IT is difficult for one nation to perfectly understand another, and
there is a certain quality of the Scots' intellect which is apt to try
the patience of an Englishman. It is said that an Englishman was once
so exasperated by the arguing by a Scot, who took the opposite side on
every subject from the weather to politics, that at last he cried out in
despair: “You will admit at least that two and two make four,” to which
the delighted Scot replied with celerity, “I'll admit naething, but I'm
willing to argue the proposition.” It is not recorded whether the Scot
escaped alive, but it is hardly possible to believe that he was not
assaulted. You may be the most conciliatory of people, and may even be
cleansed from all positive opinions--one of those people who are said to
be agreeable because they agree with everybody; and yet a thoroughbred
Scot will in ten minutes or less have you into a tangle of prickly
arguments, and hold you at his mercy, although afterwards you cannot
remember how you were drawn from the main road into the bramble patch,
and you are sure that the only result was the destruction of your peace
of mind for an afternoon. But the Scot enjoyed himself immensely, and
goes on with keen zest to ambush some other passenger. What evil
spirit of logic has possessed this race? an English person cannot
help complaining, and why should any person find his pleasure in wordy
debate?
From his side of the Tweed and of human nature the Scot is puzzled and
pained by the inconsequence and opportunism of the English mind. After
a Scot, for instance, has proved to his Southern opponent that some
institution is absolutely illogical, that it ought never to have
existed, and ought at once to be abolished, and after the Scot pursuing
his victorious way of pure reason, has almost persuaded himself that
a thing so absurd never has existed, the Englishman, who has been
very much bored by the elaborate argument, will ask with a monstrous
callousness whether the institution does not work well, and put forward
with brazen effrontery the plea that if an institution works well, it
does not matter whether it be logical or not. Then it is that a Scot
will look at an Englishman in mournful silence and wonder upon what
principle he was created.
The traveller no sooner crosses the border from the genial and
irresponsible South than he finds himself in a land where a nation forms
one huge debating society, and there is a note of interrogation in the
very accent of speech. When an English tourist asked his driver what
was the reason of so many religious denominations in Scotland, and the
driver, looking down upon a village with six different kirks, answered,
“Juist bad temper, naething else,” he was indulging his cynicism and
knew very well that he was misinforming the stranger.
While it is absolutely impossible to make plain to an average Englishman
the difference between one kirk and another in Scotland, yet every one
has its own logical basis, and indeed when one considers the subtlety
and restlessness of the Scots intellect he wonders, not that there
have been so many divisions, but that there have been so few in Scots
religion. By preference a Scot discusses Theology, because it is the
deepest subject and gives him the widest sphere for his dialectic
powers, but in default of Theology he is ready to discuss anything else,
from the Game Laws to the character of Mary, Queen of Scots. He is the
guardian of correct speech and will not allow any inaccuracy to pass,
and therefore you never know when in the hurry of life you may not
be caught and rebuked. When I asked a porter in Stirling Station one
afternoon at what hour the train for Aberfoyle left I made a mistake
of which I speedily repented. _The_ train for Aberfoyle--I had assumed
there was only one train that afternoon, for this beautiful but remote
little place. Very good, that was then the position I had taken up and
must defend. The porter licked his lips with anticipation of victory,
for he held another view. “_The_ train for Aberfoyle,” he repeated
triumphantly. “Whatna train div ye mean?”--then severely as one exposing
a hasty assumption--“there's a train at 3.10, there's another at 3.60,
there's another at 6.30” (or some such hours). He challenged me to reply
or withdraw, and his voice was ringing with controversy. When I made an
abject surrender he was not satisfied, but pursued me and gained another
victory. “Very good,” I said, “then what train should I take?” He was
now regarding me with something like contempt, an adversary whom it was
hardly worth fighting with. That depended on circumstances he did not
know and purposes which I had not told him. He could only pity me. “How
can I tell,” he said, “what train ye should go by, ye can go by ony
train that suits ye, but yir luggage, being booked through, will travel
by the 3.10.” During our conversation my portmanteau which I had placed
under his charge was twice removed from its barrow in the shifting of
the luggage, and as my friend watched its goings (without interfering)
he relaxed from his intellectual severity and allowed himself a jest
suitable to my capacity. “That's a lively portmanteau o' yours. I'm
judging that if ye set it on the road it would go Aberfoyle itsel'.”
When we parted on a basis of free silver he still implied a reproach,
“so ye did conclude to go by the 3.10, but” (showing how poor were my
reasoning faculties even after I had used them) “ye would have been as
soon by the 3.50.” For a sustained and satisfying bout of argument one
must visit a Scot in his home and have an evening to spare. Was it not
Carlyle's father who wrote to Tom that a man had come to the village
with a fine ability for argument, and that he only wished his son were
with them and then he would set Tom on one side of the table and this
man on the other place, and “a proposeetion” between them, and hear them
argue for the night? But one may get pleasant glimpses of the national
sport on railway journeys and by the roadside. A farmer came into the
carriage one summer afternoon, as I was travelling through Ayrshire, who
had been attending market and had evidently dined. He had attended to
the lighter affairs of life in the sale of stock and the buying of a
reaping machine, and now he was ready for the more serious business of
theological discussion. He examined me curiously but did not judge
me worthy, and after one or two remarks on the weather with which I
hastened to agree, he fell into a regretful silence as of one losing
his time. Next station a minister entered, and the moment my
fellow-passenger saw the white tie his eyes glistened, and in about
three minutes they were actively engaged, the farmer and the Minister,
discussing the doctrine of justification. The Minister, as in duty
bound, took the side of justification by faith, and the farmer, simply I
suppose to make debate and certainly with a noble disregard of personal
interests--for he had evidently dined--took the side of works. Perhaps
it may seem as if it was an unequal match between the Minister and the
farmer, since the one was a professional scholar and the other a
rustic amateur. But the difference was not so great as a stranger might
imagine, for if a minister be as it were a theological specialist every
man in Scotland is a general practitioner. And if the latter had his
own difficulties in pronouncing words he was always right in the text
he intended. They conducted their controversy with much ability till we
came to the farmer's station, and then he left still arguing, and with
my last glimpse of that admirable Scot he was steadying himself against
a post at the extremity of the platform, and this was his final
fling: “I grant ye Paul and the Romans, but I take my stand on James.”
Wonderful country where the farmers, even after they have dined, take
to theology as a pastime. What could that man not have done before he
dined.
In earlier days, the far back days of youth, I knew a rustic whose
square and thick-set figure was a picture of his sturdy and indomitable
mind. He was slow of speech and slow also of mind, but what he knew he
held with the grip of a vice and he would yield nothing in conversation.
If you said it was raining (when it might be pouring) he would reply
that it was showery. If you declared a field of com to be fine he said
that he had seen “waur” (worse), and if you praised a sermon he
granted that it wasna bad; and in referring to a minister distinguished
throughout the land for his saintliness he volunteered the judgment that
there was “naething positively veecious in him.” Many a time did I try,
sometimes to browbeat him, and sometimes to beguile him into a positive
statement and to get him to take up a position from which he could
not withdraw. I was always beaten, and yet once I was within an ace of
success. We had bought a horse on the strength of a good character
from a dealer, and were learning the vanity of speech in all horse
transactions, for there was nothing that beast did not do of the things
no horse ought to do, and one morning after it had tried to get at James
with its hind legs, and then tried to bring him down with its fore legs,
had done its best to bite him, and also manoeuvred to crush him against
a wall, I hazarded the suggestion that our new purchase was a vicious
brute. He caught the note of assurance in my voice, and saw that he had
been trapped; he cast an almost pathetic look at me as if I was inviting
him to deny his national character and betray a historic part of
unbroken resistance. He hesitated and looked for a way of escape while
he skilfully warded off another attack, this time with the teeth, and
his face brightened. “Na!” he replied, “I'll no admit that the horse
is veecious, we maun hae more experience o' him afore we can pass sic a
judgment, but”--and now he just escaped a playful tap from the horse's
fore-leg--“I'm prepared to admit that this momin' he is a wee thingie
liteegious.” And so victory was snatched from my hand, and I was again
worsted.
If the endless arguing of the Scot be wearisome to strangers and one
would guess is a burden to himself, yet it has its advantages. It has
been a discipline for the Scots mind, and the endless disputations on
doctrine and kirks as well as more trifling matters like history and
politics has toughened the Scots brain and brought it to a fine edge.
When I hear a successful Scot speak lightly of the Shorter Catechism,
then I am amazed and tempted to despise him, for it was by that means
that he was sent forth so acute and enterprising a man, and any fortune
he has made he owes to its training. He has been trained to think and
to reason, to separate what is true from what is false, to use the
principles of speech and test the subtlest meaning of words, and
therefore, if he be in business, he is a banker by preference, because
that is the science of commerce, and if he be an artizan, he becomes an
engineer because that is the most skilful trade, and as a doctor he is
spread all over the world. Wherever hard thinking and a determined will
tell in the world's work this self-reliant and uncompromising man is
sure to succeed, and if his mind has not the geniality and flexibility
of the English, if it secretly hates the English principle of
compromise, and suspects the English standard of commonsense, if it be
too unbending and even unreasonably logical, this only proves that no
one nation, not even the Scots, can possess the whole earth.