Our readers and those of _The Galaxy_ are familiar with the
controversy between Dr. Fitzedward Hall and Mr. Grant White
(November, 1873). When one comes to inquire what it was all about,
and why Mr. White was led to consider Dr. Hall a "yahoo of
literature," and "a man born without a sense of decency," one finds
himself engaged in an investigation of great difficulty, but of
considerable interest. The controversy between these two gentlemen
by no means brings up the problem for the first time. That verbal
criticism, such as Mr. White has been producing for some time back,
is sure to end, sooner or later, in one or more savage quarrels, is
one of the most familiar facts of the literary life of our day.
Indeed, so far as our observation has gone, the rule has no
exceptions. Whenever we see a gentleman, no matter how great his
accomplishments or sweet his temper, announcing that he is about to
write articles or deliver lectures on "Words and their Uses," or on
the "English of Every-day Life," or on "Familiar Faults of
Conversation," or "Newspaper English," or any cognate theme, we feel
all but certain that we shall soon see him engaged in an encounter
with another laborer in the same field, in which all dignity will be
laid aside, and in which, figuratively speaking, clothes, hair, and
features will suffer terribly, and out of which, unless he is very
lucky, he will issue with the gravest imputations resting on his
character in every relation of life.
Now why is it that attempts to get one's fellow-men to talk
correctly, to frame their sentences in accordance with good usage,
and take their words from the best authors, have this tendency to
arouse some of the worst passions of our nature, and predispose even
eminent philologists--men of dainty language, and soft manners, and
lofty aims--to assail each other in the rough vernacular of the
fish-market and the forecastle? A careless observer will be apt to
say that it is an ordinary result of disputation; that when men
differ or argue on any subject they are apt to get angry and indulge
in "personalities." But this is not true. Lawyers, for instance,
live by controversy, and their controversies touch interests of the
gravest and most delicate character--such as fortune and reputation;
and yet the spectacle of two lawyers abusing each other in cold
blood, in print, is almost unknown. Currency and banking are, at
certain seasons, subjects of absorbing interest, and, for the last
seventy years, the discussions over them have been numerous and
voluminous almost beyond example, and yet we remember no case in
which a bullionist called a paper-money man bad names, or in which a
friend of free banking accused a restrictionist of defrauding the
poor or defacing tombstones. Politics, too, home and foreign, is a
fertile source of difference of opinion; and yet gross abuse, on
paper, of each other, by political disputants, discussing abstract
questions having no present relation to power or pay, are very rare
indeed.
It seems, at first blush, as if an examination of the well-known
_odium theologicum_, or the traditional bitterness which has been
apt to characterize controversies about points of doctrine, from the
Middle Ages down to a period within our own memory, would throw some
light on the matter. But a little consideration will show that
there are special causes for the rancor of theologians for which
word-criticism has no parallel. The _odium theologicum_ was the
natural and inevitable result of the general belief that the holding
of certain opinions was necessary to salvation, and that the
formation of opinions could be wholly regulated by the will. This
belief, pushed to its extreme limits and embodied in legislation,
led to the burning of heretics in nearly all Christian countries.
When B's failure to adopt A's conclusions was by A regarded as a
sign of depravity of nature which, would lead to B's damnation,
nothing was more natural than that when they came into collision in
pamphlets or sermons they should have attributed to each other the
worst motives. A man who was deliberately getting himself ready for
perdition was not a person to whom anybody owed courtesy or
consideration, or whose arguments, being probably supplied by Satan,
deserved respectful examination. We accordingly find that as the
list of "essential" opinions has become shortened, and as doubts as
to men's responsibility for their opinions have made their way from
the world into the church, theological controversy has lost its
acrimony and indeed has almost ceased. No theologian of high
standing or character now permits himself to show bad temper in a
doctrinal or hermeneutical discussion, and a large and increasing
proportion of theologians acknowledge that the road to heaven is so
hard for us all that the less quarrelling and jostling there is in
it, the better for everybody.
Nor does the _odium scientificum_, of which we have now happily but
occasional manifestations, furnish us with any suggestions.
Controversy between scientific men begins to be bitter and frequent,
as the field of investigation grows wider and the investigation
itself grows deeper. But then this is easily accounted for.
All scientific men of the first rank are engaged in original
research--that is, in attempts to discover laws and phenomena
previously unknown. The workers in all departments are very
numerous, and are scattered over various countries, and as one
discovery, however slight, is very apt to help in some degree in the
making of another, scientific men are constantly exposed to having
their claims to originality contested, either as regards priority in
point of time or as regards completeness. Consequently, they may be
said to stand in delicate relations to each other, and are more than
usually sensitive about the recognition of their achievements by
their brethren--a state of things which, while it cultivates a very
nice sense of honor, leads occasionally to encounters in which
free-will seems for the moment to get the better of law. The
differences of the scientific world, too, are complicated by the
theological bearing of a good deal of scientific discovery and
discussion, and many a scientific man finds himself either compelled
to defend himself against theologians, or to aid theologians in
bringing an erring brother to reason.
The true source of the _odium philologicum_ is, we think, to be
found in the fact that a man's speech is apt to be, or to be
considered, an indication of the manner in which he has been bred,
and of the character of the company he keeps. Criticism of his mode
of using words, or his pronunciation, or the manner in which he
compounds his sentences, almost inevitably takes the character of an
attack on his birth, parentage, education, and social position; or,
in other words, on everything which he feels most sensitive about or
holds most dear. If you say that his pronunciation is bad, or that
his language is slangy or ill-chosen, you insinuate that when he
lived at home with his papa and mamma he was surrounded by bad
models, or, in plain English, that his parents were vulgar or
ignorant people; when you say that he writes bad grammar, or is
guilty of glaring solecisms, or displays want of etymological
knowledge, you insinuate that his education was neglected, or that
he has not associated with correct speakers. Usually, too, you do
all this in the most provoking way by selecting passages from his
writings on which he probably prided himself, and separating them
totally from the thought of which he was full when he produced them,
and then examining them mechanically, as if they were algebraic
signs, which he used without knowing what they meant or where they
would bring him out. Nobody stands this process very long with
equanimity, because nobody can be subjected to it without being
presented to the public somewhat in the light of an ignorant,
careless, and pretentious donkey. Nor will it do to cite your
examples from deceased authors. You cannot do so without assailing
some form of expression which an eager, listening enemy is himself
in the habit of using, and is waiting for you to take up, and
through which he hopes to bring you to shame.
No man, moreover, can perform the process without taking on airs
which rouse his victim to madness, because he assumes a position not
only of grammatical, but, as we have said, of social superiority. He
says plainly enough, no matter how polite or scientific he may try
to seem, "I was better born and bred than you, and acquired these
correct turns of expression, of which you know nothing, from
cultivated relatives;" or, "I live in cultivated circles, and am
consequently familiar with the best usage, which you, poor fellow!
are not. I am therefore able to decide this matter without argument
or citations, and your best course is to take my corrections in
silence or with thankfulness." It is easy to understand how all
interest in orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody speedily
disappears in a controversy of this sort, and how the disputants
begin to burn with mutual dislike, and how each longs to inflict
pain and anguish on his opponent, and make him, no matter by what
means, an object of popular pity and contempt, and make his parts of
speech odious and ridiculous. The influence of all good men ought to
be directed either to repressing verbal criticism, or restricting
indulgence in it to the family circle or to schools and colleges.