The other day I was walking along a road at Cambridge, engulfed in a
torrent of cloth-capped and coated young men all flowing one way--going
to see or, as it is now called, to "watch" a match. We met a little
girl walking with her governess in the opposite direction. There was a
baleful light of intellect in the child's eye, and a preponderance of
forehead combined with a certain lankness of hair betrayed, I fancy,
an ingenuous academical origin. The girl was looking round her with an
unholy sense of superiority, and as we passed she said to her governess
in a clear-cut, complacent tone, "We're quite exceptional, aren't we?"
To which the governess replied briskly, "Laura, don't be ridiculous!"
To which exhortation Laura replied with self-satisfied pertinacity, "No,
but we ARE exceptional, aren't we?"
Ah, Miss Laura, I thought to myself, you are one of those people with
a dramatic sense of your own importance. It will probably make you very
happy, and an absolutely insufferable person! I have little doubt that
the tiny prig was saying to herself, "I dare say that all these men are
wondering who is the clever-looking little girl who is walking in the
opposite direction to the match, and has probably something better to
do than look on at matches." It is a great question whether one ought to
wish people to nourish illusions about themselves, or whether one ought
to desire such illusions to be dispelled. They certainly add immensely
to people's happiness, but on the other hand, if life is an educative
progress, and if the aim of human beings is or ought to be the
attainment of moral perfection, then the sooner that these illusions are
dispelled the better. It is one of the many questions which depend upon
the great fact as to whether our identity is prolonged after death. If
identity is not prolonged, then one would wish people to maintain every
illusion which makes life happier; and there is certainly no illusion
which brings people such supreme and unfailing contentment as the sense
of their own significance in the world. This illusion rises superior to
all failures and disappointments. It makes the smallest and simplest act
seem momentous. The world for such persons is merely a theatre of gazers
in which they discharge their part appropriately and successfully. I
know several people who have the sense very strongly, who are conscious
from morning till night, in all that they do or say, of an admiring
audience; and who, even if their circle is wholly indifferent, find food
for delight in the consciousness of how skilfully and satisfactorily
they discharge their duties. I remember once hearing a worthy clergyman,
of no particular force, begin a speech at a missionary meeting by saying
that people had often asked him what was the secret of his smile; and
that he had always replied that he was unaware that his smile had any
special quality; but that if it indeed was so, and it would be idle
to pretend that a good many people had not noticed it, it was that he
imported a resolute cheerfulness into all that he did. The man, as I
have said, was not in any way distinguished, but there can be no doubt
that the thought of his heavenly smile was a very sustaining one,
and that the sense of responsibility that the possession of such a
characteristic gave him, undoubtedly made him endeavour to smile like
the Cheshire Cat, when he did not feel particularly cheerful.
It is not, however, common to find people make such a frank and candid
confession of their superiority. The feeling is generally kept for more
or less private consumption. The underlying self-satisfaction generally
manifests itself, for instance, with people who have no real illusions,
say, about their personal appearance, in leading them to feel, after a
chance glance at themselves in a mirror, that they really do not look
so bad in certain lights. A dull preacher will repeat to himself, with
a private relish, a sentence out of a very commonplace discourse of his
own, and think that that was really an original thought, and that
he gave it an impressive emphasis; or a student will make a very
unimportant discovery, press it upon the attention of some great
authority on the subject, extort a half-hearted assent, and will then go
about saying, "I mentioned my discovery to Professor A----; he was
quite excited about it, and urged the immediate publication of it." Or
a commonplace woman will give a tea-party, and plume herself upon the
eclat with which it went off. The materials are ready to hand in any
life; the quality is not the same as priggishness, though it is closely
akin to it; it no doubt exists in the minds of many really successful
people, and if it is not flagrantly betrayed, it is often an important
constituent of their success. But the happy part of it is that the
dramatic sense is often freely bestowed upon the most inconspicuous and
unintelligent persons, and fills their lives with a consciousness of
romance and joy. It concerns itself mostly with public appearances, upon
however minute a scale, and thus it is a rich source of consolation and
self-congratulation. Even if it falls upon one who has no social gifts
whatever, whose circle of friends tends to diminish as life goes on,
whose invitations tend to decrease, it still frequently survives in a
consciousness of being profoundly interesting, and consoles itself by
believing that under different circumstances and in a more perceptive
society the fact would have received a wider recognition.
But, after all, as with many things, much depends upon the way that
illusions are cherished. When this dramatic sense is bestowed upon a
heavy-handed, imperceptive, egotistical person, it becomes a terrible
affliction to other people, unless indeed the onlooker possesses the
humorous spectatorial curiosity; when it becomes a matter of delight to
find a person behaving characteristically, striking the hour punctually,
and being, as Mr. Bennet thought of Mr. Collins, fully as absurd as one
had hoped. It then becomes a pleasure, and not necessarily an unkind
one, because it gives the deepest satisfaction to the victim, to tickle
the egotist as one might tickle a trout, to draw him on by innocent
questions, to induce him to unfold and wave his flag high in the air.
I had once a worthy acquaintance whose occasional visits were to me a
source of infinite pleasure--and I may add that I have no doubt that
they gave him a pleasure quite as acute--because he only required the
simplest fly to be dropped on the pool, when he came heavily to the
top and swallowed it. I have heard him deplore the vast size of his
correspondence, the endless claims made upon him for counsel. I have
heard him say with a fatuous smile that there were literally hundreds of
people who day by day brought their pitcher of self-pity to be filled
at his pump of sympathy: that he wished he could have a little rest, but
that he supposed that it was a plain duty for him to minister thus to
human needs, though it took it out of him terribly. I suppose that some
sort of experience must have lain behind this confession, for my friend
was a decidedly moral man, and would not tell a deliberate untruth; the
only difficulty was that I could not conceive where he kept his stores
of sympathy, because I had never heard him speak of any subject except
himself, and I suppose that his method of consolation, if he was
consulted, was to relate some striking instance out of his own
experience in which grace triumphed over nature.
Sometimes, again, the dramatic sense takes the form of an exaggerated
self-depreciation. I was reading the other day the life of a very
devoted clergyman, who said on his death-bed to one standing by him, "If
anything is done in memory of me, let a plain slab be placed on my grave
with my initials and the date, and the words, 'the unworthy priest of
this parish'--that must be all."
The man's modesty was absolutely sincere; yet what a strange confusion
of modesty and vanity after all! If the humility had been PERFECTLY
unaffected, he would have felt that the man who really merited such
a description deserved no memorial at all; or again, if he had had no
sense of credit, he would have left the choice of a memorial to any who
might wish to commemorate him. If one analyses the feeling underneath
the words, it will be seen to consist of a desire to be remembered,
a hope almost amounting to a belief that his work was worthy of
commemoration, coupled with a sincere desire not to exaggerate its
value. And yet silence would have attested his humility far more
effectually than any calculated speech!
The dramatic sense is not a thing which necessarily increases as life
goes on; some people have it from the very beginning. I have an elderly
friend who is engaged on a very special sort of scientific research of
a wholly unimportant kind. He is just as incapable as my sympathetic
friend of talking about anything except his own interests; "You don't
mind my speaking about my work?" he says with a brilliant smile; "you
see it means so much to me." And then, after explaining some highly
technical detail, he will add: "Of course this seems to you very minute,
but it is work that has got to be done by some one; it is only laying a
little stone in the temple of science. Of course I often feel I should
like to spread my wings and take a wider flight, but I do seem to have
a special faculty for this kind of work, and I suppose it is my duty
to stick to it." And he will pass his hand wearily over his brow, and
expound another technical detail. He apologises ceaselessly for dwelling
on his own work; but in no place or company have I ever heard him do
otherwise; and he is certainly one of the happiest people I know.
But, on the other hand, it is a rather charming quality to find in
combination with a certain balance of mind. Unless a man is interesting
to himself he cannot easily be interesting to others; there is a
youthful and ingenuous sense of romance and drama which can exist side
by side with both modesty and sympathy, somewhat akin to the habit
common to imaginative children of telling themselves long stories in
which they are the heroes of the tale. But people who have this faculty
are generally mildly ashamed of it; they do not believe that their
fantastic adventures are likely to happen. They only think how pleasant
it would be if things arranged themselves so. It all depends whether
such dramatisation is looked upon in the light of an amusement, or
whether it is applied in a heavy-handed manner to real life. Imaginative
children, who have true sympathy and affection as well, generally end by
finding the real world, as they grow up into it, such an astonishing and
interesting place, that their horizon extends, and they apply to other
people, to their relationships and meetings, the zest and interest that
they formerly applied only to themselves. The kind of temperament that
falls a helpless victim to dramatic egotism is generally the priggish
and self-satisfied man, who has a fervent belief in his own influence,
and the duty of exercising it on others. Most of us, one may say
gratefully, are kept humble by our failures and even by our sins. If the
path of the transgressor is hard, the path of the righteous man is
often harder. If a man is born free from grosser temptations, vigorous,
active, robust, the chances are ten to one that he falls into the snare
of self-righteousness and moral complacency. He passes judgment
on others, he compares himself favourably with them. A spice of
unpopularity gives him a still more fatal bias, because he thinks that
he is persecuted for his goodness, when he is only disliked for his
superiority. He becomes content to warn people, and if they reject his
advice and get into difficulties, he is not wholly ill-pleased. Whereas
the diffident person, who tremblingly assumes the responsibility for
some one else's life, is beset by miserable regrets if his penitent
escapes him, and attributes it to his own mismanagement. The truth is
that moral indignation is a luxury that very few people can afford to
indulge in. And if it is true that a rich man can with difficulty enter
the kingdom of heaven, it is also true that the dramatic man finds it
still more difficult. He is impervious to criticism, because he bears
it with meekness. He has so good a conscience that he cannot believe
himself in the wrong. If he makes an egregious blunder, he says
to himself with infinite solemnity that it is right that his
self-satisfaction should be tenderly purged away, and glories in his own
humility. A far wholesomer frame of mind is that of the philosopher
who said, when complimented on the mellowness that advancing years had
brought him, that he still reserved to himself the right of damning
things in general. Because the truth is that the things which really
discipline us are the painful, dreary, intolerable things of life, the
results of one's own meanness, stupidity, and weakness, or the black
catastrophes which sometimes overwhelm us, and not the things which we
piously and cheerfully accept as ministering to our consciousness of
worth and virtue.
If I say that the dramatic failing is apt to be more common among the
clergy than among ordinary mortals, it is because the clerical vocation
is one that tempts men who have this temperament strongly developed
to enter it, and afterwards provides a good deal of sustenance to the
particular form of vanity that lies behind the temptation. The
dramatic sense loves public appearances and trappings, processions and
ceremonies. The instinctive dramatist, who is also a clergyman, tends
to think of himself as moving to his place in the sanctuary in a solemn
progress, with a worn spiritual aspect, robed as a son of Aaron. He
likes to picture himself as standing in the pulpit pale with emotion,
his eye gathering fire as he bears witness to the truth or testifies
against sin. He likes to believe that his words and intonations have
a thrilling quality, a fire or a delicacy, as the case may be, which
scorch or penetrate the sin-burdened heart. It may be thought that this
criticism is unduly severe; I do not for a moment say that the attitude
is universal, but it is commoner, I am sure, than one would like
to believe; and neither do I say that it is inconsistent with deep
earnestness and vital seriousness. I would go further, and maintain that
such a dramatic consciousness is a valuable quality for men who have to
sustain at all a spectacular part. It very often lends impressiveness to
a man, and convinces those who hear and see him of his sincerity; while
a man who thinks nothing of appearances often fails to convince his
audience that he cares more for his message than for the fact that he is
the mouthpiece of it. I find it very difficult to say whether it is
well for people who cherish such illusions about their personal
impressiveness to get rid of such illusions, when personal
impressiveness is a real factor in their success. To do a thing really
well it is essential to have a substantial confidence in one's aptitude
for the task. And undoubtedly diffidence and humility, however sincere,
are a bad outfit for a man in a public position. I am inclined to think
that self-confidence, and a certain degree of self-satisfaction, are
valuable assets, so long as a man believes primarily in the importance
of what he has to say and do, and only secondarily in his own power of,
and fitness for, saying and doing it.
There is an interesting story--I do not vouch for the truth of it--that
used to be told of Cardinal Manning, who undoubtedly had a strong sense
of dramatic effect. He was putting on his robes one evening in the
sacristy of the Cathedral at Westminster, when a noise was heard at the
door, as of one who was determined on forcing an entrance in spite of
the remonstrances of the attendants. In a moment a big, strongly-built
person, looking like a prosperous man of business, labouring under a
vehement and passionate emotion, came quickly in, looked about him, and
advancing to Manning, poured out a series of indignant reproaches. "You
have got hold of my boy," he said, "with your hypocritical and sneaking
methods; you have made him a Roman Catholic; you have ruined the
happiness and peace of our home; you have broken his mother's heart,
and overwhelmed us in misery." He went on in this strain at some length.
Manning, who was standing in his cassock, drew himself up in an attitude
of majestic dignity, and waited until the intruder's eloquence had
exhausted itself, and had ended with threatening gestures. Some of those
present would have intervened, but Manning with an air of command waved
them back, and then, pointing his hand at the man, he said: "Now, sir,
I have allowed you to have your say, and you shall hear me in reply. You
have traduced Holy Church, you have broken in upon the Sanctuary, you
have uttered vile and abominable slanders against the Faith; and I tell
you," he added, pausing for an instant with flashing eyes and marble
visage, "I tell you that within three months you will be a Catholic
yourself." He then turned sharply on his heel and went on with his
preparations. The man was utterly discomfited; he made as though
he would speak, but was unable to find words; he looked round, and
eventually slunk out of the sacristy in silence.
One of those present ventured to ask Manning afterwards about the
strange scene. "Had the Cardinal," he inquired, "any sudden premonition
that the man himself would adopt the Faith in so short a time?" Manning
smiled indulgently, putting his hand on the other's shoulder, and said:
"Ah, my dear friend, who shall say? You see, it was a very awkward
moment, and I had to deal with the situation as I best could."
That was an instance of supreme presence of mind and great dramatic
force; but one is not sure whether it was a wholly apostolical method of
handling the position.
But to transfer the question from the ecclesiastical region into the
region of common life, it is undoubtedly true that if a man or a woman
has a strong sense of moral issues, a deep feeling of responsibility
and sympathy, an anxious desire to help things forward, then a dramatic
sense of the value of manner, speech, gesture, and demeanour is a highly
effective instrument. It is often said that people who wield a great
personal influence have the gift of making the individual with whom they
are dealing feel that his case is the most interesting and important
with which they have ever come in contact, and of inspiring and
maintaining a special kind of relationship between themselves and their
petitioner. That is no doubt a very encouraging thing for the applicant
to feel, even though he is sensible enough to realise that his case is
only one among many with which his adviser is dealing, and probably
not the most significant. Upon such a quality as this the success of
statesmen, lawyers, physicians largely depends. But where the dramatic
sense is combined with egotism, selfishness, and indifference to the
claims of others, it is a terrible inheritance. It ministers, as I have
said before, to its possessor's self-satisfaction; but on the other hand
it is a failing which goes so deep and which permeates so intimately the
whole moral nature, that its cure is almost impossible without the gift
of what the Scripture calls "a new heart." Such self-complacency is a
fearful shield against criticism, and particularly so because it gives
as a rule so few opportunities for any outside person, however intimate,
to expose the obliquity of such a temperament. The dramatic egotist is
careful as a rule not to let his egotism appear, but to profess to be,
and even to believe that he is, guided by the highest motives in all his
actions and words. A candid remonstrance is met by a calm tolerance, and
by the reply that the critic does not understand the situation, and
is trying to hinder rather than to help the development of beneficent
designs.
I used to know a man of this type, who was insatiably greedy of
influence and recognition. It is true that he was ready to help other
people with money or advice. He was wealthy, and of a good position; and
he would take a great deal of trouble to obtain appointments for friends
who appealed to him, or to unravel a difficult situation; though the
object of his diligence was not to help his applicants, but to obtain
credit and power for himself. He did not desire that they should be
helped, but that they should depend upon him for help. Nothing could
undeceive him as to his own motive, because he gave his time and his
money freely; yet the result was that most of the people whom he helped
tended to resent it in the end, because he demanded services in return,
and was jealous of any other interference. Chateaubriand says that it is
not true gratitude to wish to repay favours promptly and still less is
it true benevolence to wish to retain a hold over those whom one has
benefited.
Sometimes indeed the two strains are almost inextricably intertwined,
real and vital sympathy with others, combined with an overwhelming
sense of personal significance; and then the problem is an inconceivably
complicated one. For I suppose it must be frankly confessed that the
basis of the dramatic sense is not a very wholesome one; it is, of
course, a strong form of individualism. But while it is true that we
suffer from taking ourselves too seriously, it is also possible to
suffer from not taking ourselves seriously enough. If effectiveness is
the end of life, there is no question that a strong sense of what we
like to call responsibility, which is generally nothing more than a
sense of one's own importance, decorously framed and glazed, is
an immense factor in success. I myself cherish the heresy that
effectiveness is very far from being the end of life, and that the only
effectiveness that is worth anything is unintentional effectiveness. I
believe that a man or woman who is humble and sincere, who loves and is
loved, is higher on the steps of heaven than the adroitest lobbyist; but
it may be that the world's criterion of what it admires and respects is
the right one; and indeed it is hard to see how so strong an instinct is
implanted in the human race, the instinct to value strength and success
above everything, unless it is put there by our Maker. At the same time
one cherishes the hope that there is a better criterion somewhere, in
the Divine Mind, in the fruitful future; the criterion that it is not
what a man actually effects that matters, but what he makes of the
resources that are given him to work with.
The effectiveness of the dramatic sense is beyond question. One can see
a supreme instance of it in the case of the Christian Science movement,
in which a woman of strong personality, by lighting upon an idea latent
in a large number of minds, an idea moreover of real and practical
vitality, and by putting it in a form which has all the definiteness
required by brains of a hazy and emotional order, has contrived to
effect an immense amount of good, besides amassing a colossal
fortune, and assuming almost Divine pretensions, without being widely
discredited. The human race is, speaking generally, so anxious for any
leading that it can get, that if a man or woman can persuade themselves
that they have a mission to humanity, and maintain a pontifical air,
they will generally be able to attract a band of devoted adherents,
whose faith, rising superior to both intelligence and common-sense,
will endorse almost any claim that the prophet or prophetess likes to
advance.
But the danger for the prophet himself is great. Arrogance, complacency,
self-confidence, all the Pharisaical vices flourish briskly in such a
soil. He loses all sense of proportion, all sense of dependence. Instead
of being a humble learner in a mysterious world, he expects to find
everything made after the pattern revealed to him in the Mount. The good
that he does may be permanent and fruitful; but in some dark valley of
humiliation and despair he will have to learn that God tolerates us and
uses us; He does not need us, "He delighteth not in any man's legs," as
the Psalmist said with homely vigour. To save others and be oneself
a castaway is the terrible fate of which St. Paul saw so clearly the
possibility; and thus any one who is conscious of the dramatic sense,
or even dimly suspects that it is there, ought to pray very humbly to
be delivered from it, as he would from any other darling bosom-sin. He
ought to eschew diplomacy and practise frankness, he ought to welcome
failure and to rejoice when he makes humiliating mistakes. He ought
to be grateful even for palpable faults and weaknesses and sins and
physical disabilities. For if we have the hope that God is educating us,
is moulding a fair statue out of the frail and sordid clay, such a
faith forbids us to reject any experience, however disagreeable, however
painful, however self-revealing it may be, as of no import; and thus we
can grow into a truer sense of proportion, till at last we may come
"to learn that Man
Is small, and not forget that Man is great."