§ 10. We come now to the broader condition of General Knowledge. This,
in the minds of many, sums up in itself all the conditions of good
conversation, and yet it is so partial a truth as to be practically
misleading. A great mistake lies at the root of such an opinion, which
assumes that the first object of conversation is not to please but to
instruct. I could produce one hundred Irish peasants more agreeable than
many a highly-informed Englishman, and yet these peasants might in many
cases be unable to read or write. Of course to instruct or to be
instructed is often very pleasant, and so far knowledge, general or
special, is a very useful help to conversation, but it is as talk, not
as a lesson, that we must here regard it.
The advantage of general above special knowledge for our purpose is that
it can be applied in a greater number of cases, and used to interest a
greater number of people. The man of general knowledge can suit himself
to various company, and, if he is not able to speak with the authority
of the specialist, can help and stimulate in many cases where the latter
is likely to be silent. If therefore we exclude the object of gaining
information, which many people estimate above its importance in our
present subject, we must decide that general information is the better
condition to promote agreeable social intercourse.
It may be attained in two directions; either knowledge of books or
knowledge of men. The former is within the reach of most men, even
though it requires a peculiar memory to make it applicable with ease and
readiness. We may even say with truth that no man can attain to general
knowledge nowadays without reading many books. The danger of a desultory
habit, very likely to arise from skimming the mass of ephemeral
literature now gushing from the press, is that the facts acquired will
not be ordered, and will come out as untidy scraps, not as the details
of a proper system of study. The books which a man reads may either be
the great masters, which are perhaps rather useful for cultivating his
deeper self than for ordinary converse, or the newest authors, whose
merits are still upon trial, and who therefore afford an excellent field
for discussion and criticism. In either case there is hardly a
distinction to be drawn between the specialist and the generalist, for
all people are supposed to study literature, and a good knowledge of
either familiar or fashionable books can hardly fail to tell in any
gathering of cultivated men and women.
§ 11. There is, however, another kind of general knowledge which is not
so easy to acquire, for it requires long experience, a certain position
in society, and means for foreign travel. I mean the general knowledge
of remarkable men, concerning whom the speaker can tell his
recollections. There is often a man of no great learning or ability
whose official position, tact, or private means have brought him into
contact with the great minds about whom every detail is interesting.
Such a man’s general knowledge should always make him an agreeable
member of society. Akin to this man is the experienced traveller who has
wandered through many lands and seen the cities and the ways of men. The
peculiar advantage of this kind of general knowledge for conversation is
that its very acquisition comes in the practice of society, and that all
those defects of narrowness, awkwardness, and self-consciousness which
often mar the man of books, are rubbed off, as the phrase is, by
constant contact with various men. The man of books, on the contrary,
has to acquire his store in the silence of his study, and so by a
process which rather untrains him for talking, so that even though his
knowledge when acquired may be of more solid and permanent value, his
way of producing it may put him at a disadvantage.
Let me add before leaving this head that the enormous increase of the
means for acquiring knowledge, and the application of great inventions
to save time in so doing, are by no means accompanied by corresponding
strides in the art of conversation. All the knowledge of the day
professes to be curtailed and collected into newspapers, periodicals,
and handbooks, just as all the travelling of the day is done by rail and
steam, with the aid of guide-books, which save the traveller all the
trouble and all the education of thinking. The tourist who formerly went
through Italy with his _vetturino_, and saw every village and road
deliberately, talking with the people and observing national life, is
now whirled through tunnels and by night from one capital to another,
where he sees what Cook or Murray choose him to see, just as the man who
trusts the newspapers for his knowledge gets scraps, perversions, even
lies, served up for him by way of universal information. It is easy to
see that this kind of training, as it interferes with both liberty and
leisure of thought, and induces men to spend far too much time in
gathering facts, is in no way conducive to the improvement of
conversation.
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