Part 4
Sometimes, in reopening an old book over which long ago we had dreamed, we come upon the innocent source of some of our long-cherished opinions. Such discovery I made in the old Family Bible when opening at the pages inserted by the publisher between the Old Testament and the Apocrypha. On many a Sunday afternoon my stated hour of Bible reading was diversified by excursions into these uncanonical pages. There was a sense of stolen pleasure in the heap of miscellaneous secularities. It was like finding under the church roof a garret in which one might rummage at will. Here were tables of weights and measures, explanations about shekels, suggestions in regard to the probable length of a cubit, curious calculations as to the number of times the word “and” occurred in the Bible. Here, also, was a mysterious “Table of Offices and Conditions of Men.”
I am sure that my scheme of admirations, my conception of the different varieties of human grandeur, has been colored by that “Table of Offices and Conditions of Men.” It was my “Social Register” and Burke’s “Peerage” and “Who’s Who?” all in one. It was a formidable list, beginning with the patriarchs, and ending with the deacons. The dignity of the deacon I already knew, for my uncle was one, but his function was vastly exalted when I thought of him in connection with the mysterious personages who went before. There was the “Tirshatha, a governor appointed by the kings of Assyria,”--evidently a very great man. Then there were the “Nethinims, whose duty it was to draw water and to cleave wood.” When I was called upon to perform similar services I ventured to think that I myself, had I lived in better days, might have been recognized as a sort of Nethinim.
Here, also, I learned the exact age of the world, not announced arbitrarily, but with the several items all set down, so that I might have verified them for myself, had I been mathematically gifted. “The whole sum and number of years from the beginning of the world unto the present year of our Lord 1815 is 5789 years, six months, and the said odd ten days.” I have no prejudice in favor of retaining that chronology as far as the thousands are concerned. Five thousand years is one way of saying it was a very long time. If the geologists prefer to convey the same idea by calling it millions, I am content; but I should hate to give up the “said odd ten days.”
From the same Table of Offices and Conditions I imbibed my earliest philosophical prejudices; for there I learned the difference between the Stoics and the Epicureans.
The Stoics were described succinctly as “those who denied the liberty of the will.” Just what this might mean was not clear, but it had an ugly sound. The Stoics were evidently contentious persons. On the other hand, all that was revealed concerning the Epicureans was that they “placed all happiness in pleasure.” This seemed an eminently sensible idea. I could not but be favorably disposed toward people who managed to get happiness out of their pleasures.
To the excessive brevity of these definitions I doubtless owe an erroneous impression concerning that ancient, and now almost extinct people, the Samaritans. The name has had to me a suggestion of a sinister kind of scholarship, as if the Samaritans had been connected with some of the black arts. Yet I know nothing in their history to justify this impression. The source of the error was revealed when I turned again to the “Table of Offices and Conditions of Men” and read once more, “Samaritans, mongrel professors, half heathen and half Jew.” How was I to know that the reference was to professors of religion, and not to professors of the arts and sciences?
As there are prejudices which begin in verbal misunderstandings, so there are those which are nourished by the accidental collocation of words. A noun is known by the adjectives it keeps. When we hear of dull conservatism, rabid radicalism, selfish culture, timid piety, smug respectability, we receive unfavorable impressions. We do not always stop to consider that all that is objectionable really inheres in the qualifying words. In a well-regulated mind, after every such verbal turn there should be a call to change partners. Let every noun take a new adjective, and every verb a new adverb.
Clever Bohemians, having heard so much of “smug respectability,” take a dislike to respectability. But some of the smuggest persons are not respectable at all,--far from it! Serenely satisfied with their own irresponsibility, they look patronizingly upon the struggling world that owes them a living. I remember a visit from one of these gentry. He called to indicate his willingness to gratify my charitable impulses by accepting from me a small loan. If I did not believe the story of his frequent incarcerations I might consult the chaplain of the House of Correction. He evidently considered that he had a mission. He went about offering his hard and impenitent heart as a stone on which the philanthropists might whet their zeal. Smug respectability, forsooth!
From force of habit we speak of the “earnest” reformer, and we are apt to be intolerant of his lighter moods. Wilberforce encountered this prejudice when he enlivened one of his speeches with a little mirth. His opponent seized the opportunity to speak scornfully of the honorable gentleman’s “religious facetiousness.” Wilberforce replied very justly that “a religious man might sometimes be facetious, seeing that the irreligious did not always escape being dull.”
An instance of the growth of a verbal prejudice is that which in certain circles resulted in the preaching against what was called “mere morality.” What the preachers had in mind was true enough. They objected to _mere_ morality, as one might say, “Mere life is not enough to satisfy us, we must have something to live on.” They would have more than a bare morality. It should be clothed with befitting spiritual raiment. But the parson’s zeal tended to outrun his discretion, and forgetting that the true object of his attack was the mereness and not the morality, he gave the impression that the Moral Man was the great enemy of the faith. At last the parishioner would turn upon his accuser. “You need not point the finger of scorn at me. What if I have done my duty to the best of my ability! You should not twit on facts. If it comes to that, you are not in a position to throw stones. If I am a moral man, you’re another.”
There are prejudices which are the result of excessive fluency of speech. The flood of words sweeps away all the natural distinctions of thought. All things are conceived of under two categories,--the Good and the Bad. If one ill is admitted, it is assumed that all the rest follow in its train. There are persons who cannot mention “the poor” without adding, “the weak, the wretched, the oppressed, the downtrodden, the suffering, the sick, the sinful, the erring,” and so on to the end of the catalogue. This is very disconcerting to a young fellow who, while in the best of health and spirits, is conscious that he is rather poor. He would willingly admit his poverty were it not for the fear of being smothered under the wet blanket of universal commiseration.
When the category of the Good is adopted with the same undiscriminating ardor the results are equally unfortunate. We are prejudiced against certain persons whom we have never met. We have heard nothing but good of them, and we have heard altogether too much of that. Their characters have been painted in glaring virtues that swear at one another. We are sure that we should not like such a combination of unmitigated excellencies, for human nature abhors a paragon. And yet the too highly commended person may, in reality, not be a paragon at all, but a very decent fellow. He would quickly rise in our regard were it not for the eulogies which hang like millstones around his neck.
It is no easy thing to praise another in such a way as to leave a good impression on the mind of the hearer. A virtue is not for all times. When a writer is too highly commended for being laborious and conscientious we are not inclined to buy his book. His conscience doth make cowards of us all. It may be proper to recommend a candidate for a vacant pulpit as indefatigable in his pastoral labors; but were you to add, in the goodness of your heart, that he was equally indefatigable as a preacher, he would say, “An enemy hath done this.” For the congregation would suspect that his freedom from fatigue in the pulpit was likely to be gained at their expense.
The prejudices which arise from verbal association are potent in preventing any impartial judgment of men whose names have become household words. The man whose name has become the designation of a party or a theory is the helpless victim of his own reputation. Who takes the trouble to pry into the personal opinions of John Calvin? Of course they were Calvinistic. When we hear of the Malthusian doctrine about population, we picture its author as a cold-blooded, economical Herod, who would gladly have ordered a massacre of the innocents. Let no one tell us that the Reverend Richard Malthus was an amiable clergyman, who was greatly beloved by the small parish to which he ministered. In spite of all his church wardens might say, we would not trust our children in the hands of a man who had suggested that there might be too many people in the world. But in such cases we should remember that a man’s theories do not always throw light upon his character. When a distinguished physician has a disease named after him, it is understood that the disease is the one he discovered, and not the one he died of.
When the Darwinian hypothesis startled the world, many pious imaginations conceived definite pictures of the author of it. These pictures had but one thing in common,--their striking unlikeness to the quiet gentleman who had made all this stir. By the way, Darwin was the innocent victim of two totally disconnected lines of prejudice. After he had outlived the disfavor of the theologians, he incurred the contempt of the apostles of Culture; all because of his modest confession that he did not enjoy poetry as much as he once did. Unfortunately, his scientific habit of mind led him to say that he suspected that he might be suffering from atrophy of the imaginative faculty. Instantly every literal-minded reader and reviewer exclaimed, “How dreadful! What a judgment on him!” Yet, when we stop to think about it, the affliction is not so uncommon as to call for astonishment. Many persons suffer from it who are not addicted to science.
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After all, these are harmless prejudices. They are content with their own little spheres; they ask only to live and let live. There are others, however, that are militantly imperialistic. They are ambitious to become world powers. Such are those which grow out of differences in politics, in religion, and in race.
Political animosities have doubtless been mitigated by freer social intercourse, which gives more opportunities for meeting on neutral ground. It is only during a heated campaign that we think of all of the opposing party as rascals. There is time between elections to make the necessary exceptions. It is customary to make allowance for a certain amount of partisan bias, just as the college faculty allows a student a certain number of “cuts.” It is a just recognition of human weakness.
Our British cousins go farther, and provide means for the harmless gratification of natural prejudices. There are certain questions on which persons are expected to express themselves with considerable fervor, and without troubling themselves as to the reasonableness of their contention. In a volume of published letters I was pleased to read one from a member of the aristocracy. He had been indulging in trivial personalities, when suddenly he broke off with “Now I must go to work on the Wife’s Sister’s Question; I intend to make a good stout protest against that rascally bill!” There is no such exercise for the moral nature as a good stout protest. We Americans take our exercise spasmodically. Instead of going about it regularly, we wait for some extraordinary occasion. We make it a point of sportsmanship to shoot our grievance on the wing, and we are nervously anxious lest it get out of range before we have time to take aim.
Not so the protesting Briton. He approves of the answer of Jonah when he was asked, “Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?” Jonah, without any waste of words, replied, “I do well to be angry.” When the Englishman feels that it is well for him to be angry, he finds constitutional means provided. Parliament furnishes a number of permanent objects for his disapproval. Whenever he feels disposed he can make a good stout protest, feeling assured that his indignation is well bestowed. He has such satisfaction as that which came to Mr. Micawber in reading his protest against the villainies of Uriah Heep: “Much afflicted but still intensely enjoying himself, Mr. Micawber folded up the letter and handed it with a bow to my aunt, as something she might like to keep.”
These stout-hearted people have learned not only how to take their pleasures sadly, but, what is more to the purpose, how to take their sadnesses pleasantly. We Americans have, here, something to learn. We should get along better if we had a number of argument-proof questions like that in regard to marriage with the deceased wife’s sister which could be warranted to recur at regular intervals. They could be set apart as a sort of public playground for the prejudices. It would at least keep the prejudices out of mischief.
Religious prejudice has an air of singularity. The singular thing is that there should be such a variety. If we identify religion with the wisdom that is from above, and which is “first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated, without partiality,” it is hard to see where the prejudice comes in. Religious prejudice is a compound of religion and several decidedly earthly passions. The combination produces a peculiarly dangerous explosive. The religious element has the same part in it that the innocent glycerine has in nitro-glycerine. This latter, we are told, is “a compound produced by the action of a mixture of strong nitric and sulphuric acids on glycerine at low temperatures.” It is observable that in the making of religious prejudice the religion is kept at a very low temperature, indeed.
We are at present in an era of good feeling. Not only is there an interchange of kindly offices between members of different churches, but one may detect a tendency to extend the same tolerance to the opposing party in the same church. This is a real advance, for it is always more difficult to do justice to those who differ from us slightly than to those whose divergence is fundamental. To love our friends is a work of nature, to love our enemies is a work of grace; the troublesome thing is to get on with those who are “betwixt and between.” In such a case we are likely to fall between nature and grace as between two stools. Almost any one can be magnanimous in great affairs, but to be magnanimous in trifles is like trying to use a large screw-driver to turn a small screw.
In a recently published correspondence between dignitaries of the Church of England I find many encouraging symptoms. The writers exhibit a desire to do justice not only to the moral, but also to the intellectual, gifts of those who differ from them even slightly. There is, of course, enough of the old Adam remaining to make their judgments on one another interesting reading. It is pleasant to see brethren dwelling together in unity,--a pleasure seldom prolonged to the point of satiety. Thus the Dean of Norwich writes to the Dean of Durham in regard to Dean Stanley. Alluding to an opinion, in a previous letter, in regard to Archbishop Tait, the writer says: “I confess I shouldn’t have ranked him among the great men of the day. Of our contemporaries I should have assigned that rank, without hesitation, to little Stan, though I quite think he did more mischief in our church and to religion than most men have it in them to do. Still I should say that little Stan was a great man in his way.” There you may see a mind that has, with considerable difficulty, uprooted a prejudice, though you may still perceive the place where the prejudice used to be.
While the methods of the exact sciences have had a discouraging effect on partisan and sectarian prejudices, they seem, for the moment, to have given new strength to those which are the result of differences in race. Time was when Anti-Semitism derived its power from religious rancor. The cradle hymn which the Puritan mother sang began sweetly,--
Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber! Holy angels guard thy bed!
But after a while the mother thinks of the wickedness of the Jews:--
Yet to read the shameful story How the Jews abused their King, How they served the Lord of Glory, Makes me angry while I sing.
In these days, the Anti-Semites are not so likely to be angry while they sing, as while they cast up their accounts.
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The natural sciences discriminate between classes rather than between individuals. Sociology deals with groups, and not with persons. Anthropology acquaints us with the aboriginal and unmoralized man. It emphasizes the solidarity of the clan and the persistence of the cult. Experimental psychology is at present interested in the sub-conscious and instinctive life. For its purpose it treats a man as a series of nervous reactions. Human history is being rewritten as a branch of Natural History. Eliminating the part played by personal will, it exhibits an age-long warfare between nations and races.
This is all very well so long as we remember what it is that we are studying. Races, cults, and social groups exist and have their history. There is no harm in defining the salient characteristics of a race, and saying that, on the whole, one race is inferior to another. The difficulty comes when this rough average is made the dead line beyond which an individual is not allowed to pass.
In our Comedy of Errors, which is always slipping into tragedy, there are two Dromios on the stage,--the Race and the Individual. The Race is an abstraction which can bear any amount of punishment without flinching. You may say anything you please about it and not go far wrong. It is like criticising a composite photograph. There is nothing personal about it. Who is offended at the caricatures of Brother Jonathan or of John Bull? We recognize certain persistent national traits, but we also recognize the element of good-humored exaggeration. The Jew, the Slav, the Celt, the Anglo-Saxon have existed for ages. Each has admired himself, and been correspondingly disliked by others. Even the Negro as a racial abstraction is not sensitive. You may, if you will, take up the text, so much quoted a generation ago, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be.... God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” Dromio Africanus listens unmoved to the exegesis of Petroleum V. Nasby and his compeers at the Crossroads: “God cust Canaan, and sed he shood be a servant forever. Did he mean us to pay him wages? Not eny: for ef he hed he wood hev ordered our tastes and habits so es we shood hev hed the wherewithal to do it.”
The impassive Genius of Africa answers the Anglo-Saxon: “If it pleases you to think that your prejudice against me came out of the Ark, so be it. If you find it agreeable to identify yourself with Japheth who shall providentially be enlarged, I may as well be Canaan.”
So long as the doctrinaires of the Crossroads are dealing only with highly generalized conceptions no harm is done. But now another Dromio appears. He is not a race; he is a person. He has never come that way before, and he is bewildered by what he sees and hears. Immediately he is beset by those who accuse him of crimes which some one who looks like him has committed. He is beaten because he does not know his place; how can he know it, stumbling as he does upon a situation for which he is altogether unprepared? It is an awkward predicament, this of being born into the world as a living soul. Under the most favorable conditions it is hard for the new arrival to find himself, and adjust himself to his environment. But this victim of mistaken identity finds that he has been judged and condemned already. When he innocently tries to make the most of himself a great uproar is created. What right has he to interfere with the preconceived opinions of his betters? They understand him, for have they not known him for many generations?
Poor man Dromio! Whether he have a black skin or a yellow, and whatever be the racial type which his features suggest, the trouble is the same. He is sacrificed on the altar of our stupidity. He suffers because of our mental color-blindness, which prevents our distinguishing persons. We see only groups, and pride ourselves on our defective vision. By and by we may learn to be a little ashamed of our crudely ambitious generalizations. A finer gift is the ability to know a man when we see him. It may be that Nature is “careful of the type,” and “careless of the single life.” If that be so, it may be the part of wisdom for us to give up some of our anxieties about the type, knowing that Nature will take care of that. Such relief from excessive cosmic responsibility will give us much more time for our proper work, which is to deal justly with each single life.
HOW TO KNOW THE FALLACIES
My friend Scholasticus was in a bad way. He had been educated before the elective system came in, and he had a pathetic veneration for the old curriculum. It was to him the sacred ark, now, alas, carried away into the land of the Philistines. He cherished it as a sort of creed containing the things surely to be learned by a gentleman, and whoso hath not learned these things, let him be anathema. In meeting the present-day undergraduates, it was hard to say which amazed him most, the things they knew or the things they did not know. Perhaps the new knowledge seemed to him the more uncouth.
“The intellectual world,” he would say, “is topsy-turvy. What is to be expected of a generation that learns to write before it learns to read, and learns to read before it learns to spell,--or rather which never does learn to spell. Everything begins wrong end foremost. In my day small children were supposed to be ‘pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw,’ until such time as they were old enough to be put to stiff work on the First Reader. Nowadays, the babes begin with the esoteric doctrine of their playthings. Even the classics of infancy are rationalized. I was about to buy a copy of ‘Mother Hubbard and her Dog’ for a dear young friend, when I discovered that it was a revised version. The most stirring incident was given thus,--
She went to the baker’s to buy some bread, And when she came back the dog looked dead.
That wasn’t the way the tale was told to me. I was told that the poor dog was dead, and I believed it. That didn’t prevent my believing a little while after that the doggie was dancing a jig. I took it for granted that that was the way dogs did in Mother Hubbard’s day. Nowadays, the critics in bib and tucker insist that the story must conform to what they have prematurely learned about the invariable laws of nature.