When we are children we love putting on masks to astonish our elders;
there is a lordly pleasure in puzzling those harmless giants who are
not in the secret. We ourselves, of course, know that it is only
a disguise; and when presently we pull it off, their surprise at
recognizing us is something deliciously comic. Yet, at bottom, this
compulsory return to nature is a little sad; our young empiricism
would like to take appearances more seriously. To an unsophisticated
mind every transformation seems as credible as it is interesting; there
is always danger and hope of anything. Why should people hesitate to
believe something intrinsically so plausible as that Johnny should
have acquired a bull's head, or that little Alice should suddenly
develop a red nose and furious mustachios? That is just the sort of
thing that would happen if this stupid world were only more natural;
but the trouble with old people is that their minds have become
stagnant, dominated as they are by precedent and prejudice; it is
too much of an exertion for them to imagine anything but what they
have always seen. Even when they tell us about religion, which is so
full of exciting and lovely things that we know _must_ be true, they
seem to be trying to remember something they have read or heard of,
and quite spoil the story; they don't seem to understand at all, as
we do, why it all happens. They are terrible believers in substance,
and can hardly lend themselves to the wayward game of experience.
This after all wouldn't matter so much; it is not worth while playing
with people who don't relish games. The subtlest part of the pleasure
is being blindfolded on purpose and feeling lost when you know you
are not lost. Empiricism would be agony if any one was so silly as
really to forget his material status and to become the sport of his
passing ideas. But masks are great fun in themselves, and when you are
fundamentally sane it is pleasant to play the madman and to yield to
the eloquence of an imagined life; and it is intolerable to have the
game spoiled by some heavy-footed person who constantly reminds you of
the discovered facts and will not lend himself to the spirit of your
fiction, which is the deepest part of your own spirit. No one would be
angry with a man for unintentionally making a mistake about a matter
of fact; but if he perversely insists on spoiling your story in the
telling of it, you want to kick him; and this is the reason why every
philosopher and theologian is justly vexed with every other. When we
are children the accident and fatality of having been born human are
recent and only half welcome; we still feel a little hurt at being so
arbitrarily confined to one miserable career and forced to remain
always consistent; we still see the equal antecedent propriety of being
anybody or anything else. Masks afford us the pleasing excitement of
revising our so accidental birth-certificate and of changing places in
spirit with some other changeling.
Nevertheless the game soon tires. Although children are no believers in
substance, they are substances themselves without knowing it. The mask
refuses to grow on to their flesh: it thwarts their rising impulses.
Play-acting is seldom worth the commitments it involves; your part,
after a few enthusiastic rehearsals, turns out not really to suit you.
It seemed at first to open up splendid adventures and give you a chance
to display your unsuspected passions and powers; but now you begin
to think your speeches ridiculous and your costume unbecoming. You
must pull off the mask to see clearly and to breathe freely; you are
overheard indulging in asides that are out of character, and swearing
in the unvarnished vernacular; and when the performance at last is
over, what a relief to fling away your wig and your false beard, and
relapse into your honest self! There is no place like home, although
there may be better places; and there is no face like one's own, for
comfort to the wearer.
The Englishman likes to be comfortable, and he hates masks. It is
pleasant to be straightforward, as it is to be clean. Mere façades
offend him so much that he actually manages to build houses without
them; they have creepers, they have chimneys, they have bow-windows,
they have several doors, but they have no front. His Empire, too, for
all its extent and complexity, presents no imposing façade to the
world; it seems to elude observation and to be everywhere apologizing
for its existence. Its enemies, on the contrary, both at home and
abroad, are blatancy itself, always parading their heroisms and
their ambitions; and one wonders how a power so hated, so hesitant,
and so involuntary can last at all. But it has a certain plastic
invulnerability; you pommel it and trample on it here, and its strength
turns out to have lain in quite another quarter. It is like the sort
of man who serves it, a pale languid youth, sprawling on cushions,
and lisping a little when he cares to take his pipe out of his mouth
at all; but what is your surprise when, something having happened, he
gets up and knocks you down. Nothing had prepared you for that; no
philosophical eloquence or resounding _coup d'état_: he is perhaps
a little surprised himself at his energy. He blushes if by chance
any warm gesture or expression has escaped him; he feels that it
misrepresents his average sentiment; the echo of it sounds hollow in
his ear, and just because it was so spontaneous he detests it as if it
had been a lie. The passing grimaces of passion, the masks of life, are
odious to him; yet he is quite happy to be deceived and to be masked by
a thick atmosphere of convention, if only this atmosphere is temperate
and sustained. He will be loyal to any nonsense that seems to justify
his instincts and that has got a domestic stamp; but elaborate original
lies are not in his nature; he has no histrionic gift. Intrigue
requires a dear perception of the facts, an insight into other people's
motives, and a power of sustained simulation; he is not clever at any
of these things. Masks, wigs, cowls, and stays are too troublesome;
if you are not always on the watch, the beastly things will fall off.
He prefers to dress his personage more constitutionally; the dyes he
uses must be all indelible, such as religion and education can supply.
These, with the habit of his set or profession, are his lifelong
make-up and his second nature; his only mask is the unperturbed
expression which time and temperance have chiselled in his face.
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