

no wood in France, though wood is the principal fuel, and vast forests are

reserved for its supply. I have heard an Englishman proudly congratulating

himself, in the spirit of Dupont's song, on the supposed fact that the

French had neither coal nor iron; and yet I have visited a vast

establishment at the Creuzot, where ten thousand workmen are continually

employed in making engines, bridges, armor-plates, and other things from

iron found close at hand, by the help of coal fetched from a very little

distance. I have read in an English newspaper that there were no singing

birds in France; and by way of commentary a hundred little French

songsters kept up a merry din that would have gladdened the soul of

Chaucer. It happened, too, to be the time of the year for nightingales,

which filled the woods with their music in the moonlight.

Patriotic ignorance often gets hold of some partial truth unfavorable to

another country, and then applies it in such an absolute manner that it is

truth no longer. It is quite true, for example, that athletic exercises

are not so much cultivated in France, nor held in such high esteem, as

they are in England, but it is not true that all young Frenchmen are

inactive. They are often both good swimmers and good pedestrians, and,

though they do not play cricket, many of them take a practical interest in

gymnastics and are skilful on the bar and the trapeze. The French learn

military drill in their boyhood, and in early manhood they are inured to

fatigue in the army, besides which great numbers of them learn fencing on

their own account, that they may hold their own in a duel. Patriotic

ignorance likes to shut its eyes to all inconvenient facts of this kind,

and to dwell on what is unfavorable. A man may like a glass of absinthe in

a _café_ and still be as energetic as if he drank port wine at home. I

know an old French officer who never misses his daily visit to the _café_,

and so might serve as a text for moralizing, but at the same time he walks

twenty kilomètres every day. Patriotic ignorance has its opportunity in

every difference of habit. What can be apparently more indolent, for an

hour or two after _déjeûner_, than a prosperous man of business in Paris?

Very possibly he may be caught playing cards or dominoes in the middle of

the day, and severely blamed by a foreign censor. The difference between

him and his equal in London is simply in the arrangement of time. The

Frenchman has been at his work early, and divides his day into two parts,

with hours of idleness between them.

Many examples of those numerous international criticisms that originate in

patriotic ignorance are connected with the employment of words that are

apparently common to different nations, yet vary in their signification.

One that has given rise to frequent patriotic criticisms is the French

word _univers_. French writers often say of some famous author, such as

Victor Hugo, "Sa renommée remplit l'univers;" or of some great warrior,

like Napoleon, "Il inquiéta l'univers." English critics take up these

expressions and then say, "Behold how bombastic these French writers are,

with their absurd exaggerations, as if Victor Hugo and Napoleon astonished

the universe, as if they were ever heard of beyond our own little

planet!" Such criticism only displays patriotic ignorance of a foreign

language. The French expression is perfectly correct, and not in the least

exaggerated. Napoleon did not disquiet the universe, but he disquieted

_l'univers_. Victor Hugo is not known beyond the terrestrial globe, but he

is known, by name at least, throughout _l'univers_. The persistent

ignorance of English writers on this point would be inexplicable if it

were not patriotic; if it did not afford an opportunity for deriding the

vanity of foreigners. It is the more remarkable that the deriders

themselves constantly use the word in the same restricted sense as an

adjective or an adverb. I open Mr. Stanford's atlas, and find that it is

called "The London Atlas of _Universal Geography_," though it does not

contain a single map of any planet but our own, not even one of the

visible hemisphere of the moon, which might easily have been given. I take

a newspaper, and I find that the late President of the Royal Society died

_universally_ respected, though he was known only to the cultivated

inhabitants of a single planet. Such is the power of patriotic ignorance

that it is able to prevent men from understanding a foreign word when they

themselves employ a nearly related word in identically the same

sense.[23]

The word _univers_ reminds me of universities, and they recall a striking

example of patriotic ignorance in my own countrymen. I wonder how many

Englishmen there are who know anything about the University of France. I

never expect an Englishman to know anything about it; and, what is more, I

am always prepared to find him impervious to any information on the

subject. As the organization of the University of France differs

essentially from that of English universities, each of which is localized

in one place, and can be seen in its entirety from the top of a tower, the

Englishman hears with contemptuous inattention any attempt to make him

understand an institution without a parallel in his own country. Besides

this, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are venerable and wealthy

institutions, visibly beautiful, whilst the University of France is of

comparatively recent origin; and, though large sums are expended in its

service, the result does not strike the eye because the expenditure is

distributed over the country. I remember having occasion to mention the

Academy of Lyons to a learned doctor of Oxford who was travelling in

France, and I found that he had never heard of the Academy of Lyons, and

knew nothing about the organization of the national university of which

that academy forms a part. From a French point of view this is quite as

remarkable an example of patriotic ignorance as if some foreigner had

never heard of the diocese of York, or the episcopal organization of the

Church of England. Every Frenchman who has any education at all knows the

functions of academies in the university, and which of the principal

cities are the seats of those learned bodies.

As Englishmen ignore the University of France, they naturally at the same

time ignore the degrees that it confers. They never know what a _Licencié_

is, they have no conception of the _Agrégation_, or of the severe ordeal

of competitive examination through which an _Agrégé_ must have passed.

Therefore, if a Frenchman has attained either of these grades, his title

is unintelligible to an Englishman.

There is, no doubt, great ignorance in France on the subject of the

English universities, but it is neither in the same degree nor of the same

kind. I should hardly call French ignorance of the classes at Oxford

patriotic ignorance, because it does not proceed from the belief that a

foreign university is unworthy of a Frenchman's attention. I should call

French ignorance of the Royal Academy, for example, genuine patriotic

ignorance, because it proceeds from a conviction that English art is

unworthy of notice, and that the French _Salon_ is the only exhibition

that can interest an enlightened lover of art. That is the essence of

patriotism in ignorance,--to be ignorant of what is done in another

nation, because we believe our own to be first and the rest nowhere; and

so the English ignorance of the University of France is genuine patriotic

ignorance. It is caused by the existence of Oxford and Cambridge, as the

French ignorance of the Royal Academy is caused by the French _Salon_.

Patriotic ignorance is one of the most serious impediments to conversation

between people of different nationality, because occasions are continually

arising when the national sentiments of the one are hurt by the ignorance

of the other. But we may also wound the feelings of a foreigner by

assuming a more complete degree of ignorance on his part than that which

is really his. This is sometimes done by English people towards Americans,

when English people forget that their national literature is the common

possession of the two countries. A story is told by Mr. Grant White of an

English lady who informed him that a novel (which she advised him to read)

had been written about Kenilworth, by Sir Walter Scott; and he expected

her to recommend a perusal of the works of William Shakespeare. Having

lived much abroad, I am myself occasionally the grateful recipient of

valuable information from English friends. For example, I remember an

Englishman who kindly and quite seriously informed me that Eton College

was a public school where many sons of the English aristocracy were

educated.

There is a very serious side to patriotic ignorance in relation to war.

There can be no doubt that many of the most foolish, costly, and

disastrous wars ever undertaken were either directly due to patriotic

ignorance, or made possible only by the existence of such ignorance in the

nation that afterwards suffered by them. The way in which patriotic

ignorance directly tends to produce war is readily intelligible. A nation

sees its own soldiers, its own cannons, its own ships, and becomes so

proud of them as to remain contentedly and even wilfully ignorant of the

military strength and efficiency of its neighbors. The war of 1870-71, so

disastrous to France, was the direct result of patriotic ignorance. The

country and even the Emperor himself were patriotically ignorant of their

own inferior military condition and of the superior Prussian organization.

One or two isolated voices were raised in warning, but it was considered

patriotic not to listen to them. The war between Turkey and Russia, which

cost Turkey Bulgaria and all but expelled her from Europe, might easily

have been avoided by the Sultan; but he was placed in a false position by

the patriotic ignorance of his own subjects, who believed him to be far

more powerful than he really was, and who would have probably dethroned or

murdered him if he had acted rationally, that is to say, in accordance

with the degree of strength that he possessed. In almost every instance

that I am able to remember, the nations that have undertaken imprudent and

easily avoidable wars have done so because they were blinded by patriotic

ignorance, and therefore either impelled their rulers into a foolish

course against their better knowledge, or else were themselves easily led

into peril by the temerity of a rash master, who would risk the well-being

of all his subjects that he might attain some personal and private end.

The French have been cured of their most dangerous patriotic

ignorance,--that concerning the military strength of the country,--by the

war of 1870, but the cure was of a costly nature.

Patriotism has been so commonly associated with a wilful closing of the

eyes against unpleasant facts, that those who prefer truth to illusion are

often considered unpatriotic. Yet surely ignorance has not the immense

advantage over knowledge of having all patriotism on her side. There is a

far higher and better patriotism than that of ignorance; there is a love

of country that shows itself in anxiety for its best welfare, and does not

remain satisfied with the vain delusion of a fancied superiority in

everything. It is the interest of England as a nation to be accurately

informed about all that concerns her position in the world, and it is

impossible for her to receive this information if a stupid national vanity

is always ready to take offence when it is offered. It is desirable for

England to know exactly in what degree she is a military power, and also

how she stands with reference to the naval armaments of other nations, not

as they existed in the days of Nelson, but as they will exist next year.

It is the interest of England to know by what tenure she holds India, just

as in the reign of George the Third it would have been very much the

interest of England to know accurately both the rights of the American

colonists and their strength. I cannot imagine any circumstances that

might make ignorance more desirable for a free people than knowledge. With

enslaved peoples the case is different: the less they know and the

greater, perhaps, are their chances of enjoying the dull kind of somnolent

happiness which alone is attainable by them; but this is a kind of

happiness that no citizen of a free country would desire.

ESSAY XX.

CONFUSIONS.

Surely the analytical faculty must be very rare, or we should not so

commonly find people confounding together things essentially distinct. Any

one who possesses that faculty naturally, and has followed some occupation

which strengthens it, must be continually amused if he has a humorous

turn, or irritated if he is irascible, by the astounding mental confusions

in which men contentedly pass their lives. To be just, this account ought

to include both sexes, for women indulge in confusions even more

frequently than men, and are less disposed to separate things when they

have once been jumbled together.

A confusion of ideas in politics which is not uncommon amongst the enemies

of all change is to believe that whoever desires the reform of some law

wants to do something that is not legal, and has a rebellious, subversive

spirit. Yet the reformer is not a rebel; it is indeed the peculiar

distinction of his position not to be a rebel, for there has never been a

real reformer (as distinguished from a revolutionist) who wished to do

anything illegal. He desires, certainly, to do something which is not

legal just at present, but he does not wish to do it so long as it remains

in the condition of illegality. He wishes first to make it legal by

obtaining legislative sanction for his proposal, and then to do it when it

shall have become as legal as anything else, and when all the most

conservative people in the kingdom will be strenuous in its defence as

"part and parcel of the law of the land."

Another confusion in political matters which has always been extremely

common is that between private and public liberty. Suppose that a law were

enacted to the effect that each British subject without exception should

go to Mass every Sunday morning, on pain of death, and should take the

Roman Catholic Sacrament of Holy Communion, involving auricular

confession, at Easter; such a law would not be an infringement of the

sensible liberty of Roman Catholics, because they do these things already.

Then they might say, "People talk of the tyranny of the law, yet the law

is not tyrannical at all; we enjoy perfect liberty in England, and it is

most unreasonable to say that we do not." The Protestant part of the

community would exclaim that such a law was an intolerable infringement of

liberty, and would rush to arms to get rid of it. This is the distinction

between private and public liberty. There is private liberty when some men

are not interfered with in the ordinary habits of their existence; and

there has always been much of such private liberty under the worst of

despotisms; but there is not public liberty until every man in the country

may live according to his own habits, so long as he does not interfere

with the rights of others. Here is a distinction plain enough to be

evident to a very commonplace understanding; yet the admirers of tyrants

are often successful in producing a confusion between the two things, and

in persuading people that there was "ample liberty" under some foreign

despot, because they themselves, when they visited the country that lay

prostrate under his irresistible power, were allowed to eat good dinners,

and drive about unmolested, and amuse themselves by day and by night

according to every suggestion of their fancy.

Many confusions have been intentionally maintained by political enemies in

order to cast odium on their adversaries; so that it becomes of great

importance to a political cause that it should not bear a name with two

meanings, or to which it may be possible to give another meaning than that

which was originally intended. The word "Radical" is an instance of this.

According to the enemies of radicalism it has always meant a political

principle that strikes at the root of the constitution; but it was not

that meaning of the word which induced the first Radicals to commit the

imprudence of adopting it. The term referred to agriculture rather than

tree-felling, the original idea being to uproot abuses as a gardener pulls

weeds up by the roots. I distinctly remember my first boyish notion of the

Radicals. I saw them in a sort of sylvan picture,--violent savage men

armed with sharp axes, and hewing away at the foot of a majestic oak that

stood for the glory of England. Since then I have become acquainted with

another instance of the unfortunate adoption of a word which may be

plausibly perverted from its meaning. The French republican motto is

_Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité_, and to this day there is hardly an

English newspaper that does not from time to time sneer at the French

Republicans for aspiring to equality, as if equality were not impossible

in the nature of things, and as if, supposing an unnatural equality to be

established to-day, the operation of natural causes would not bring about

inequality to-morrow. We are told that some men would be stronger, or

cleverer, or more industrious than others, and earn more and make

themselves leaders; that children of the same parents, starting in life

with the same fortunes, never remain in precisely the same positions; and

much more to the same purpose. All this trite and familiar reasoning is

without application here. The word _Égalité_ in the motto means something

which _can_ be attained, and which, though it did not exist in France

before the Revolution, is now almost a perfect reality there,--it means

equality before the law; it means that there shall not be privileged

classes exempt from paying taxes, and favored with such scandalous

partiality that all posts of importance in the government, the army, the

magistracy, and the church are habitually reserved for them. If it meant

absolute equality, no Republican could aim at wealth, which is the

creation of inequality in his own favor; neither would any Republican

labor for intellectual reputation, or accept honors. There would not even

be a Republican in the gymnastic societies, where every member strives to

become stronger and more agile than his fellows, and knows that, whether

in his favor or against him, the most striking inequalities will be

manifested in every public contest. There would be no Republicans in the

University, for has it not a hierarchy with the most marked gradations of

title, and differences of consideration and authority? Yet the University

is so full of Republicans that it is scarcely too much to say that it is

entirely composed of them. I am aware that there are dreamers in the

working classes, both in France and elsewhere, who look forward to a

social state when all men will work for the same wages,--when the

Meissonier of the day will be paid like a sign-painter, and the

sign-painter like a white-washer, and all three perform each other's tasks

by turns for equality of agreeableness in the work; but these dreams are

only possible in extreme ignorance, and lie quite outside of any theories

to be seriously considered.

Religious intolerance, when quite sincere and not mixed up with social

contempt or political hatred, is founded upon a remarkable confusion of

ideas, which is this. The persecutor assumes that the heretic knowingly

and maliciously resists the will of God in rejecting the theology which he

knows that God desires him to receive. This is a confusion between the

mental states of the believer and the unbeliever, and it does not

accurately describe either, for the believer of course accepts the

doctrine, and the unbeliever does not reject it as coming from God, but

precisely because he is convinced that it has a purely human origin.

"Are you a Puseyite?" was a question put to a lady in my hearing; and she

at once answered, "Certainly not, I should be ashamed of being a

Puseyite." Here was a confusion between her present mental state and her

supposed possible mental state as a Puseyite; for it is impossible to be a

real Puseyite and at the same time to think of one's belief with an inward

sense of shame. A believer always thinks that his belief is simply the

truth, and nobody feels ashamed of believing what is true. Even

concealment of a belief does not imply shame; and those who have been

compelled, in self-defence, to hide their real opinions, have been

ashamed, if at all, of hiding and not of having them.

A confusion common to all who do not think, and avoided only with the

greatest difficulty by those who do, is that between their own knowledge

and the knowledge possessed by another person who has different tastes,

different receptive powers, and other opportunities. They cannot imagine

that the world does not appear the same to him that it appears to them.

They do not really believe that he can feel quite differently from

themselves and still be in every respect as sound in mind and as

intelligent as they are. The incapacity to imagine a different mental

condition is strikingly manifested in what we call the Philistine mind,

and is one of its strongest characteristics. The true Philistine thinks

that every form of culture which opens out a world that is closed against

himself leaves the votary exactly where he was before. "I cannot imagine

why you live in Italy," said a Philistine to an acquaintance; "nothing

could induce _me_ to live in Italy." He did not take into account the

difference of gifts and culture, but supposed the person he addressed to

have just his own mental condition, the only one that he was able to

conceive, whereas, in fact, that person was so endowed and so educated as

to enjoy Italy in the supreme degree. He spoke the purest Italian with

perfect ease; he had a considerable knowledge of Italian literature and

antiquities; his love of natural beauty amounted to an insatiable passion;

and from his youth he had delighted in architecture and painting. Of these

gifts, tastes, and acquirements the Philistine was simply destitute. For

him Italy could have had no meaning. Where the other found unfailing

interest he would have suffered from unrelieved _ennui_, and would have

been continually looking back, with the intolerable longing of nostalgia,

to the occupations of his English home. In the same spirit a French

_bourgeois_ once complained in my hearing that too much space was given to

foreign affairs in the newspapers, "car, vous comprenez, cela n'intéresse

pas." This was simply an attribution of his personal apathy to everybody

else. Certainly, as a nation, the French take less interest in foreign

affairs than we do, but they do take some interest, and the degree of it

is exactly reflected by the importance given to foreign affairs in their

journals, always greatest in the best of them. An Englishman said, also in

my hearing, that to have a library was a mistake, as a library was of no

use; he admitted that a few books might be useful if the owner read them

through. Here, again, is the attribution of one person's experience to all

cases. This man had never himself felt the need of a library, and did not

know how to use one. He could not realize the fact that a few books only

allow you to read, whilst a library allows you to pursue a study. He could

not at all imagine what the word "library" means to a scholar,--that it

means the not being stopped at every turn for want of light, the not being

exposed to scornful correction by men of inferior ability and inferior

industry, whose only superiority is the great and terrible one of living

within a cabfare of the British Museum. I remember reading an account of

the establishment of a Greek professorship in a provincial town, and it

was wisely proposed, by one who understood the difficulties of a scholar

remote from the great libraries, that provision should be made for the

accumulation of books for the use of the future occupants of the chair,

but the trustees (honest men of business, who had no idea of a scholar's

wants and necessities) said that each professor must provide his own

library, just as road commissioners advertise that a surveyor must have

his own horse.

One of the most serious reasons why it is imprudent to associate with

people whose opinions you do not wish to be made responsible for is that

others will confound you with them. There is an old Latin proverb, and

also a French one, to the effect that if a man knows what your friends

are, he knows what you are yourself. These proverbs are not true, but they

well express the popular confusion between having something in common and

having everything in common. If you are on friendly terms with clergymen,

it is inferred that you have a clerical mind; when the reason may be that

you are a scholar living in the country, and can find no scholarship in

your neighborhood except in the parsonage houses. You associate with

foreigners, and are supposed to be unpatriotic; when in truth you are as

patriotic as any rational and well-informed creature can be, but have a

faculty for languages that you like to exercise in conversation. This kind

of confusion takes no account of the indisputable fact that men constantly

associate together on the ground of a single pursuit that they have in

common, often a mere amusement, or because, in spite of every imaginable

difference, they are drawn together by one of those mysterious natural

affinities which are so obscure in their origin and action that no human

intelligence can explain them.

Not only are a man's tastes liable to be confounded with those of his

personal acquaintances, but he may find some trade attributed to him, by a

perfectly irrational association of ideas, because it happens to be

prevalent in the country where he lives. I have known instances of men

supposed to have been in the cotton trade simply because they had lived in

Lancashire, and of others supposed to be in the mineral oil trade for no

other reason than because they had lived in a part of France where mineral

oil is found.

Professional men are usually very much alive to the danger of confusion as

affecting their success in life. If you are known to do two things, a

confusion gets established between the two, and you are no longer classed

with that ease and decision which the world finds to be convenient. It

therefore becomes a part of worldly wisdom to keep one of the occupations

in obscurity, and if that is not altogether possible, then to profess as

loudly and as frequently as you can that it is entirely secondary and only

a refreshment after more serious toils. Many years ago a well-known

surgeon published a set of etchings, and the merit of them was so

dangerously conspicuous, so superior, in fact, to the average of

professional work, that he felt constrained to keep those too clever

children in their places by a quotation from Horace,--

"O laborum

Dulce lenimen!"

To present one's self to the world always in one character is a great help

to success, and maintains the stability of a position. The kings in the

story-books and on playing cards who have always their crowns on their

heads and sceptres in their hands, appear to enjoy a decided advantage

over modern royalty, which dresses like other people and enters into

common interests and pursuits. Literary men admire the prudent

self-control of our literary sovereign, Tennyson, who by his rigorous

abstinence from prose takes care never to appear in public without his

singing robes and his crown of laurel. Had he carelessly and familiarly

employed the commoner vehicle of expression, there would have been a

confusion of two Tennysons in the popular idea, whilst at present his name

is as exclusively associated with the exquisite music of his verse as that

of Mozart with another kind of melody.

The great evil of confusions, as they affect conversation, is that they

constantly place a man of accurate mental habits in such trying situations

that, unless he exercises the most watchful self-control, he is sure to

commit the sin of contradiction. We have all of us met with the lady who

does not think it necessary to distinguish between one person and

another, who will tell a story of some adventure as having happened to A,

when in reality it happened to B; who will attribute sayings and opinions

to C, when they properly belong to D; and deliberately maintain that it is

of no consequence whatever, when some suffering lover of accuracy

undertakes to set her right. It is in vain to argue that there really does

exist, in the order of the universe, a distinction between one person and

another, though both belong to the human race; and that organisms are

generally isolated, though there has been an exception in the case of the

Siamese twins. The death of the wonderful swimmer who attempted to descend

the rapids of Niagara afforded an excellent opportunity for confounders.

In France they all confounded him with Captain Boyton, who swam with an

apparatus; and when poor Webb was sucked under the whirlpool they said,

"You see that, after all, his inflated dress was of no avail." Fame of a

higher kind does not escape from similar confusions. On the death of

George Eliot, French readers of English novels lamented that they would

have nothing more from the pen that wrote "John Halifax," and a cultivated

Frenchman expressed his regret for the author of "Adam Bede" and "Uncle

Tom's Cabin."[24]