"Now as they walked together, the guide asked the old gentleman if he
did not know one Mr. Fearing that came on a pilgrimage out of his
parts?
"_Honest_. Yes, very well, said he. He was a man that had the root of
the matter in him, but he was one of the most troublesome pilgrims that
ever I met in all my days.
"_Great Heart_. Why, he was always afraid he should come short of
whither he had a desire to go. Everything frightened him that he heard
anybody speak of that had but the least appearance of opposition in it.
I hear that he lay roaring in the Slough of Despond for about a month
together.... Well, after he had lain in the Slough of Despond a great
while, as I have told you, one sunshine morning, I do not know how, he
ventured and so got over; but when he was over he would scarce believe
it. He had, I believe, a Slough of Despond in his mind, a slough he
carried everywhere with him.... When he came to the Hill Difficulty he
made no stick at that; nor did he much fear the lions; for you must know
his trouble was not about such things as those.... When he was come at
Vanity Fair, I thought he would have fought with all the men at the
fair.... He was a man of choice spirit though he kept himself very low."
Poor Mr. Fearing. We all have been made uncomfortable by him. But we
love Bunyan for that touch about the lions, for we know it is true. Easy
things go hard with Mr. Fearing; but give him something difficult, like
going up San Juan hill in the face of a withering fire, and Mr. Fearing
can keep up with the best Rough Rider of them all. It takes Mr. Great
Heart to do justice to Mr. Fearing.
It is the mission of a kindly humor to take a person full of foibles and
weaknesses and suddenly to reveal his unsuspected nobleness. And there
is considerable room for this kind of treatment; for there are a great
many lovable people whose virtues are not chronic, but sporadic. These
virtues grow up, one knows not how, without visible means of support in
the general character, and in defiance of moral science; and yet it is a
real pleasure to see them.
There are two very different kinds of humor. One we naturally describe
as a flavor, the other as an atmosphere. We speak of the flavor of the
essays of Charles Lamb. It is a discovery we make very much as Bobo made
the discovery of roast pig. The mind of Charles Lamb was like a
capacious kettle hanging from the crane in the fireplace; all sorts of
savory ingredients were thrown into it, and the whole was kept gently
simmering, but never allowed to come to the boil.
Lamb says, "C. declares that a man cannot have a good conscience who
refuses apple dumpling, and I confess that I am of the same opinion." I
am inclined to pass that kind of judgment on the person who does not
have a comfortable feeling of satisfaction in reading for the twentieth
time The Complaint on the Decay of Beggars, and the Praise of Chimney
Sweepers.
Charles Lamb is not jocose. He likes to theorize. Now, your prosaic
theorist has a very laborious task. He tries to get all the facts under
one formula. This is very ticklish business. It is like the game of Pigs
in Clover. He gets all the facts but one into the inner circle. By a
dexterous thrust he gets that one in, and the rest are out.
Lamb is a philosopher who does not have this trouble. He does not try to
fit all the facts to one theory. That seems to him too economical, when
theories are so cheap. With large-hearted generosity he provides a
theory for every fact. He clothes the ragged exception with all the
decent habiliments of a universal law. He picks up a little ragamuffin
of a fact, and warms its heart and points out its great relations. He is
not afraid of generalizing from insufficient data; he has the art of
making a delightful summer out of a single swallow. When we turn to the
essay on the Melancholy of Tailors, we do not think of asking for
statistics. If one tailor was melancholy, that was enough to justify the
generalization. When we find a tailor who is not melancholy, it will be
time to make another theory to fit his case.
This is the charm of Lamb's letter to the gentleman who inquired
"whether a person at the age of sixty-three, with no more proficiency
than a tolerable knowledge of most of the characters of the English
alphabet amounts to, by dint of persevering application and good
masters, may hope to arrive within a presumable number of years at that
degree of attainment that would entitle the possessor to the character
of a _learned man_." The answer is candid, serious, and exhaustive. No
false hopes are encouraged. The difficulties are plainly set forth.
"However," it is said, "where all cannot be compassed, much may be
accomplished; but I must not, in fairness, conceal from you that you
have much to do." The question is thoroughly discussed as to whether it
would be well for him to enter a primary school. "You say that you stand
in need of emulation; that this incitement is nowhere to be had but in
the public school. But have you considered the nature of the emulation
belonging to those of tender years which you would come in competition
with?"
Do you think these dissertations a waste of time? If you do, it is
sufficient evidence that you sadly need them; for they are the antitoxin
to counteract the bacillus of pedantry. Were I appointed by the school
board to consider the applicants for teachers' certificates, after they
had passed the examination in the arts and sciences, I should subject
them to a more rigid test. I should hand each candidate Lamb's essays on
The Old and New Schoolmaster and on Imperfect Sympathies. I should make
him read them to himself, while I sat by and watched. If his countenance
never relaxed, as if he were inwardly saying, "That's so," I should
withhold the certificate. I should not consider him a fit person to have
charge of innocent youth.
Just as we naturally speak of the flavor of Charles Lamb, so we speak of
the atmosphere of Cervantes or of Fielding. We are out of doors in the
sunshine. All sorts of people are doing all sorts of things in all sorts
of ways; and we are glad that we are there to see them. It is one of the
"charmed days
When the Genius of God doth flow;
The wind may alter twenty ways
But a tempest cannot blow."
On such days it doesn't matter what happens. We are not "under the
weather," but consciously superior to it. We are in no mood to grumble
over mishaps,--the more the merrier. The master of the revels has made
the brave announcement that his programme shall be carried out "rain or
shine," and henceforth we have no anxieties.
This diffused good-humor can only come from a mind which is free from
any taint of morbidness. It is that merry-heartedness that "doth good
like medicine." It is an overflowing friendliness, which brings a
laughter that is without scorn.
This kind of humor is possible only among persons who are thoroughly
congenial, and who take mutual good-will for granted. It is for this
reason that it is so difficult to translate it or to carry it from one
community to another. It is customary for every nation to bring the
accusation against foreigners that they are destitute of the sense of
humor. Even peoples so near akin as the English and Americans cherish
such suspicions. The American is likely to feel that his English friends
do not receive his pleasantries with that punctuality which is the
politeness of kings. They are conscientious enough and eventually do the
right thing; but procrastination is the thief of wit as well as of time.
But we, on our side, are equally slow, and Mr. Punch often causes
anxious thoughts.
The real difficulty is not in understanding what is said but in
appreciating that which should be taken for granted. The stranger does
not see the serious background of sober thought and genuine admiration,
into which the amusing figures suddenly intrude. The frontiersman would
see no point in a story that might delight a common room in Oxford. What
if a bishop did act in an undignified manner or commit a blunder? Why
shouldn't he--like the rest of us? To enjoy his foibles one must first
have a realizing sense of what a great man a bishop is, and how
surprising it is that, now and then, he should step down from his
pedestal.
On the other hand, the real humor of the frontier is missed by one who
has not learned to take seriously the frontiersman's life and who has
not entered into his habitual point of view.
Dickens is an example of the way in which a man's humor is limited to
the sphere of his sympathies. How genial is the atmosphere which
surrounds Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Sam Weller! Whatever they do, they can
never go wrong. But when we turn to the "American Notes" or to the
American part of "Martin Chuzzlewit," we are conscious of a difference.
There is no atmosphere to relieve the dreariness. Mr. Jefferson Brick is
not amusing; he is odious. The people on the Ohio River steamer do not
make us smile by their absurdities. Dickens lets us see how he despises
them all. He is fretful and peevish. He fails utterly to catch the
humor of the frontier. He is unable to follow out the hint which Mark
Tapley gave when, looking over the dreary waste of Eden on the
Mississippi, he said apologetically, "Eden ain't all built yet."
To an Englishman that does not mean much, but to an American it is
wonderfully appealing. Martin Chuzzlewit saw only the ignominious
contrast between the prospectus and the present reality. Eden was a
vulgar fraud, and that was the whole of it. The American, with
invincible optimism, looking upon the same scene, sees something more!
He smiles, perhaps, a little cynically at the incongruity between the
prospectus and the present development, and then his fancy chuckles at
what his fancy sees in the future. "Eden ain't all built yet,"--that's a
fact. But just think what Eden will be when it is all built!
* * * * *
By the way, there is one particularly good thing about the atmosphere;
it prevents our being hit by meteors. The meteor, when it strikes the
upper air, usually ignites, and that is the end of it. There are some
minds that have not enough atmosphere to protect them. They are pelted
continually; whatever is unpleasant comes to them in solid chunks. There
are others more fortunately surrounded, who escape this impact. All that
is seen is a flash in the upper air. They are none the worse for passing
through a meteoric shower of petty misfortunes.
The mind that is surrounded by an atmosphere of humorous suggestiveness
is also favored in its outlook upon the shortcomings of mankind. Their
angularities are softened and become less uniformly unpleasing. That
fine old English divine, Dr. South, has a sermon in which he defends the
thesis that it is a greater guilt to enjoy the contemplation of our
neighbor's sins than to commit the same offences in our proper persons.
That seems to me to be very hard doctrine. I am inclined to make a
distinction. There are some faults which ought to be taken seriously at
all times, but there are others which the neighbors should be allowed to
enjoy, if they can.
Indeed, it is the genuine reformer who is seeking to right great wrongs
who most needs the capacity to distinguish between grave evils and
peccadillos. A measure of good-humored tolerance for human weakness is a
part of his equipment for effective work. Lacking in this, he is doomed
to perpetual irritation and disappointment. He mistakes friends for foes
and wages a losing battle. He is likely to be the victim of a moral
egoism which distorts the facts of experience and confuses his personal
whims with his disinterested purposes. His great ideal is lost sight of
in some petty strife. Above all, he loses the power of endurance in the
time of partial failure.
The contest of wits between the inventors of projectiles and the makers
of armor plate seemed at one time settled by Harvey's process for
rendering the surface of the resisting steel so hard that the missiles
hurled against it were shattered. The answer of the gun-makers was made
by attaching a tip of softer metal to the shell. The soft tip received
the first shock of the impact, and it was found that the penetrating
power of the shell was increased enormously. The scientific explanation
I have forgotten. I may, however, hazard an anthropomorphic
explanation. If there is any human nature in the atoms of steel, I can
see a great advantage in having the softer particles go before the hard,
to have a momentary yielding before the inevitable crash. When they are
hurtling through the air, tense and strained by the initial velocity
till it seems that they must fly apart, it is a great thing to have a
group of good-humored, happy-go-lucky atoms in the front, who call out
cheerily: "Come along, boys! Don't take it too hard; we're in for it."
And sure enough, before they have time to fall apart they are in. Those
whose thoughts and purposes have most penetrated the hard prejudices of
their time have learned this lesson.
Your unhumorous reformer, with painful intensity of moral
self-consciousness, cries out:--
"The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!"
He takes himself and his cause always with equal seriousness. He hurls
himself against the accumulated wrongs and the invincible ignorance of
the world, and there is a great crash; but somehow, the world seems to
survive the shock better than he does. It is a tough old world, and
bears a great deal of pounding. Indeed, it has been pounded so much and
so long that it has become quite solid.
Now and then, however, there comes along a reformer whose zeal is tipped
with humor. His thought penetrates where another man's is only
shattered. That is what made Luther so effective. He struck heavy blows
at the idols men adored. But he was such a genial, whole-souled
iconoclast that those who were most shocked at him could not help liking
him--between times. He would give a smashing blow at the idol, and then
a warm hand grasp and a hearty "God bless you" to the idolater; and then
idolater and iconoclast would be down on the floor together, trying to
see if there were any pieces of the idol worth saving. It was all so
unexpected and so incongruous and so shocking, and yet so unaffectedly
religious and so surprisingly the right thing to do, that the upshot of
it all was that people went away saying, "Dr. Martin isn't such a bad
fellow, after all."
Luther's "Table Talk" penetrated circles which were well protected
against his theological treatises. Men were conscious of a good humor
even in his invective; for he usually gave them time to see the kindly
twinkle in his eye before he knocked them down.
In order to engage Karlstadt in a controversy, Luther drew out a florin
from his pocket and cried heartily, "Take it! Attack me boldly!"
Karlstadt took it, put it in his purse, and gave it to Luther. Luther
then drank to his health. Then Karlstadt pledged Luther. Then Luther
said, "The more violent your attacks, the more I shall be delighted."
Then they gave each other their hands and parted. One can almost be
reconciled to theological controversy, when it is conducted in a manner
so truly sportsmanlike.
Luther had a way of characterizing a person in a sentence, that was much
more effective than his labored vituperation (in which, it must be
confessed, he was a master). Thus, speaking of the attitude of Erasmus,
he said, "Erasmus stands looking at creation like a calf at a new door."
It was very unjust to Erasmus, and yet the picture sticks in the mind;
for it is such a perfect characterization of the kind of mind that we
are all acquainted with, which looks at the marvels of creation with the
wide-eyed gaze of bovine youthfulness, curious, not to know how that
door came there, but only to know whether it leads to something to eat.
The humor of Luther suggests that of Abraham Lincoln. Both were men of
the people, and their humor had a flavor of the soil. They were alike
capable of deep dejection, but each found relief in spontaneous
laughter. The surprise of the grave statesman when Lincoln would preface
a discussion with a homely anecdote of the frontier was of the same kind
felt by the sixteenth-century theologians when Luther turned aside from
his great arguments, which startled Europe, to tell a merry tale in
ridicule of the pretensions of the monks.
If I were to speak of the humorist as a philosopher, some of the gravest
of the philosophers would at once protest. Humor, they say, has no place
in their philosophy; and they are quite right. Indeed, it is doubtful if
a humorist would ever make a good, systematic philosopher. He is a
modest person. He is only a gleaner following the reapers; but he
manages to pick up a great many grains of wisdom which they overlook.
Dante pictures the sages of antiquity as forever walking on a verdant
mead, "with eyes slow and grave, and with great authority in their
looks;" as if, in the other world, they were continually oppressed by
the wisdom they had acquired in this. But I can imagine a gathering of
philosophers in a different fashion. Gravely they have come, each
bearing his ponderous volume, in which he has explained the universe and
settled the destiny of mankind. Then, suddenly, in contrast with their
theories, the reality is disclosed. The incorrigible pedants and
dogmatists turn away in sullen disappointment; but from all true lovers
of wisdom there arises a peal of mellow laughter, as each one realizes
the enormous incongruity between what he knew and what he thought he
knew.
The discovery that things are not always as they seem is one that some
people make in this world. They get a glimpse of something that is going
on behind the scenes, and their smile is very disconcerting to the sober
spectators around them.
Sometimes it is the bitter smile of disillusion. Matthew Arnold wrote of
Heine:--
"The Spirit of the world,
Beholding the absurdity of men,--
Their vaunts, their feats,--let a sardonic smile,
For one short moment, wander o'er his lips.
That smile was Heine."
But there is another kind of smile evoked by the incongruity between the
appearance and the reality. It is the smile that comes when behind some
mask that had affrighted us we recognize a familiar and friendly face.
There is a smile which is not one of disillusion. There is a philosophy
which is dissolved in humor. The wise man sees the incongruities
involved in the very nature of things. They are the result of the free
play of various forces. To his quick insight the actual world is no more
like the formal descriptions of it than the successive attitudes of a
galloping horse are like the pose of an equestrian statue. His mind
catches instantaneous views of this world as its elements are
continually dissolving and recombining. It is all very surprising, and
he smiles as he sees how much better they turn out than might be
expected.
"Sad-eyed Fakirs swiftly say
Endless dirges to decay.
* * * * *
And yet it seemeth not to me
That the high gods love tragedy;
For Saadi sat in the sun.
* * * * *
Sunshine in his heart transferred,
Lighted each transparent word.
* * * * *
And thus to Saadi said the Muse:
'Eat thou the bread which men refuse;
Flee from the goods which from thee flee;
Seek nothing,--Fortune seeketh thee.
* * * * *
On thine orchard's edge belong
All the brags of plume and song.
* * * * *
Nor scour the seas, nor sift mankind,
A poet or a friend to find:
Behold, he watches at the door!
Behold his shadow on the floor!'"
In the book of Proverbs, Wisdom says, "I, Wisdom, dwell with Prudence."
But there is another member of the household. It is Humor, sister of
serene Wisdom and of the heavenly Prudence. She does not often laugh,
and when she does it is mostly at her sister Wisdom, who cannot long
resist the infection. There is not one set smile upon her face, as if
she contemplated an altogether amusing world. The smiles that come and
go are shy, elusive things, but they cannot remain long in hiding.
Wisdom, from her high house, takes wide views, and Prudence peers
anxiously into the future; but gentle Humor loves to take short views;
she delights in homely things, and continually finds surprises in that
which is most familiar. Wisdom goes on laborious journeys, and comes
home bringing her treasures from afar; and Humor matches them, every
one, with what she has found in the dooryard.