Chapter 6

The occurrence of a panic fills the breasts of all these with various degrees of rejoicing. They always take a very dark view of it, and laugh contemptuously at those who consider it a "Wall-Street flurry," or ascribe it to any vice in the currency or in the banking system. Extravagant living they believe to be at the bottom of it, and, like the hard-money men, they are only surprised that it has not come sooner, and they believe most firmly that it is going to effect a sort of social revolution, and bring the world more nearly to their own ideal of what it ought to be. The amount of "rottenness" which they expect it to reveal is always enormous, and they look forward to the exposure and the general coming-down of their guilty neighbors to "the hard pan" with the keenest relish. They have long, for instance, been unable to imagine where the multitude of people who live in brown-stone houses get the money to keep them. There was something wrong about it, they felt satisfied, though they could not tell what, and when the panic comes they half fancy that the murder will out, and that there will be a great migration of fraudulent bankrupts from Fifth Avenue and its neighborhood into tenement-houses on the East and North Rivers. How Mrs. Smith, too, dressed as she did, and where Smith got the money to take her to Sharon every summer, and how Jones managed to entertain as he was doing, have often been puzzling problems, which "the crash" in the money market is at last going to solve. It is also highly gratifying to those who consider yachting a senseless amusement to reflect that the panic will probably diminish the number of yachts, and they even flatter themselves that it may stop yachting in future, and reduce the general style of living among rich young men. "We shall now," they say, "have fewer fast horses, and less champagne, and less gaudy furniture, and more honest, hard work, and plain, wholesome food." They accordingly rejoice in the panic as a means adopted by Providence to bring a gluttonous and ungodly generation to its senses, and lead it back to that state of things which is known, as "republican simplicity."

The curious thing about this expectation is that it has survived innumerable disappointments without apparently losing any of its vigor. It was strong after 1837, and strong after 1857, and stronger than ever after 1861. The war was surely, people said, to bring back the golden age, when all the men were prudent, sober, and industrious, and all the women simple, modest, and homekeeping. The war did nothing of the kind. In fact, it left us more extravagant and lavish and self-indulgent than ever; yet the ancient and tough belief in the purifying influence of a stringent money market still lasts, and is at this moment cropping out in the moral department of a thousand newspapers.

The belief belongs to what may be called the cataclysmal theory of progress, which improves the world by sudden starts, and clings so fondly to liquor-laws, and has profound faith in specific remedies for moral and political diseases. What commercial panics and great national misfortunes do not do, particular bits of legislation are sure to do. You put something in the Constitution, or forbid something, or lose a battle, or have a "shrinkage of values," or have a cholera season, and forthwith the community turns over a new leaf, and becomes moral, economical, and sober-minded. We doubt whether this theory will ever die out, however much philosophers may preach against it, or however often facts may refute it, because it gratifies, or promises to gratify, one of the deepest longings of the human heart--the desire which each man feels to have a great deal of history crowded into his own little day. None of us can bear to quit the scene without witnessing the solution of the problems by which his own life has been vexed or over which he has long labored. Indeed a great many men would find it impossible to work with any zeal to bring about results which would probably not be witnessed until they had been centuries in the tomb.

We accordingly find that the most eager reformers are apt to be those who look for the triumph of virtue by the close of the current year. Of all dreams of eager reformers, however, there is probably none more substantial than that which looks for a restoration of that vague thing called "simplicity of manners." Simplicity and economy are, of course, relative terms. The luxurious gentleman in the fourteenth century lived in a way which the well-to-do artisan in our own time would not tolerate; and when we undertake to carry people back to ancient ways of living we find that there is hardly a point short of barbarism at which we can consistently stop. A country in which money is easily made and abounds, will be one in which money will always be freely spent, and in which personal comfort and even display will occupy men's and women's thoughts a great deal. We can no more prevent this than we can prevent the growth of wealth itself; and our duty is, instead of wasting our breath in denouncing extravagance, or hailing panics as purging fires, to do what in us lies to give rich people more taste, more conscience, more sense of responsibility for curable ills, and a keener relish of the higher forms of pleasure. Extravagance--or, in other words, the waste of money on sensual enjoyment, the production of hideous furniture or jewelry, or of barbarous display--has to be checked not by the preaching of poor people, but by the rich man's own superiority to these things, and his own repugnance for them. This repugnance can only be inspired by education, whether that of school and college, or that of a refined and cultivated social atmosphere. Much would be done in this direction if public opinion exacted of the owners of large fortunes that they should give their sons the best education the country affords; or, in other words, send them to college, instead of setting them up in the dry-goods business or the grocery business. A man who has made a large fortune in honest trade or industry has not contributed his share to moral and intellectual interests by merely making donations. It is his duty, also, if he leaves children behind him, to see to it, as far as he can, that they are men who will be an addition to the general culture and taste of the nation, and who will stimulate its nobler ambition, raise its intellectual standard, quicken its love of excellence in all fields, and deepen its faith in the value of things not seen.

THE ODIUM PHILOLOGICUM

Our readers and those of _The Galaxy_ are familiar with the controversy between Dr. Fitzedward Hall and Mr. Grant White (November, 1873). When one comes to inquire what it was all about, and why Mr. White was led to consider Dr. Hall a "yahoo of literature," and "a man born without a sense of decency," one finds himself engaged in an investigation of great difficulty, but of considerable interest. The controversy between these two gentlemen by no means brings up the problem for the first time. That verbal criticism, such as Mr. White has been producing for some time back, is sure to end, sooner or later, in one or more savage quarrels, is one of the most familiar facts of the literary life of our day. Indeed, so far as our observation has gone, the rule has no exceptions. Whenever we see a gentleman, no matter how great his accomplishments or sweet his temper, announcing that he is about to write articles or deliver lectures on "Words and their Uses," or on the "English of Every-day Life," or on "Familiar Faults of Conversation," or "Newspaper English," or any cognate theme, we feel all but certain that we shall soon see him engaged in an encounter with another laborer in the same field, in which all dignity will be laid aside, and in which, figuratively speaking, clothes, hair, and features will suffer terribly, and out of which, unless he is very lucky, he will issue with the gravest imputations resting on his character in every relation of life.

Now why is it that attempts to get one's fellow-men to talk correctly, to frame their sentences in accordance with good usage, and take their words from the best authors, have this tendency to arouse some of the worst passions of our nature, and predispose even eminent philologists--men of dainty language, and soft manners, and lofty aims--to assail each other in the rough vernacular of the fish-market and the forecastle? A careless observer will be apt to say that it is an ordinary result of disputation; that when men differ or argue on any subject they are apt to get angry and indulge in "personalities." But this is not true. Lawyers, for instance, live by controversy, and their controversies touch interests of the gravest and most delicate character--such as fortune and reputation; and yet the spectacle of two lawyers abusing each other in cold blood, in print, is almost unknown. Currency and banking are, at certain seasons, subjects of absorbing interest, and, for the last seventy years, the discussions over them have been numerous and voluminous almost beyond example, and yet we remember no case in which a bullionist called a paper-money man bad names, or in which a friend of free banking accused a restrictionist of defrauding the poor or defacing tombstones. Politics, too, home and foreign, is a fertile source of difference of opinion; and yet gross abuse, on paper, of each other, by political disputants, discussing abstract questions having no present relation to power or pay, are very rare indeed.

It seems, at first blush, as if an examination of the well-known _odium theologicum_, or the traditional bitterness which has been apt to characterize controversies about points of doctrine, from the Middle Ages down to a period within our own memory, would throw some light on the matter. But a little consideration will show that there are special causes for the rancor of theologians for which word-criticism has no parallel. The _odium theologicum_ was the natural and inevitable result of the general belief that the holding of certain opinions was necessary to salvation, and that the formation of opinions could be wholly regulated by the will. This belief, pushed to its extreme limits and embodied in legislation, led to the burning of heretics in nearly all Christian countries. When B's failure to adopt A's conclusions was by A regarded as a sign of depravity of nature which, would lead to B's damnation, nothing was more natural than that when they came into collision in pamphlets or sermons they should have attributed to each other the worst motives. A man who was deliberately getting himself ready for perdition was not a person to whom anybody owed courtesy or consideration, or whose arguments, being probably supplied by Satan, deserved respectful examination. We accordingly find that as the list of "essential" opinions has become shortened, and as doubts as to men's responsibility for their opinions have made their way from the world into the church, theological controversy has lost its acrimony and indeed has almost ceased. No theologian of high standing or character now permits himself to show bad temper in a doctrinal or hermeneutical discussion, and a large and increasing proportion of theologians acknowledge that the road to heaven is so hard for us all that the less quarrelling and jostling there is in it, the better for everybody.

Nor does the _odium scientificum_, of which we have now happily but occasional manifestations, furnish us with any suggestions. Controversy between scientific men begins to be bitter and frequent, as the field of investigation grows wider and the investigation itself grows deeper. But then this is easily accounted for. All scientific men of the first rank are engaged in original research--that is, in attempts to discover laws and phenomena previously unknown. The workers in all departments are very numerous, and are scattered over various countries, and as one discovery, however slight, is very apt to help in some degree in the making of another, scientific men are constantly exposed to having their claims to originality contested, either as regards priority in point of time or as regards completeness. Consequently, they may be said to stand in delicate relations to each other, and are more than usually sensitive about the recognition of their achievements by their brethren--a state of things which, while it cultivates a very nice sense of honor, leads occasionally to encounters in which free-will seems for the moment to get the better of law. The differences of the scientific world, too, are complicated by the theological bearing of a good deal of scientific discovery and discussion, and many a scientific man finds himself either compelled to defend himself against theologians, or to aid theologians in bringing an erring brother to reason.

The true source of the _odium philologicum_ is, we think, to be found in the fact that a man's speech is apt to be, or to be considered, an indication of the manner in which he has been bred, and of the character of the company he keeps. Criticism of his mode of using words, or his pronunciation, or the manner in which he compounds his sentences, almost inevitably takes the character of an attack on his birth, parentage, education, and social position; or, in other words, on everything which he feels most sensitive about or holds most dear. If you say that his pronunciation is bad, or that his language is slangy or ill-chosen, you insinuate that when he lived at home with his papa and mamma he was surrounded by bad models, or, in plain English, that his parents were vulgar or ignorant people; when you say that he writes bad grammar, or is guilty of glaring solecisms, or displays want of etymological knowledge, you insinuate that his education was neglected, or that he has not associated with correct speakers. Usually, too, you do all this in the most provoking way by selecting passages from his writings on which he probably prided himself, and separating them totally from the thought of which he was full when he produced them, and then examining them mechanically, as if they were algebraic signs, which he used without knowing what they meant or where they would bring him out. Nobody stands this process very long with equanimity, because nobody can be subjected to it without being presented to the public somewhat in the light of an ignorant, careless, and pretentious donkey. Nor will it do to cite your examples from deceased authors. You cannot do so without assailing some form of expression which an eager, listening enemy is himself in the habit of using, and is waiting for you to take up, and through which he hopes to bring you to shame.

No man, moreover, can perform the process without taking on airs which rouse his victim to madness, because he assumes a position not only of grammatical, but, as we have said, of social superiority. He says plainly enough, no matter how polite or scientific he may try to seem, "I was better born and bred than you, and acquired these correct turns of expression, of which you know nothing, from cultivated relatives;" or, "I live in cultivated circles, and am consequently familiar with the best usage, which you, poor fellow! are not. I am therefore able to decide this matter without argument or citations, and your best course is to take my corrections in silence or with thankfulness." It is easy to understand how all interest in orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody speedily disappears in a controversy of this sort, and how the disputants begin to burn with mutual dislike, and how each longs to inflict pain and anguish on his opponent, and make him, no matter by what means, an object of popular pity and contempt, and make his parts of speech odious and ridiculous. The influence of all good men ought to be directed either to repressing verbal criticism, or restricting indulgence in it to the family circle or to schools and colleges.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S LECTURES

Biologist like Professor Huxley have, as popular lecturers, the advantage over scientific men in other fields, of occupying themselves with what is to ninety-nine men and women out of a hundred the most momentous of all problems--the manner in which life on this globe began, and in which men and other animals came to be what they are. The doctrine of evolution as a solution of these problems, or of one of them, derives additional interest from the fact that in many minds it runs counter to ideas which a very large proportion of the population above the age of thirty imbibed with the earliest and most impressive portion of their education. Down to 1850 the bulk of intelligent men and women believed that the world, and all that is therein, originated in the precise manner described in the first chapter of Genesis, and about six thousand years ago. Most of the adaptations, or attempts at adaptation, of what is called the Mosaic account of the creation, of the chronological theories of the geologists and evolutionists by theologians and Biblical scholars have been made within that period, and it may be safely said that it is only within ten or fifteen years that any clear knowledge of the "conflict between science and religion" has reached that portion of the people who take a lively or, indeed, any interest, in religious matters. It would not, in fact, be rash to say that little or nothing is known about this conflict to this hour among the great body of Methodists or Catholics, or the evangelical portion of other denominations, and that their religious outlook is little, if at all, affected by it. One would never detect, for instance, in Mr. Moody's preaching, any indication that he had ever heard of any such conflict, or that the doctrines of the orthodox Protestant Church had undergone any sensible modification within a hundred years. Professor Huxley and men like him, therefore, make their appearance now not simply as manipulators of a most interesting subject, but as disturbers of beliefs which are widely spread, deeply rooted, and surrounded by the tenderest and most sacred associations of human existence.

That under such circumstances he has met with so little opposition is, on the whole, rather surprising. As far as our observation has gone, no strong hostility whatever to himself or his teachings has been shown, except in one or two instances, by either the clergy or the religious press. Indeed, ministers formed a very prominent and attentive portion of his audience at the recent lectures at Chickering Hall. But it has been made very apparent by the articles and letters which these lectures have called out in the newspapers that the religious public has hardly understood him. The collision between the theologians and the scientific men has been very slight among us; and, indeed, the waves of the controversy hardly reached this country until the storm had passed away in Europe, so that it is difficult for Americans to appreciate the combative tone of Mr. Huxley's oratory. Of this difficulty the effect of his substitution of Milton for Moses as the historian of the creation, on the night of his first lecture, has furnished an amusing illustration. The audience, or at least that portion of it which was gifted with any sense of humor, saw the joke and laughed over it heartily. It was simply a telling rhetorical device, intended to point a sarcasm directed against the biblical commentators who have been trying to extract the doctrines of evolution from the first chapter of Genesis. But many of the newspapers all over the country took it up seriously, and the professor must, if he saw them, have enjoyed mightily the various letters and articles which have endeavored in solemn earnest to show that Milton was not justly entitled to the rank of a scientific expositor, and that it was a cowardly thing in the lecturer to attack Moses over Milton's shoulders. Whenever Professor Huxley enters on the defence of his science, as distinguished from the exposition of it, there are traces in his language of the _gaudium certaminis_ which has found expression in so many hard-fought fields in his own country, and which has made him perhaps the most formidable antagonist, in so far as dialectics go, that the transcendental philosophers have ever encountered. He is, _par excellence_, a fighting man, but certainly his pugnacity diminishes neither his worth nor his capacity.

In many of the comments which his lectures have called out in the newspapers one meets every now and then with a curious failure to comprehend the position which an average non-scientific man occupies in such a conflict as in now going on over the doctrines of evolution. Professor Huxley was very careful not to repeat the error which delivered Professor Tyndall into the hands of the enemy at Belfast. He expressed no opinion as to the nature of the causal force which called the world into existence. He did not profess to know anything about the sources of life. He consequently did not once place himself on the level of the theologian or the unscientific spectator. What he undertook to do and did was to present to the audience some specimens of the evidence by which evolutionists have been led to the conclusion that their theory is correct. Now, the mistake which a good many newspaper writers--some of them ministers--have made in passing judgment on the lectures lies in their supposing that this evidence must be weak and incomplete because _they_ have not been convinced. There is probably no more widely diffused fallacy, or one which works more mischief in all walks of life, than the notion that it is only those whose business it is to persuade who need to be trained in the art of proof, and that those who are to be persuaded need no process of preparation at all.

The fact is that skill in reasoning is as necessary on the one side as the other. He cannot be fully and rightly convinced who does not himself know how to convince, and no man is competent to judge in the last resort of the force of an argument who is not on something like an equality of knowledge and dialectical skill with the person using it. This is true in all fields of discussion; it is pre-eminently true in scientific fields. Of course, therefore, the real public of the scientific man--the public which settles finally whether he has made out his case--is a small one. Outside of it there is another and larger one on which his reasoning may act with irresistible force; but just as the fact that it does so act does not prove that his hypothesis is true, so also the fact that it has failed to convince proves nothing against its soundness. In other words, a man's occupying the position of a listener does not necessarily clothe him with the attributes of a judge, and there may be as much folly and impertinence in his going about saying, "I do not agree with Huxley; he has not satisfied me; he will have to produce more proof than that before I believe in evolution," as in going about saying, "I know as much about evolution as Huxley and could give as good a lecture on it as he any day." And yet a good many people are guilty of the one who would blush at the mere thought of the other.