§ 26. In all the faculties hitherto enumerated, it has been my principle
to select and specify those which are capable of improvement by
conscious training. I have over and over again admitted that
nature—probably meaning by nature _heredity_—has endowed some people
with gifts which others must strive to attain by exercise. But I have
hitherto excluded such conditions as are either too wide to be called
conditions of conversation, or too special ever to be attained without
great and peculiar natural gifts.
Of the first kind are general moral worth and truthfulness, which afford
the proper ground for respect, and which therefore give weight and
importance to anything the speaker says. In cases of moral doubt, in
cases of disputed fact, the authority of such a person is a welcome
haven of rest for those that distrust other evidence, and like a great
authority in a science expounding the principles of that science, so a
man or woman of high character may be of much service in conversation.
But of course it would be ridiculous to recommend the cultivation of
this lofty character for the sake of conversation. It is perhaps more
practical to observe that an over-seriousness in morals may be
detrimental to the ease and grace, above all to the playfulness, of
talk. Let me not be misunderstood in this matter. There is no more
valuable and useful check on the degenerating of talk into ribaldry,
profanity, or indecency, than the presence of a mind of solid moral
worth, which will not tolerate such licence. There are companies,
especially of young men, where such things are taken for wit, and which
thus show a degradation of the conception of talk that would very soon
render conversation intolerable to any intelligent man, not only from
its coarseness, but from its dulness. No man, no society, can be called
witty, which has not far better credentials than that. Every company of
men ought to import two or three grave and reverend people into their
circle for the purpose of checking such ruinous excesses, if there be
any probability that the conversation may stray into this slough of
mire.
§ 27. But on the other hand, there is such a thing in society—Aristotle
saw it long ago—as being over-scrupulous in truthfulness. Even a
consummate liar, though generally vulgar, and therefore offensive, is a
better ingredient in a company than the scrupulously truthful man, who
weighs every statement, questions every fact, and corrects every
inaccuracy. In the presence of such a social scourge I have heard a
witty talker pronounce it the golden rule of conversation to _know
nothing accurately_. Far more important is it, in my mind, to _demand_
no accuracy. There is no greater or more common blunder in society than
to express disbelief or scepticism in a story told _for the amusement of
the company_. The object of the speaker is not to instruct, but to
divert, and to ask him: Is that really true? or to exclaim: Really that
is too much to expect us to believe! shows that the objector is a
blockhead unfit for any amusing conversation. The only social criticism
on such a story, if it be really beyond the bounds of reasonable belief,
is to out-do it with another still more extravagant, and so to bring
back the company with laughter, and by excess of exaggeration to a
soberer vein. The seriousness of the blunder just noted is not felt till
we have learned that there is a vast number of real facts in nature so
strange at first hearing, that they excite active scepticism, and that
you may lay a wager with any one to pass them off as lies. In fact, any
society only familiar with one class of natural facts, can be furnished
with facts from another sphere in nature which the majority will
disbelieve.[7]
Footnote 7:
For example, to men of town life, or of mere books, it will seem
incredible that a fish should shoot flies with a drop of water, or a
diver carry about its egg hugged against its breast, or that an otter
should take a single bite out of a salmon and leave the rest, or that
a woodcock should carry its young in its bill, all of which facts in
natural history I have myself heard told to intelligent pedants, and
set down by them as impudent inventions.
The point of importance in the present connection is that, if a man is
reporting what he knows to be true, and finds himself disbelieved, he
will certainly either feel hurt, or will conceive such contempt for the
ignorance and bad manners of his hearers that he will make no further
effort to help the conversation.
The outcome, therefore, of what has here been said about high moral
worth and extreme truthfulness, is that these virtues, though lending
the speaker dignity, must not be allowed to tyrannise. The great and
good man must unbend; he must acquiesce in being amused; he must even
connive at inaccuracies, and smile at what he considers inventions; he
must for the nonce regard recreation as his direct object.
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