Part 3
I once made the acquaintance of an ancient Philosopher. His talents were for cosmogony, and his equipment would have been deemed ample in the days when cosmogony was the fashion. He had meditated much on the genesis of things and had read nothing, so that his speculations were uncontaminated by the investigations of others. He was just the man to construct a perfectly simple and logical theory of the universe, and he did it. His universe was not like that of which our sciences give us imperfect glimpses, but it was very satisfactory to him. He was very fair in dealing with facts; he explained all that could be explained by his system. As the only criterion of a fact which he recognized was that it agreed with his system, there was none left over to trouble him. His manner of thought was so foreign to that of our time that his intellectual ability was not widely appreciated; yet had his birth not been so long delayed, he might have been the founder of a school and have had books written about him. For so far as I could learn, his views of the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water, were very much like those of the early Greek physicists. Had I taken him as a fellow American, I should have dismissed him as not up to date; but considering him in the light of an ancient sage, I found much in him to admire.
Once upon the coast of Maine I came upon a huge wooden cylinder. Within it was a smaller one, and in the centre, seated upon a swinging platform, was the owner of the curious contrivance. He was a mild-eyed, pleasant-spoken man, whom it was a pleasure to meet. He explained that this was “The Amphibious Vehicle,” and that it would move equally well on land or sea.
“You know,” said he, “what the prophet Ezekiel said about the ‘wheel in the middle of a wheel’?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Well, this is it.”
There was something convincing in this matter-of-fact statement. The “wheel within a wheel” had been to me little more than a figure of speech, but here it was made out of good pine lumber, with a plank in the middle for the living creature to sit on. It was as if I had fallen through a trap door into another age. Here was a literal-minded contemporary of Ezekiel, who, having heard of the wheel within a wheel, had proceeded at once to make one. I ascended into the precarious seat, and we conversed upon the spiritual and temporal possibilities of the vehicle. I found that on the scriptural argument he was clearly ahead of me, being able to quote chapter and verse with precision, while my references were rather vague. In the field of mechanics he was also my superior. I could not have made the vehicle, having not yet emerged beyond the stone age. As we talked I forgot that we were at the mouth of the Penobscot. We were on the “river of Chebar,” and there was no knowing what might happen.
* * * * *
The belated philosophers and inventors, who think the thoughts of the ancient worthies after them, live peaceful lives. What matters it that they are separated by a millennium or two from the society in which they were fitted to shine? They are self-sufficing, and there are few who care to contradict them. It is not so with one who is morally belated. There is something pathetic in the condition of one who cherishes the ambition of being a good man, but who has not informed himself of the present “state of the art.”
Now and then an ethical revolution takes place. New ideals are proclaimed, and in their light all things are judged. The public conscience becomes sensitive in regard to courses of conduct which heretofore had been unchallenged. Every such advance involves a waste in established reputations. There are always excellent men who are not aware of what has been going on. They keep on conforming scrupulously to the old standards, being good in the familiar ways that were commended in their youth. After a time they find themselves in an alien world, and in that world they are no longer counted among the best people. The tides of moral enthusiasm are all against them. The good man feels his solid ground of goodness slipping away from under him. Time has played false with his moral conventionalities. He is like a polar bear on a fast-diminishing iceberg, growling at the Gulf Stream.
When a great evil has been recognized by the world, there is a revision of all our judgments. A new principle of classification is introduced, by which we differentiate the goats from the sheep. It is hard after that to revive the old admirations. The temperance agitation of the last century has not abolished drunkenness, but it has made the conception of a pious, respectable drunkard seem grotesque. It has also reduced the business of liquor-selling to a decidedly lower place in the esteem of the community. When we read to-day of the horrors of the slave trade, we reconstruct in our imagination the character of the slave trader,--and a brutal wretch he is. But in his day the Guinea captain held his own with the best. He was a good husband and father, a kind neighbor, a generous benefactor. President Ezra Stiles of Yale College, in his “Literary Diary,” describes such a beautiful character. It was when Dr. Stiles was yet a parish minister in Newport that one of his parishioners died, of whom he wrote: “God had blessed him with a good Estate and he and his Family have been eminent for Hospitality to all and Charity to the poor and afflicted. At his death he recommended Religion to his Children and told them that the world was nothing. The only external blemish on his Character was that he was a little addicted to the marvelous in stories of what he had seen in his Voyages and Travels. But in his Dealings he was punctual, upright, and honest, and (except as to the Flie in the Oynment, the disposition to tell marvelous Stories of Dangers, Travels, &c.), in all other Things he was of a sober and good moral character, respected and beloved of all, so as to be almost without enemies. He was forward in all the concerns of the Church and Congregation, consulting its Benefit and peaceably falling in with the general sense without exciting quarrels, parties, &c., and even when he differed from his Brethren he so differed from them that they loved him amidst the differences. He was a peaceable man and promoted Peace.”
It was in 1773 that this good man died in the odor of sanctity. It is quite incidentally that we learn that “he was for many years a Guinea captain, and had no doubt of the slave trade.” His pastor suggests that he might have chosen another business than that of “buying and selling the human species.” Still, in 1773, this did not constitute an offense serious enough to be termed a fly in the ointment. In 1785, Dr. Stiles speaks of the slave trade as “a most iniquitous trade in the souls of men.” Much may happen in a dozen years in changing one’s ideas of moral values. In another generation the civilized world was agreed that the slave trade was piracy. After that there were no fine Christian characters among the slave traders.
There is evidence that at the present time there is an awakening of the social conscience that threatens as great a revolution as that which came with the abolition of the slave trade. Business methods which have been looked upon as consistent with high moral character are being condemned as “the sum of all villainies.” The condemnation is not yet universal, and there are still those who are not conscious that anything has happened. The Christian monopolist, ruthlessly crushing out his competitors and using every trick known to the trade, has no more doubts as to the rightfulness of his proceedings than had the good Newport captain in regard to the slave trade.
It is a good time to have his obituary written. His contemporaries appreciate his excellent private virtues, and have been long accustomed to look leniently on his public wrong-doing. The new generation, having agreed to call his methods robbery, may find the obituary eulogies amusing.
AN HOUR WITH OUR PREJUDICES
We may compare the human mind to a city. It has its streets, its places of business and amusement, its citizens of every degree. When one person is introduced to another it is as if the warder drew back the bolts, and the gates were thrown open. If he comes well recommended he is given the freedom of the city. In the exercise of this freedom, however, the stranger should show due caution.
There is usually a new quarter. Here the streets are well lighted and policed, the crowds are cosmopolitan, and the tourist who wanders about looking at the shop windows is sure of a civil reply to his questions. There is no danger of highway robbers, though of course one may be taken in by confidence men. But if he be of an inquiring mind and a lover of the picturesque, he is not satisfied with this. After all, the new quarters are very much alike, and one tires after a while of shop windows. The visitor longs to explore the old town, with its winding ways, with its overhanging houses, and its mild suggestions of decay.
But in the mental city the lover of the picturesque must remember that he carries his life in his hands. It is not safe to say to a casual acquaintance, “Now I have a fair idea of that part of your mind which is like that of any other decently educated person. I have seen all the spick and span show places, and admired all the modern improvements. Where are your ruins? I should like to poke around a while in the more dilapidated section of your intellect.”
Ah, but that is the Forbidden City. It is inhabited, not by orderly citizens, under the rule of Right Reason, but by a lawless crowd known as the Prejudices. They are of all sorts and conditions. Some are of aristocratic lineage. They come from a long line of hereditary chiefs, who, as their henchmen have deserted them, have recreated into their crumbling strongholds. Some are bold, roistering blades who will not stand a question; dangerous fellows, these, to meet in the dark! The majority, perhaps, are harmless folk, against whom the worst that can be said is that they have a knack of living without visible means of support.
A knowledge of human nature, as distinguished from a knowledge of moral philosophy, is a perception of the important part played by instinctive likes and dislikes, by perverse antipathies, by odd ends of thought, by conclusions which have got hopelessly detached from their premises--if they ever had any. The formal philosopher, judging others by himself, works on the assumption that man is naturally a reasoning animal, whereas experience teaches that the craving for the reasonable is an acquired taste.
Of course we all have reasons for our opinions,--plenty of them! But in the majority of cases they stand not as antecedents, but as consequents. There is a reversal of the rational order like that involved in Dr. Hale’s pleasant conceit of the young people who adopted a grandmother. In spite of what intellectual persons say, I do not see how we can get along without prejudices. A prejudice is defined as “an opinion or decision formed without due examination of the facts or arguments which are necessary to a just and impartial determination.” Now, it takes a good deal of time to make a due examination of facts and arguments, even in regard to a small matter. In the meantime our minds would be sadly unfurnished. If we are to make a fair show in the world, we must get our mental furniture when we set up housekeeping, and pay for it on the installment plan.
Instead of taking a pharisaic attitude toward our neighbor’s prejudices, it is better to cultivate a wise tolerance, knowing that human intercourse is dependent on the art of making allowances. This is consistent with perfect honesty. There is always something to admire if the critic is sufficiently discriminating. When you are shown a bit of picturesque dilapidation, it is quite possible to enjoy it. Said the Hebrew sage, “I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; and, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction.”
His point of view was that of a moralist. Had he also been a bit of an artist, the sight of the old wall with its tangle of flowering briers would have had still further interest.
When one’s intellectually slothful neighbor points with pride to portions of his untilled fields, we must not be too hard upon him. We also have patches of our own that are more picturesque than useful. Even if we ourselves are diligent husbandmen, making ceaseless war on weeds and vermin, there are times of relenting. Have you never felt a tenderness when the ploughshare of criticism turned up a prejudice of your own? You had no heart to harm the
Wee sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie.
It could not give a good account of itself. It had been so long snugly ensconced that it blinked helplessly in the garish light. Its
wee-bit housie, too, in ruin! Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin’! And naething now to big a new ane.
You would have been very angry if any one had trampled upon it.
This is the peculiarity about a prejudice. It is very appealing to the person who holds it. A man is seldom offended by an attack on his reasoned judgments. They are supported by evidence and can shift for themselves. Not so with a prejudice. It belongs not to the universal order; it is his very own. All the chivalry of his nature is enlisted in its behalf. He is, perhaps, its only defense against the facts of an unfriendly world.
We cannot get along without making allowances for these idiosyncrasies of judgment. Conversation is impossible where each person insists on going back, all the time, to first principles, and testing everything by an absolute standard. With a person who is incapable of changing his point of view we cannot converse; we can only listen and protest. We are in the position of one who, conscious of the justice of his cause, attempts to carry on a discussion over the telephone with “Central.” He only hears an inhuman buzzing sound indicating that the line is busy. There is nothing to do but to “hang up the ’phone.”
When a disputed question is introduced, one may determine the true conversationalist by applying the method of Solomon. Let it be proposed to divide the subject so that each may have his own. Your eager disputant will be satisfied, your genial talker is aghast at the proposition, for he realizes that it would kill the conversation. Instead of holding his own, he awaits developments. He is in a mood which can be satisfied with something less than a final judgment. It is not necessary that his friend’s opinions should be just; it is sufficient that they are characteristic. Whatever turn the talk may take, he preserves an easy temper. He is a heresy-hunter,--not of the grim kind that goes hunting with a gun; he carries only a camera. If he stirs up a strange doctrine he does not care to destroy it. When he gets a snap-shot at human nature he says,--
Those things do best please me That befall preposterously.
An English gentleman relates a conversation he had with Prince Bismarck. The prince was inclined to take a pessimistic view of the English people. He thought that there was a degeneration in the race, which he attributed to the growing habit of drinking water. “Not that he believed that there was any particular virtue _per se_ inherent in alcoholic drink; but he was sorry to hear that the old ‘three bottle men’ were dying out and leaving no successors. He had a suspicion that it meant shrinkage in those qualities of the English which had made them what they were in the past, and for which he had always felt a sincere admiration.”
It would have been very easy to drift into debate over this proposition. The English gentleman, however, defended his countrymen more diplomatically. “I replied that with regard to the water-drinking proclivities of my countrymen there was a good deal of calumny connected with the story. It is true that a certain section of English society has indeed taken to water as a beverage. But to argue therefrom that the English people have become addicted to water would be to draw premature conclusions from insufficient data. In this way I was able to calm Prince Bismarck’s fears in regard to what the future might bring forth, and our conversation reverted to Royalty.”
Each nation has its own set of preconceptions. We must take them altogether, or not at all. They are as compact and as natural a growth as the concentric layers of an onion. Here is a sentence from Max Müller’s “Autobiography,” thrown out quite incidentally. He has been telling how strange it seemed, when first coming to Oxford, to find that the students got along without dueling. Fighting with swords seemed to him the normal method of developing manliness, though he adds that in the German universities “pistol duels are generally preferred by theological students, because they cannot easily get a living if the face is scarred all over.”
This remark must be taken as one would take a slice of the national onion. One assumption fits into another. To an Englishman or an American there is an incongruity that approaches the grotesque,--because our prejudices are different. It all becomes a matter-of-fact statement when we make the proper assumptions in regard to dueling in general and theological duels in particular. Assuming that it is necessary for theological students to fight duels, and that the congregations are prejudiced against ministers whose faces have been slashed by swords, what is left for the poor theologues but pistols? Their method may seem more dangerous than that adopted by laymen, but Max Müller explains that the danger is chiefly to the seconds.
Individual peculiarities must be taken into account in the same way. Prince Bismarck, in dining with the Emperor, inquired the name of the brand of champagne, which proved to be a cheap German article. “The Emperor explained, ‘I drink it from motives of economy, as I have a large family; then again I drink it from patriotic motives.’ Thereupon I said to the Emperor, ‘With me, your Majesty, patriotism stops short in the region of my stomach.’”
It is evident that here was a difference not to be arbitrated by reason. If the Emperor could not understand the gastronomic limitations to the Chancellor’s patriotism, neither could the Chancellor enter into the Emperor’s anxieties, as he economized for the sake of his large family.
One cannot but wonder at the temerity of a person who plunges into conversation with a stranger without any preliminary scouting or making sure of a line of retreat. Ordinary prudence would suggest that the first advances should be only in the nature of a reconnoissance in force. You may have very decided prejudices of your own, but it is not certain that they will fraternize with those of your new acquaintance. There is danger of falling into an ambush. There are painful occasions when we remember the wisdom of the Son of Sirach: “Many have fallen by the edge of the sword, but not so many as have fallen by the tongue.” The mischief of it is that the most kindly intent will not save us. The path of the lover of mankind is beset by difficulties for which he is not prepared. There are so many antagonisms that are unpredictable.
When Nehemiah came to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem he remarked grimly, “When Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, heard of it, it grieved them exceedingly that there was come a man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel;” and the trouble was that a large number of the children of Israel themselves seem to have resented the interference with their habitual misfortunes. The experience of Nehemiah is that of most reformers. One would suppose that the person who aims at the greatest good for the greatest number would be greeted with instant applause. The difficulty is that the greatest good is just what the greatest number will not tolerate. One does not need to believe in human depravity to recognize the prejudice which most persons have against anything which is proposed as good for them. The most successful philanthropists are those who most skillfully conceal their benevolent intent.
In Coleman’s “Life of Charles Reade” there is a paragraph which gives us a glimpse of a prejudice that has resisted the efforts of the most learned men to eradicate it. An incident is there recorded that took place when Reade was a fellow in Magdalen College. “Just as I was about to terminate my term of office (I hope with credit to myself and the ’Varsity), an untoward incident occurred which embittered my relations for life with two very distinguished men. Professor Goldwin Smith and his friend John Conington, who belonged to us, had attempted to inaugurate a debating society. A handful of unmannerly young cubs, resenting the attempt to teach them political economy, ducked poor Conington under the college pump.”
“Resenting the attempt to teach them political economy!”--What is the source of that resentment? What psychologist has fathomed the abyss of the dark prejudice which the natural man has against those who would improve his mind? It is a feud which reaches back into hoar antiquity. Doubtless the accumulated grievances of generations of schoolboys have intensified the feud, but no amelioration of educational methods has put an end to it. In the most successful teacher you may detect a nervous strain like that which the trainer of wild beasts in the arena undergoes. His is a perilous position, and every faculty must be on the alert to hold the momentary ascendency. A single false motion, and the unmannerly young cubs would be upon their victim.
Must we not confess that this irrational resentment against our intellectual benefactors survives, in spite of all discipline, into mature life? We may enlarge the area of our teachableness, but there are certain subjects in regard to which we do not care to be set right. The polite conventionality according to which a person is supposed to know his own business is an evidence of this sensitiveness. Of course the assumption is not justified by facts. A man’s own business is just the thing he is conscious of not knowing, and he would give anything in a quiet way to find out. Yet when a candid friend ventures to instruct him, the old irrational resentment flashes out. What we call tact is the ability to find before it is too late what it is that our friends do not desire to learn from us. It is the art of withholding, on proper occasions, information which we are quite sure would be good for them.