§ 12. What has hitherto been said about knowledge in a man of
conversation has left out of all account the way of producing it, and
merely considered the mental store from which conversation may be
supplied. But almost as important as these materials, is the faculty of
producing them without effort. This quality may be called intellectual
_quickness_, as distinguished from solidity; and of all the conditions
we have yet discussed, this seems most due to nature, and unattainable
by education. It is indeed sometimes a characteristic of nations. The
Irishman or the Frenchman will show this quality with an average
excellence far above that attained in England or Germany. It may of
course be allied with, or even due to, some such moral quality as
sympathy, of which we shall speak presently. But quite apart from it, a
selfish man, who has no sympathy for his company, may, by the quickness
of his intellect, show brilliantly in conversation, while his more solid
and worthy fellow is considered a bore. As I have just said, this is
generally a gift of nature. Some men and some nations are born with
quick wits. But even so it is a great mistake to think that it may not
be vastly improved by intercourse with people who have the faculty
already well developed. Moreover it is a very dangerous advantage, and
if not deepened by solid acquirements, or chastened by moral restraints,
may make a man rather the scourge than the delight of his company.
For this is the mental quality which is the foundation of wit, and a
joker who merely consults his own amusement, or the amusement of some of
his hearers at the expense of others, is not a good converser. The
tendency of a very quick intellect is also to impatience, and so it will
interfere with and cow more modest minds, which might have contributed
well to the feast of talk had they been allowed to work without hurry or
pressure. So strong do we often find this contrast that it is
unadvisable, in choosing a set of people for conversation, to bring
together very slow and very quick intellects. While the former are more
dazzled and confused than pleased, the latter feel the delay of
listening to long and deliberate sentences intolerable; and so a company
in which all the members are socially excellent may fail to be pleasant
on account of the mental contrasts of its members.
Let me illustrate it by an extreme case. Who would think of introducing
a young brilliant flashing sceptic into a society of grave and sober
orthodoxy? If the conversation did not soon degenerate into acrid
controversy—the very lees of social intercourse—it would result in
contemptuous silence on one side or other, probably with the contempt so
transparent as to challenge harsh over-statement from the talker by way
of challenge or reply to unspoken censure. Could anything be more
ruinous to the object we have in view? It may be urged on the other hand
that if too many quick intellects are brought together—not a very easy
thing, by the way, to accomplish—the pressure will become too great and
the conversation move so fast that the strain may become a weariness. I
think that any danger in this direction is rather due to the moral
defects of the talkers than their intellectual brightness, and so I
shall discuss this point under another head.
But if the quality under consideration is valuable at all times, it is
so peculiarly when a number of strangers meet together, or when it is
the lot of men and women to be obliged to talk together in dialogue,
upon a stray or sudden occasion. Then it is, when for example you go
down to dinner with a strange man or woman whose name you have not
caught, that quickness of intellect becomes the prime agent in starting
a pleasant conversation. There are, indeed, even here many easy rules
which may help to get over the initial difficulty, without those initial
chords about the weather whereby so many people, otherwise really
intelligent, hide themselves at the outset under the prelude of
commonplace. But here as elsewhere art can only imitate better nature.
It is further to be added that as general knowledge, and special also,
are principally to be expected from men, so quickness of mind, which is
often impaired by deeper study, is the proper attribute of women, and
ought to be the distinctive quality of their conversation. This is
supposed to be so in French society; I cannot say that it has come under
my observation as a general law, the many instances which I have met
being always noted and quoted as brilliant and as exceptional, so
implying that it was not the rule.
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