I am often asked why I have forsaken the society of educated people,
and have made my home among 'rough uneducated' people, in a poor man's
house. The briefest answer is, that it is good to live among those who,
on the whole, are one's superiors.
It is pointed out with considerable care what ill effects such a life
has, or is likely to have, upon a man. It is looked upon as a kind of
relapse. But to settle down in a poor man's house is by no means to
adopt a way of life that is less trouble. On the contrary, it is more
trouble.
It is true that most of what schoolmasters call one's accomplishments
have to be dropped. One cannot keep up everything anywhere.
It is true that one goes to the theatre less and reads less. Life,
lived with a will, is play enough, and closer acquaintance with life's
sterner realities renders one singularly impatient with the literature
of life's frillings. I do not notice, however, that it makes one less
susceptible to the really fine and strong things of literature and art.
It is true that one drops into dialect when excited; that one's manners
suffer in conventional correctness. I suppose I know how to behave
fairly correctly; I was well taught at all events; but my manners never
have been and never will be so good, so considerate as Tony's. 'Tisn't
in me.
It is true that one becomes much coarser. One acquires a habit of
talking with scandalous freedom about vital matters which among the
unscientific educated are kept hid in the dark--and go fusty there. But
I do not think there is much vulgarity to be infected with here.
Coarseness and vulgarity are incompatibles. It was well said in a book
written not long ago, that "Coarseness reveals but vulgarity hides."
Vulgarity is chiefly characteristic of the non-courageous who are
everlastingly bent on climbing up the social stairs. Poor people are
hardly ever vulgar, until they begin to 'rise' into the middle class.
[Sidenote: _WISDOM_]
It is true that, so far as knowledge goes, one is bound to be cock o'
the walk among uneducated people--which, alone, is bad for a man. But
knowledge is not everything, nor even the main thing. Wisdom is more
than knowledge: it is _Knowledge applied to life, the ability to make
use of the knowledge well_. In that respect I often have here to eat a
slice of humble-pie. For all my elaborate education and painfully
gained stock of knowledge, I find myself silenced time after time by
the direct wisdom of these so-called ignorant people. They have
preserved better, between knowledge and experience, that balance which
makes for wisdom. They have less knowledge (less mental dyspepsy too)
and use it to better purpose. It occurs to one finally that, according
to our current standards, the great wise men whom we honour--Christ,
Plato, Shakespeare, to name no more--were very ignorant fellows.
Possibly the standards are wrong.
[Sidenote: _DIFFERENTIAL EVOLUTION_]
To live with the poor is to feel oneself in contact with a greater
continuity of tradition and to share in a greater stability of life.
The nerves are more annoyed, the thinking self less. Perhaps the
difference between the two kinds of life may be tentatively
expressed--not necessarily accounted for--in terms of Differential
Evolution,[23] somewhat thus:
(1) The first, the least speculative, evolutionary criterion of an
animal is its degree of adaptation to its environment.
(2) Man exhibits a less degree of adaptation to environment than
any other animal; principally because (_a_) he consists, roughly
speaking, incomparably more than any other animal, of three
interdependent parts--body, thinking brain, and that higher mental
function that we call spirit--the development of any one of which,
beyond a certain stage, is found to be detrimental to the other
two; and because (_b_) he is able possibly to control directly his
own evolution, and certainly to modify it indirectly by modifying
the environment in which he evolves. He is able to make mistakes in
his own evolution.
(3) The typical poor man is better adapted to his environment, such
as it is, than the typical man of any other class; for he has been
kept in closer contact with the primary realities--birth, death,
risk, starvation;--in closer contact, that is to say, with those
sections of human environment which are not of human making and
which are common to all classes. He has fewer mistakes to go back
upon.
[23] Evolution is at present the last refuge of unscientific
minds which think they have explained a process when they
have given it a new name, just as chemists used to call an
obscure chemical action _catalytic_ and then assume that its
nature was plain. _Evolution_ means an _unfolding_. In that
sense it is an observed fact, though exactly how the
unfolding is brought about is still conjectural. But it does
not matter for the purposes of my argument whether human
beings evolve by the transmission to offspring of acquired
characteristics, or by bequeathing to them as birthright an
environment that their fathers had to make. The material for
constructing any theory of mental, or joint mental and
physical evolution, is so hazy that one cannot do more than
speculate. It may be noted, however, that acquired mental
characteristics appear to be more transmissible, and less
stable, than acquired physical characteristics; and that
mental evolution (in the broad sense again) proceeds faster
and collapses more readily than physical evolution.
It might be said, of course, that mal-adaptation at any given
moment is more than counterbalanced by greater evolutional
potentialities, or by greater inducement to evolve; and that the
above chain of reasoning simply goes to prove that the poor man is
more of an animal--less evolved. On the other hand, from an
evolutionary standpoint, the animal faculties are the most basic of
all. A sound stomach is more necessary than a highly developed
brain, and good reproductive faculties are essential; because the
first demand of evolution is plenty of material. It does not follow
that our typical poor man is more of an animal, is less evolved, or
has a smaller potentiality to evolve, because he has preserved
better the animal faculties which lie at the basis of evolution.
Furthermore:
(4) There is a reasonable probability that an interior balance,
between body, brain, and spirit, is more needful for realising the
potentialities of evolution than rapidity of development in any
single respect. _Mens sana in corpore sano--animaque integra_
is an ideal as sound as it is unachieved. More haste less speed, is
probably true of human evolution. A healthy baby is more hopeful
than a mad adult.
(5) The typical poor man does, now, exhibit a better balance
between these three components of him. Less evolved in some ways,
he is on the whole, and for that reason, more forward. His
evolution is proceeding with greater solidity. It is more stable,
and more likely to realise its potentialities.
* * * * *
That is a speculation among probabilities and possibilities; an attempt
to go in a bee-line across fields that are mainly hidden ditches; a
first spying out of a country that wants mapping; a course over a sea
that can never perhaps be buoyed, where bearings must be taken afresh
from the sun for each voyage that is made. In any case, my belief grows
stronger that the poor have kept essentially what a schoolboy calls the
better end of the stick; not because their circumstances are
better--materially their lives are often terrible enough--but because
they know better how to make the most of what material circumstances
they have. If they could improve their material circumstances and
continue making the most of them.... That is the problem.
Good Luck to us all!