§ 19. Next to modesty and simplicity I class the moral virtue of
_unselfishness_. It is very characteristic that we have no other word
for this noble quality than the mere negation of its opposite—the most
prevalent vice in the world. Why can we not describe it better? Because
in particular connections it has other names—loyalty, devotion,
self-sacrifice, which occupy a part of the ground with more especial
attributes. We are not here concerned with these heights of human
nature, with the nobility of grand and pathetic moments. What shows
itself in these as devotion and self-sacrifice bears in our commonplace
life a negative and non-descriptive name, and is yet a very distinct and
valuable quality, distinct from simplicity, distinct even from sympathy,
with which it is so often allied; it may display itself in all kinds of
men and women who take part in a conversation. It is not less important
to the silent man than to the talkative man, though the latter case is
the more obvious. The good talker who monopolises conversation, who
insists on keeping other people waiting that he may finish his story,
who tells anecdotes which are evidently unpleasant to some of the
company, but will not forego his joke for the sake of others—the social
bully who makes butts of the more retiring, and sallies at their
expense, is the most obvious case of a man failing from selfishness, and
losing the great natural advantages he possesses through want of the
opposite quality. This is the man too who interrupts others, who refuses
to exercise for a moment that patience which he so often exacts.
I have spoken of these people as failures, and such they really are, in
the truest and highest sense, for they certainly kill more conversation
than they create, nor do they understand that the very meaning of the
word implies a contribution-feast, an _eranos_ as the Greeks would say,
not the entertainment provided by a single host. But alas! in a lesser
and looser sense these people often dominate society for years, and are
even sought out as social conveniences, who will keep things going at a
dinner table, and supply the defects of silence and dulness so painfully
common in English more than in other societies. But the punishment of
the selfish talker is sure to come at last, when he lives till his
vivacity and his power of acquiring new things fail, while he still
presumes on his old reputation. He is then discovered to be an
intolerable bore, which, indeed from a higher point of view, was always
the case; and thereupon society, which is as selfish as he is, and
insists on being amused at all costs, throws him aside with contempt. He
has perhaps still one place of refuge; he may become a high priest in
that great modern temple of selfishness—his club; but even there his
popularity has waned, and he sinks into the old age unfriended and
unsociable—ἄφιλον ἀπροσὀμιλον—which Sophocles regarded as one of the
tragic features in the life of man.
§ 20. I turn now to a far more common, but less observed and less
censured case of social selfishness, which requires urgently to be
brought into the light of criticism. No man requires to practise
unselfishness more than the silent man; for as everybody is able to
contribute and ought to contribute something, so the man who thrusts
himself into society to enjoy the talk of others, and will take no
trouble to help, to suggest, or to encourage, is really a serious
criminal. I have known a person of good position, and not the least
wanting in brains, who would insist in sitting at dinner between the two
most agreeable people in the room, in order that he might eat and
listen, while under no circumstances would he make the smallest effort
to entertain in return. These silent people not only take all they can
get in society for nothing, but they take it without the smallest
gratitude, and have the audacity afterwards to censure those who have
laboured for their amusement.
I ask the reader’s pardon for illustrating this important fact by a
personal anecdote. In a country house where I was staying, the host had
invited the colonel commanding a neighbouring dèpôt and his wife to
dinner, and the conversation was flagging seriously. Some mention of New
Zealand in that day’s papers suggested it as a topic, upon which a
couple of us brought out all we knew about New Zealand, discussed the
natives, then savages generally, and so restored the fortunes of the
evening. The colonel and his wife still sat silent. When they were gone,
we said to the host that we thought it very hard work to entertain
people who would not say anything to anybody. He replied that they _had_
said something as they got into their carriage. What was it? The colonel
observed that it was very impertinent of people to talk about countries
they had never seen, especially in presence of a man like himself, who
had not only lived for years in New Zealand, but had written a book
about it! This was the thanks we got.
§ 21. There is another special scope for unselfishness in society, which
may fitly find its place here. In every company there may be people
either socially or intellectually inferior to the rest, who feel
themselves somewhat _out of it_ (to use a vulgar phrase), and whom the
selfish man, the big talker, the ambitious man is apt to ignore. And yet
these very people may be in possession of knowledge or of mental
qualities which will be of the highest value in conversation. It
requires unselfishness to watch them, to appeal to their sympathies, to
draw them into the stream and make them feel that instead of being
outsiders they are really among people anxious to know what they think
and hear what they have to say. Many a time have I seen an unknown and
obscure person drawn in this way and become the leading feature in a
delightful evening, for fresh and curious knowledge, which suddenly
springs from an unexpected source, can hardly fail to be profoundly
interesting, and to stimulate all the active minds that hear it. Thus I
remember a stupid young man successfully probed by an intelligent
person, till it accidentally came out that he knew all about the wild
cattle in Lord Tankerville’s park (Chillingham Forest). From that moment
he took the lead in the conversation, and excited a most interesting
discussion, in which several very dull country farmers took an animated
interest.
All this can be done by mere intellectual unselfishness, by the man or
woman who considers that each person in a society should be attended to,
and if possible compelled to contribute to the general entertainment.
But it is both rare to find this kind of unselfishness and difficult to
apply it without the subsidiary faculty or constitution of mind, which
many think the whole root of good conversation—I mean sympathy.
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