AS the next day was fine, we agreed to have our reading in the same spot
that I have described before. There was scarcely any conversation worth
noting, until after Milverton had read us the following essay on
Conformity.
CONFORMITY.
The conformity of men is often a far poorer thing than that which
resembles it amongst the lower animals. The monkey imitates from
imitative skill and gamesomeness: the sheep is gregarious, having no
sufficient will to form an independent project of its own. But man often
loathes what he imitates, and conforms to what he knows to be wrong.
It will ever be one of the nicest problems for a man to solve how far he
shall profit by the thoughts of other men, and not be enslaved by them.
He comes into the world, and finds swaddling clothes ready for his mind
as well as his body. There is a vast scheme of social machinery set up
about him; and he has to discern how he can make it work with him and for
him, without becoming part of the machinery himself. In this lie the
anguish and the struggle of the greatest minds. Most sad are they,
having mostly the deepest sympathies, when they find themselves breaking
off from communion with other minds. They would go on, if they could,
with the opinions around them. But, happily, there is something to which
a man owes a larger allegiance than to any human affection. He would be
content to go away from a false thing, or quietly to protest against it;
but in spite of him the strife in his heart breaks into burning utterance
by word or deed.
Few, however, are those who venture, even for the shortest time, into
that hazy world of independent thought, where a man is not upheld by a
crowd of other men’s opinions, but where he must find a footing of his
own. Among the mass of men, there is little or no resistance to
conformity. Could the history of opinions be fully written, it would be
seen how large a part in human proceedings the love of conformity, or
rather the fear of non-conformity, has occasioned. It has triumphed over
all other fears; over love, hate, pity, sloth, anger, truth, pride,
comfort, self-interest, vanity, and maternal love. It has torn down the
sense of beauty in the human soul, and set up in its place little ugly
idols which it compels us to worship with more than Japanese devotion.
It has contradicted Nature in the most obvious things, and been listened
to with abject submission. Its empire has been no less extensive than
deep-seated. The serf to custom points his finger at the slave to
fashion—as if it signified whether it is an old or a new thing which is
irrationally conformed to. The man of letters despises both the slaves
of fashion and of custom, but often runs his narrow career of thought,
shut up, though he sees it not, within close walls which he does not
venture even to peep over.
It is hard to say in what department of human thought and endeavour
conformity has triumphed most. Religion comes to one’s mind first; and
well it may when one thinks what men have conformed to in all ages in
that matter. If we pass to art, or science, we shall see there too the
wondrous slavery which men have endured—from puny fetters, moreover,
which one stirring thought would, as we think, have burst asunder. The
above, however, are matters not within every one’s cognisance; some of
them are shut in by learning or the show of it; and plain “practical” men
would say, they follow where they have no business but to follow. But
the way in which the human body shall be covered is not a thing for the
scientific and the learned only: and is allowed on all hands to concern,
in no small degree, one half at least of the creation. It is in such a
simple thing as dress that each of us may form some estimate of the
extent of conformity in the world. A wise nation, unsubdued by
superstition, with the collected experience of peaceful ages, concludes
that female feet are to be clothed by crushing them. The still wiser
nations of the west have adopted a swifter mode of destroying health, and
creating angularity, by crushing the upper part of the female body. In
such matters nearly all people conform. Our brother man is seldom so
bitter against us, as when we refuse to adopt at once his notions of the
infinite. But even religious dissent were less dangerous and more
respectable than dissent in dress. If you want to see what men will do
in the way of conformity, take a European hat for your subject of
meditation. I dare say there are twenty-two millions of people at this
minute each wearing one of these hats in order to please the rest. As in
the fine arts, and in architecture, especially, so in dress, something is
often retained that was useful when something else was beside it. To go
to architecture for an instance, a pinnacle is retained, not that it is
of any use where it is, but in another kind of building it would have
been. That style of building, as a whole, has gone out of fashion, but
the pinnacle has somehow or other kept its ground and must be there, no
one insolently going back to first principles and asking what is the use
and object of building pinnacles. Similar instances in dress will occur
to my readers. Some of us are not skilled in such affairs; but looking
at old pictures we may sometimes see how modern clothes have attained
their present pitch of frightfulness and inconvenience. This matter of
dress is one in which, perhaps, you might expect the wise to conform to
the foolish; and they have.
When we have once come to a right estimate of the strength of conformity,
we shall, I think, be more kindly disposed to eccentricity than we
usually are. Even a wilful or an absurd eccentricity is some support
against the weighty common-place conformity of the world. If it were not
for some singular people who persist in thinking for themselves, in
seeing for themselves, and in being comfortable, we should all collapse
into a hideous uniformity.
It is worth while to analyse that influence of the world which is the
right arm of conformity. Some persons bend to the world in all things,
from an innocent belief that what so many people think must be right.
Others have a vague fear of the world as of some wild beast which may
spring out upon them at any time. Tell them they are safe in their
houses from this myriad-eyed creature: they still are sure that they
shall meet with it some day, and would propitiate its favour at any
sacrifice. Many men contract their idea of the world to their own
circle, and what they imagine to be said in that circle of friends and
acquaintances is their idea of public opinion—“as if,” to use a saying of
Southey’s, “a number of worldlings made a world.” With some unfortunate
people, the much dreaded “world” shrinks into one person of more mental
power than their own, or perhaps merely of coarser nature; and the fancy
as to what this person will say about anything they do, sits upon them
like a nightmare. Happy the man who can embark his small adventure of
deeds and thoughts upon the shallow waters round his home, or send them
afloat on the wide sea of humanity, with no great anxiety in either case
as to what reception they may meet with! He would have them steer by the
stars, and take what wind may come to them.
A reasonable watchfulness against conformity will not lead a man to spurn
the aid of other men, still less to reject the accumulated mental capital
of ages. It does not compel us to dote upon the advantages of savage
life. We would not forego the hard-earned gains of civil society because
there is something in most of them which tends to contract the natural
powers, although it vastly aids them. We would not, for instance, return
to the monosyllabic utterance of barbarous men, because in any formed
language there are a thousand snares for the understanding. Yet we must
be most watchful of them. And in all things, a man must beware of so
conforming himself as to crush his nature and forego the purpose of his
being. We must look to other standards than what men may say or think.
We must not abjectly bow down before rules and usages; but must refer to
principles and purposes. In few words, we must think, not whom we are
following, but what we are doing. If not, why are we gifted with
individual life at all? Uniformity does not consist with the higher
forms of vitality. Even the leaves of the same tree are said to differ,
each one from all the rest. And can it be good for the soul of a man
“with a biography of his own like to no one else’s,” to subject itself
without thought to the opinions and ways of others: not to grow into
symmetry, but to be moulded down into conformity?
* * * * *
_Ellesmere_. Well, I rather like that essay. I was afraid, at first, it
was going to have more of the fault into which you essay writers
generally fall, of being a comment on the abuse of a thing, and not on
the thing itself. There always seems to me to want another essay on the
other side. But I think, at the end, you protect yourself against
misconstruction. In the spirit of the essay, you know, of course, that I
quite agree with you. Indeed, I differ from all the ordinary biographers
of that independent gentleman, Don’t Care. I believe Don’t Care came to
a good end. At any rate he came to some end. Whereas numbers of people
never have beginning, or ending, of their own. An obscure dramatist,
Milverton, whom we know of, makes one of his characters say, in reply to
some world-fearing wretch:
“While you, you think
What others think, or what you think they’ll say,
Shaping your course by something scarce more tangible
Than dreams, at best the shadows on the stream
Of aspen leaves by flickering breezes swayed—
Load me with irons, drive me from morn till night,
I am not the utter slave which that man is
Whose sole word, thought, and deed are built on what
The world may say of him.”
_Milverton_. Never mind the obscure dramatist. But, Ellesmere, you
really are unreasonable, if you suppose that, in the limits of a short
essay, you can accurately distinguish all you write between the use and
the abuse of a thing. The question is, will people misunderstand
you—not, is the language such as to be logically impregnable? Now, in
the present case, no man will really suppose it is a wise and just
conformity that I am inveighing against.
_Ellesmere_. I am not sure of that. If everybody is to have independent
thought, would there not be a fearful instability and want of
compactness? Another thing, too—conformity often saves so much time and
trouble.
_Milverton_. Yes; it has its uses. I do not mean, in the world of
opinion and morality, that it should be all elasticity and no
gravitation; but at least enough elasticity to preserve natural form and
independent being.
_Ellesmere_. I think it would have been better if you had turned the
essay another way, and instead of making it on conformity, had made it on
interference. That is the greater mischief and the greater folly, I
think. Why do people unreasonably conform? Because they feel
unreasonable interference. War, I say, is interference on a small scale
compared with the interference of private life. Then the absurdity on
which it proceeds; that men are all alike, or that it is desirable that
they should be; and that what is good for one is good for all.
_Dunsford_. I must say, I think, Milverton, you do not give enough
credit for sympathy, good-nature, and humility as material elements in
the conformity of the world.
_Ellesmere_. I am not afraid, my dear Dunsford, of the essay doing much
harm. There is a power of sleepy conformity in the world. You may just
startle your conformists for a minute, but they gravitate into their old
way very soon. You talk of their humility, Dunsford, but I have heard
people who have conformed to opinions, without a pretence of
investigation, as arrogant and intolerant towards anybody who differed
from them, as if they stood upon a pinnacle of independent sagacity and
research.
_Dunsford_. One never knows, Ellesmere, on which side you are. I
thought you were on mine a minute or two ago; and now you come down upon
me with more than Milverton’s anti-conforming spirit.
_Ellesmere_. The greatest mischief, as I take it, of this slavish
conformity, is in the reticence it creates. People will be, what are
called, intimate friends, and yet no real interchange of opinion takes
place between them. A man keeps his doubts, his difficulties, and his
peculiar opinions to himself. He is afraid of letting anybody know that
he does not exactly agree with the world’s theories on all points. There
is no telling the hindrance that this is to truth.
_Milverton_. A great cause of this, Ellesmere, is in the little reliance
you can have on any man’s secrecy. A man finds that what, in the heat of
discussion, and in the perfect carelessness of friendship, he has said to
his friend, is quoted to people whom he would never have said it to;
knowing that it would be sure to be misunderstood, or half-understood, by
them. And so he grows cautious; and is very loth to communicate to
anybody his more cherished opinions, unless they fall in exactly with the
stream. Added to which, I think there is in these times less than there
ever was of a proselytising spirit; and people are content to keep their
opinions to themselves—more perhaps from indifference than from fear.
_Ellesmere_. Yes, I agree with you.
By the way, I think your taking dress as an illustration of extreme
conformity is not bad. Really it is wonderful the degree of square and
dull hideousness to which, in the process of time and tailoring, and by
severe conformity, the human creature’s outward appearance has arrived.
Look at a crowd of men from a height, what an ugly set of ants they
appear! Myself, when I see an Eastern man, one of the people attached to
their embassies, sweeping by us in something flowing and stately, I feel
inclined to take off my hat to him (only that I think the hat might
frighten him), and say, Here is a great, unhatted, uncravated, bearded
man, not a creature clipt and twisted and tortured into tailorhood.
_Dunsford_. Ellesmere broke in upon me just now, so that I did not say
all that I meant to say. But, Milverton, what would you admit that we
are to conform to? In silencing the general voice, may we not give too
much opportunity to our own headstrong suggestions, and to wilful
licence?
_Milverton_. Yes: to be somewhat deaf to the din of the world may be no
gain, even loss, if then we only listen more to the worst part of
ourselves; but in itself it is a good thing to silence that din. It is
at least a beginning of good. If anything good is then gained, it is not
a sheepish tendency, but an independent resolve growing out of our
nature. And, after all, when we talk of non-conformity, it may only be
that we non-conform to the immediate sect of thought or action about us,
to conform to a much wider thing in human nature.
_Ellesmere_. Ah me! how one wants a moral essayist always at hand to
enable one to make use of moral essays.
_Milverton_. Your rules of law are grand things—the proverbs of justice;
yet has not each case its specialities, requiring to be argued with much
circumstance, and capable of different interpretations? Words cannot be
made into men.
_Dunsford_. I wonder you answer his sneers, Milverton.
_Ellesmere_. I must go and see whether words cannot be made into
guineas: and then guineas into men is an easy thing. These trains will
not wait even for critics, so, for the present, good-bye.