Though I was then hardly fifteen, the other teachers would gently ask me if I would engage in prayer in their meetings, which meant praying aloud among them. The idea made me tremble. I was very shy, and the sound of my own voice was as a thing apart from me, for which I was responsible, and which I could not control. Then, what should I say? To say what others said, to utter a few familiar scriptural phrases, diluted by ignorant earnestness, seemed to me, even at that time, an insipid offering of praise. Then it occurred to me to notice any newness of thought and expression I heard in week-day discourses, and with them I composed small prayers, which brought me some credit when I spoke them, as they were unlike any one else's. But only once—at a Friday night's church meeting—did I pray with natural freedom. Afterwards I avoided requests to pray, as I thought it unreal to be thinking more of the terms of the prayer than the simple spirit of it, and I hoped that one day fitting language would become natural to me.
It is proof that my mind was as free from scientific inspiration as any saint's, since I had no misgiving as to the effect of prayer. If Christianity were preached for the first time now to well-to-do people, able to help themselves, it would be treated like Mormonism in America; but to the poor who have neither money nor reflection, Christianity, as a praying power, is a very real thing. People who have no idea that help will, or can, come in any other way, are glad to think that it may come from heaven. It had never been explained to me that low wages were caused by there being too many labourers in the market, or that ill-health is caused by poor food and hard condition. It was my daily habit to pray for things most necessary and always deficient, not for myself alone, but for others to whom in their need I would give, at any cost to myself—to whom, if disinterested prayers were answered, any God of sympathy would give. Yet, though no prayer was answered, it did not strike me that that method of help failed. Prayer was no remedy, yet I did not see its futility. Had I spent a single hour only in "dropping a bucket into an empty well, never drawing any water up," I should not have continued the operation without further inquiry. It never struck me that, if preachers could obtain material aid by prayer, or knew any form of supplication by which it could be obtained, they might grow rich in a day by selling copies of that priceless formula. No Church would be needy, no believer would be poor.
In those days Christianity was a very real thing to me. What was part of my conviction was also part of my life. So far as I had knowledge, I was like the parson of Chaucer, who—
This I did with a zeal of spirit which neither knew nor sought any evasion of the letter.
At this time there came to Birmingham one Rev. Tully Cribbace, a middle-aged man with copious dark hair, pale, thin face, and earnest, unceasing speech. The zealous members of many congregations went to hear him. He interested me greatly. He rebuked our Churches, as is the way with new, wandering preachers—without appointments—for their want of faith in the promise of Christ, who had said that "Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do." I had the belief, I had asked in His name; but nothing came of it. With insufficient clothing I had gone out in inclement weather to worship, or to teach, trusting in that promise that I should be protected if no gifts of clothing came from heaven. No gifts did come, but illness from exposure often did. In a very anxious spirit I went to Mr. Cribbace's lodgings in Newhall Street, where he had said inquirers might call upon him. When he asked me "what I wished to say," I at once, not without emotion, replied, "Do you really believe, sir, what you said? Is it true that what we ask in faith we shall receive? I have great need to know that."
My seemingly abrupt and distrustful question was not a reflection upon his veracity of speech. Mr. Cribbace quite understood that from my tone of inquiry. It never struck me that his threadbare dress, his half-famished look, and necessity of "taking up a collection" the previous night "to pay expenses," showed that faith was not a source of income to him. Yet he had told us that faith would be all that to us, and with a sincerity which never seemed to me more real on any human lips. He did not mistake the earnestness or purport of my question. He parried with his answer with many words, and at length said that "the promise was to be taken with the provision that what we asked for would be given, if God thought it for our good." Christ did not think this; He did not say it; He did not suggest it. Knowing how many generations of men to the end of the world would imperil their lives on the truth of His words, He could not suffer treacherous ambiguity to creep into His meaning by omission. His words were: "If it were not so, I would have told you." There was no double meaning in Christ, no reticence, no half-statement, leaving the hearer to find out the half-concealed words which contradicted the half-revealed. All this I believed of him, and therefore I trusted Christ's sayings.
St. Chrysostom, in the prayer of the Church Litany, does not stop, but keeps open the gap through which this evasion crawls. "Almighty God," he says, "who dost promise that when two or three are gathered together in Thy name, Thou wilt grant their requests. Fulfil now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of Thy servants, as may be most expedient for them." Christ was no juggler like St. Chrysostom. A prayer is a deposit—the money of despair paid into a bank; but no one would pay money into a bank if they were told they would get back only as much as was good or expedient for them.
My heart sank within me as Mr. Cribbace spoke the words of evasion. There was nothing to be depended upon in prayer. The doctrine was a juggle of preachers. They might not mean it or think it straight out, but this is what it came to. Christ a second time repeated the words: "If ye shall ask anything in My name, I will do it." However it might be true in apostolic days, it was not true in ours, and the preachers knew it, and did not say so. Christ might as well be dead if the promise had passed away. Christianity had no material advantage to offer to the believer, whatever else it may have had.
Mr. Cribbace spoke the truth now; I could see that. Never did that morning pass from my mind. That answer did not make me disbelieve, but I was never again the same Christian I had been before. The foundation on which every forlorn, helpless, uninformed, trusting believer rests had slipped—slipped away from under my feet. Whatever Christianity might be, it was no dependence in human need. The hard, material world was not touched by prayer. How else it could be moved I then knew not.
For myself, I did not think about the terms of the Bible, but believed them. If there was an exception, it related to the saying of Christ that every "idle word" men should speak should be recorded against them. If "idle words" were to go down, then angry or wicked words would also be recorded. At night, as I made my last prayer, I tried to think over what I had said or done which might have been added to that serious catalogue, and thus I suffered more than my fair share of alarm. I did not know then that the rich have a much smaller account against them above than the poor, and that they fare better than the indigent in heaven, as they do on earth. A gentleman has his house and grounds, no one he dislikes can enter his home. His neighbour cannot much annoy him; he is at a distance from him. If he has a feud with his annoyer, he does not meet him above once a year, perhaps at a county ball, and there he can "cut" him; while a poor man lives in a house where he has several fellow-lodgers, who have done him a shabby turn, and whom he meets four or five times a day on the stairs. Evil thoughts come into his heart, evil words escape his lips, and he himself employs a recording angel all his time in taking down his offences, while the rich man has, peradventure, only a single note made against his name once a week.
It was after I had been some time at the Mechanics' Institution—which was quite a new world of thought to me—that I was asked if I would conduct a class at the New Meeting Unitarian Sunday school. The rooms in which the Mechanics' Institution was held were those of the Sunday school of the Old Meeting-house, no other being obtainable. Since anything I knew had been taught me by these generous believers, it seemed to me natural that they should invite me to assist in one of their schools, and that I should comply. My consenting was not because I shared their tenets. The Rev. Mr. Crompton, whose sister subsequently became Mrs. George Dawson, asked me after a time what my view was as to the unity of Deity. My answer was that I believed in three Deities. I had never thought of the possibility of all this great world being managed by one Being. My preference for the acquaintance of Unitarians was that there was so much more to be learned among them than among any other religious body I had known. My invitation to their school was to teach Euclid to one class, and the simpler elements of logic to another. These were subjects never thought of in the Evangelical Sunday schools to which I had belonged. The need of human knowledge had become very clear to me. I could see that young men of my age trained in Unitarian schools were very superior to Evangelical youths, who had merely spiritual information. Devoutness I knew to be goodness; but I could see it was not power. My personal piety did not conceal from me my inferiority to those better informed. This made me grateful to the Unitarians, who cared on Sundays for human as well as spiritual things; and I thought it a duty to help them, as far as my humble attainments might enable me.
As soon as this was known in the Inge Street church, to which I was considered to belong, the elders spake unto me thereupon. I was invited to a prayer-meeting, which I readily consented to attend, when I found that all the prayers were directed against me—were mere solicitations to heaven to divert my heart from continuing to attend the Unitarian schools. It would be wronging my sincere and well-meaning friends of that time, to recount the deterrents they used and the fears they expressed. Religion refined by human intelligence was regarded then as a form of sin. At the end I did not dissent from their view, but I made no promise to do what they wished. It seemed to me a sin that any youths should be as ignorant as I had been, and I refuse to give them such knowledge as I had acquired. In this matter of teaching I said it was right to do as the Unitarians did, but wrong to believe as they believed. This opinion I held all the while I was a teacher in their Sunday school.
Had these prayerful friends of mine succeeded in their object of persuading me from association with these larger believers, they would have shut the door of freedom, effort and improvement for me. My lot would have been to spend my days inviting others, with much earnestness, to cherish like incapacity. Yet I have no word of disrespect for their honest-hearted endeavour to advise me, as they thought, for the best. It was the desire of knowledge which saved me from their dangerous temptation.
The Meeting-house to whose Sunday school I went, was the one where Dr. Priestley formerly preached. It was my duty on a Sunday to accompany my class into chapel during the morning service. The scholars' seats were near the gallery stairs. The other teachers sat at the end of the forms, farthest from the stairs. I always chose the end nearest the stairs. When invited to sit elsewhere I never explained the reason why I did not. My reason was my belief that the wickedness of the preacher, in addressing only one Deity, would one day be resented by heaven, and that the roof would fall in upon the congregation. As I did not share their faith, I thought I ought not to partake of their fate; and I thought that by being near the stairs I could escape—if I saw anything uncomfortable in the behaviour of the ceiling, which I frequently watched. Being the person who would first understand what was about to happen, I concluded that my descent would be unimpeded by the flying and unsuspecting congregation. It seems to me only yesterday that I sat calculating my chance of escape as Mr. Kentish's sonorous and instructive sermon was proceeding.
These singular instances of bygone experience of a religious student, of which few similar have ever been given, must be suggestive—perhaps instructive—to religious teachers in church and chapel, engaged in inculcating their views. How much happier had been my life had there then existed that tolerance of social effort, that regard of social needs, that consideration of individual aspiration, which happily now prevail. This chapter will conclude what Herbert Spencer would call the "natural history" of a mind, or, as Lord Westbury would say, "what I am pleased to call my mind."
One evening, at the Mechanics' Institution, Birmingham, I was told that Robert Owen, who had unexpectedly arrived in town, was likely to speak in Well Lane, Allison Street, and was asked "would I go?" Mistaking the name for Robert Hall, I said I would. Of Robert Owen I had scarcely heard; of the Rev. Robert Hall (who had denounced all deflectors from the Baptist standard with brilliant bitterness) I had heard, admired (and do still), and much desired to see. Great was my disappointment when I discovered the mistake. As Mr. Owen passed me on entering the room, I—a mere youth—looked at the aged philosopher (who had been working for human welfare long before I was born) with an impertinent pity. I felt also some real terror for his future, as I thought what a "wicked old man" he must be. I had been assured by Robert Hall that morality without faith was of no avail in the eye of God.
Eventually it became known at the works where I was employed that I had been to hear Robert Owen, and remarks were made. In those days (1837-8) advocates of social reform were called "Socialists." Some of the remarks made against them were unjust Some "Socialists" were fellow-students at the Mechanics' Institution. These commentators made the usual mistake of concluding that the social thinkers in question must hold the opinions it was inferred that they held. At that time I did not understand this way of reasoning, though no doubt I used it myself, as those among whom I was reared knew no better. Everybody was sure that an opponent must mean what you inferred he meant, and charged against him the inference as a fact—never thinking of inquiring whether it was so. If I was not misled by those confident arguments, it was because I knew that the persons accused were leal and kind in daily life. Out of mere love of fairness I defended them to my working associates, as far as my knowledge went. Being told that "I did not know what their principles were" caused me to read their pamphlets and to hear some lectures. For a year or more I used the knowledge thus gained against the uninformed impressions of their aspersers around me.
Well do I remember that one day, as I passed two workmen in the mill-yard, one said to the other, "That is young Holyoake the sceptic." They did not know that "sceptic" merely meant a doubter in search of evidence. They used the word in the brutal sense of one who disbelieved the truth, knowing it to be the truth. The term startled me, as I neither believed nor assumed to believe what I had reported as the opinions of my friends. For myself, I had no thought of holding their opinions. The heresy supposed to be included in them was, indeed, my aversion. Then I made the resolution to examine their principles, with a view to show what arguments I could myself bring against them. Great was my dismay when, after months of thought, I found that the questioned tenets seemed, on the whole, to be true. These tenets were that wise material circumstances were likely to have a better influence on men than bad ones; and that, men having general qualities which they have inherited, the treatment of the worst should be tempered by compassion for their ill-fortune. Then it concerned me no more what any one said of me. It was as though I had passed into a new country, leaving behind me the barren land of supplication for a land of self-effort and improvement; and entered into the fruitful kingdom of material endeavour, where help and hope dwelt. Heretofore doubt and perturbation as to whether I was of the "elect" had oft agitated me. Now, I had no bonds in the death of my disproved opinions—no struggle, no misgivings. Without wish or effort of mine, I was delivered by reason alone from the prison-house in which I had dwelt with its many terrors. Not all at once did the terrors go. They long hovered about the mind like evil spirits tempting me to distrust the truth written in the Book of Nature, of which I believed God to be the author.
Some time before this change in my opinion occurred I had taken in, out of my slender savings, the beautiful Diamond edition of the Rev. Mr. Stebbing's Bible in parts. The type was very fine, the outline illustrations seemed to me very beautiful; they affect me with admiration still. It was the first book with marks of art about it that I had possessed. I had it bound in morocco, with silver clasps. It was quite a wonder in the workshop when I took it there. To possess many things I never cared, but if I had only one, and it had some beauty and finish in it, it was to me as though I had a light in my room at night, and the thought of it made me glad in the dark. A fellow-workman of sincere piety, whom I respected very much, coveted this Bible, and induced me to sell it to him, which I did, as I had it in my mind to get another bound in a yet daintier way.
Simple and natural as was this transaction, it was misconstrued. It was said I had "sold" my Bible, as though it was my act instead of being the act of another. Next it was reported that I had "burnt" it. Thus I became a founder of myths without knowing it. Nevertheless, it gave me pain—for nothing was more alien to my mind, my taste and reverence, than the act imputed to me. But what made a greater impression upon me, it being inconceivable, and unforeseen, was that he who induced me to part with my valued volume never came forward to say so. The inspiration of Christianism I had taken to be personal truth which could be trusted. In the noblest minds it is so still. But for the first time I found a Christian could be mean.
It was about this period that a poor woman I knew drew near to death from consumption. At times I visited and read the Scriptures to her. One night I asked her if she would like some one to pray with her. As she wished it, I induced one with whom I had been a Sunday school teacher to come with me one evening and pray by her side.
The consolation was very precious to her, and that is why I sought it for her. At no time did it seem to me that everybody should be of one opinion, since honesty of life consists in living and dying in that opinion of the truth of which you are convinced. This man whom I took with me was a workman, poor, mean, and utterly uninformed. In religious sympathy he inclined to the Ranters, who are not at all melodious Christians. Yet heaven might respect his prayer as much as a bishop's, for he had given up his night, after a hard day's labour, to afford what humble consolation he could to this poor woman.
One sentiment that had always possessed me was a pleasure in vengeance. I had quite a distinct passion of hatred where I was wronged, and had no means of resistance or redress. A man in my father's employ did something very unfair to me when I was quite a youth, and during nine years that I worked by his side I did not forget it or forgive it. The Lord's prayer taught me that I should "forgive those who trespassed against me," and at times I thought I had forgiven him, but I never had. Christian as I was, the revengeful lines of Byron long influenced me:—
No sermon, no prayer, no belief, no Divine command, rendered me neutral towards those I disliked. Neither authority nor precept had force which gave no reason for amity. But when I came to understand Coleridge's saying that "human affairs are a process," I could see that patience and wise adaptation of condition was the true method of improvement, since the tendency to nobleness or baseness was alike an inheritance nurtured by environment. If tempest of the human kind came, precaution and not anger—which means ignorance taken by surprise—was the remedy. Pity takes the place of resentment. Clearly, vengeance did but add to the misfortune of destiny.
I oft pondered Hooker's saying, that "anger is the sinew of the soul, and he that lacketh it hath a maimed mind." Nevertheless, I am content to be without that "sinew." Anger is rather the epilepsy of the understanding than the dictate of reason. I had come to see that there are no bad weeds in Nature—but much bad gardening. The reasons of amity had become clear to me, and that Helvetius was right. We should "go on loving men, but not expecting too much from them." Even Hooker could not win me back to the profitless pursuits of anger and retaliation.
These bygone days left their instruction with me evermore. In them I learned consideration for others. Whatever my convictions, I was always the same to my mother. The wish to change her views never entered my mind. She had chosen her own. I respected her choice, and she respected mine. In after years, when I visited Birmingham, I would read the Bible to her. She liked to hear my voice again as she had heard it in earlier days. When her eyes became dim by time I would send her large type editions of the New Testament, and of religious works which dwelt upon the human tenderness of Christ. The piety of parents should be sacred in the eyes of children. Convictions are the food of the soul, which perisheth on any other diet than that which can be assimilated by the conscience.
One of the bygones which had popularity in my day was silence, where explicitness was needed. Nothing is more grateful to the young understanding than clear, definite outlines. The Spectator (July 23, 1891) said that "Dean Stanley could not at any time have exactly defined what his own theology really was." George Dawson, who charmed so many audiences and was under no official restraint, never attempted it. Emerson, who criticised everybody who had an opinion, never disclosed his. Carlyle, who filled the air with adjurations to sincerity of conviction, carefully concealed his own. They who take credit for advising the public what to believe should avow their own belief. Otway, crossing the street to Dryden's house, wrote upon his door: "Here lives Dryden, a poet and a wit." Seeing these words as he came out, Dryden wrote under them: "Written by Otway opposite," which might mean: "This is but a partial and friendly estimate written by my neighbour who lives over the way, opposite to me"; or, it might mean that "It is written by Otway—the very 'opposite' of 'a poet and a wit.'" Janus sentences are the very grace of satire, because they offer a mitigating or a complimentary construction; but in questions of conscience, ethics, or politics, uncertainty is an evil—an evil worth remembering where it can be avoided.
"Socialists" were liable to indictment who officiated in a place not licensed as a place of worship. Such a license could be obtained on making a declaration on oath that their discourses were founded on belief in the cardinal tenets of the Church. Two social speakers were summoned to swear this. One was the father of the late Robert Buchanan. He and his colleague did so swear to avoid penalties, though they swore the contrary of the truth. I joined with other colleagues in protesting against this humiliation and ignominy. And in another way imprisonment came to all of us. Silence or the oath was the alternative from which there was no escape. The question then arose, "Was the existence of Deity so certainly known to men that inability to affirm it justified exclusion from citizenship?" Thus it was of the first moment to inquire whether it was so or not, and what was regarded as an atheistical investigation became a political necessity in self-defence. Was there such conclusive knowledge of the Unknowable as to warrant the law in making the possession of it a condition of justice and civil equality? Thus the refutation of Theism became a form of self-defence, and without foreseeing it, or intending it, or wishing it, I was, without any act of my own, engaged in it.
This narrative concerns those who deplore the rise and popularity of independent thinkers, alien to received doctrine. Few persons are aware how or why agnostic advocacy was welcomed and extended. Surely this is worth remembering. The tenet bore statute fruit, for the Affirmation Act came out of it.
It will be a satisfaction to students of spiritual progress to know that the extension and legalisation of the rights of conscience, brought no irreverence with it. The sense that the nature of Deity was beyond the capacity of dogmatism to define, created a feeling of profound humility in the mind; the incapacity which disabled me from asserting the infinite premises of Theism rendered denial an equal temerity. What tongue can speak, what eye can see, what imagination can conceive the marvels of the Inscrutable? I think of Deity as I think of Time, which is with us daily. Who can explain to us that mystery? Time—noiseless, impalpable, yet absolute—marshals the everlasting procession of nature. It touches us in the present with the hand of Eternity, and we know it only by finding that we were changed as it passed by us.
Events of the mind as well as of travel may be worth remembering. Columbus, high on a peak of Darien, saw an unexpected sight—never to be forgotten. Of another kind, as far as surprise was concerned, though infinitely less important in other respects, was my first reading of a passage of Pascal, which more than any other revealed to me a new world of human life. The passage was the well-known exclamation:—
"What an enigma is man? What a strange, chaotic and contradictory being? Judge of all things, feeble earth-worm, depository of the Truth, mass of uncertainty, glory and butt of the universe, incomprehensible monster! In truth, what is man in the midst of Nature? A cypher in respect to the infinite; all, in comparison with nonentity: a mean betwixt nothing and all."
Everybody knows that not only in different nations, but in the same nation, mankind present a strange variety of qualities and passions. The English are outspoken, the Scotch reticent, the Irish uncertain, the American alert, the French ceremonial. Even our English counties have their special ways of action. London is confident, Birmingham dogged, Manchester resolute, New-castle-on-Tyne has greater modesty and greater pride than any other place. Yes; every one agrees with Pascal that man is a bewildering creature. He is proud and abject, generous and mean, defiant and craven, standing up for inflexible truth, and lying in his daily life. As Byron says, "Man is half dust, half deity." If we go far enough in our search we find people of all qualities. Everybody sees these characteristics of countries and classes. Everybody recognises these conflicting elements of character in a race; but what amazed me was to perceive that they are to be found in each person in varying proportion and force—they are all there. The varieties of the race are to be found in the same individual. No man who understands this ever looks upon society as he did before. Not knowing this fact, not calculating upon it, error, distrust, disappointment, estrangement, grow up needlessly.
Twice within the public recollection, two political parties in England have been formed, and made furious by a common ignorance. During the great Slave War in America, the Southern planter was held up as a gentleman of polished manners, of cultivated tastes, a paternal master and courteous host By others he was described as selfish, sensual, tyrannical, with whom any guest who betrayed sympathy with slaves had an unpleasant time. Both accounts were true. The same model gentleman who showered upon you courtly attentions would tar and feather you if he found you display emotion when you heard the shriek of the slave under the whip. Later, Parliament, the press, and the Church were divided upon the character of the Turk. One party said he was tolerant, picturesque, abounding in concessions and hospitality. The other party described him as subtle, evasive, treacherous, vicious, and cruel. No one seemed to recognise that all the while he was both these things. He was an adept in personal deference, generous in professions, evasive and treacherous—in short, "Abdul the Damned." To those from whom the Sultan had anything to hope, his graciousness was superb—to those at his mercy he was rapacious and murderous.
The Circassians will offer their daughters to the Turk—they send their virgin beauty into the market of lust, and then fight for the purchasers. The Hindoos seem a gentle, unresisting, rice-minded people; yet have such capacity of heroic and vigilant reticence, that though we have been masters of India for one hundred and fifty years, it is said by experienced officials, we do not know the real mind of a single man. The Zulus have savage instincts and habits; but they are honest, speak the truth, and despise a man who is angry or excited.
Thiers, the great French statesman, had trust in individuals, but despised the masses. Yet the masses pulled down the Bastile, where only gentlemen were imprisoned and not themselves. The masses were moved by a generous dislike of oppression as strongly as Thiers himself.
President Washington, looking only at the corruption of classes he came in contact with, predicted evil to the future of American society. Yet, one hundred years after, a latent nobleness of sentiment appeared, which gave a million of lives in order that black men with large feet, as was scornfully said, should be free.
Because oppression had made, for years, assassination frequent in Italy, many thought every man carried a stiletto, and did not know that Italians are more patient and cooler-headed on great occasions than Englishmen or Frenchmen.
The Irish do not conceal that they are our enemies, and ruin every English movement in which they mingle, yet who have such brightness, drollery of imagination as they? Or who will stand by a friend of their country at the peril of their lives without hesitation as they do?
The Scotch display in contest a sort of divine ferocity, such as we read of in the Old Testament. Their battle song at Flodden ran thus:—
The Irish could not excel this rage of hell. Yet the same race gave us Burns and Sir Walter Scott, which no seer would have predicted or any would believe. The Scotch have deliberate generosity. Though narrow in piety they are broad in politics and have veracity in their bones.
It concerns us to notice that in every individual there is the same variety of qualities which exist in the race. Not to understand this is to misunderstand everybody with whom we come in contact. Take the case of a man in whom personal ambition predominates. That implies the existence of other qualities which may be even estimable, though subordinated to ends of power. William, the Norman Conqueror, had a gracious manner to any who lent themselves to further his ends; but, as Tennyson tells us, he was "stark as Death to those who crossed him." The first Napoleon gave thrones to generals who would occupy them in his interest, or as his instruments. The third Napoleon was very courteous even to workmen, so long as he believed they would be on his side in the streets; but their throats were not safe in the corridor outside his audience chamber, if he distrusted them.
This unexpected blandishment confused the strong brain of John Arthur Roebuck, who, under the influence of Bonapartean courtesy, forgot that he had become Emperor by perjury and murder. A man caring above all things for power will give anything to acquire it or hold it. If any one will help him even to plunder others, he will share the plunder with a liberal hand among his confederates, who proclaim him as a most amiable, generous, and disinterested gentleman. To them he is so. The political world and private life also abounds in men who, like Byron's captain, was the "best-mannered gentleman who ever scuttled a ship or cut a throat."
There are very few who say as Byron elsewhere wrote:—
The point of importance is that in judging a man we should accustom ourselves to see all about him, and, while we hate the evil, not shut our eyes to what there may be of good in the same person.
For objects of popularity men will encounter peril in promoting measures of public utility, and though they care more for themselves than for the public, the public profit by their ambition. Provided it is understood that these advocates are not to be depended upon any longer than it answers their purpose, nobody is discouraged when they take up with something else, which better serves their ends.
Men like Mr. Gladstone have a passion for conscience in politics; or, like Mr. Bright, have a passion for justice in public affairs; or, like Mr. Mill, have a passion for truth; or, like Mr. Cobden, who had a passion for national prosperity founded on freedom and peace—will encounter labour and obloquy with courage, and regard applause only as a happy accident, caring mainly for the consciousness of duty done. However, this class of men are not numerous, but command honour when known.
Men of the average sort very much resemble fishes, except that they are less quiet and not so graceful in their movements. There is the Pholas Dactylus, which resembles a small, animated sausage with a pudding head. His plan of life is to bore a perfectly tubular passage in the soft sand rock on the sea-side, and lie there with his cunning head at the mouth of his dwelling and snap up the smaller creatures who wander heedlessly by. Sometimes a near relative has made a dwelling-place at right angles to the direction in which he has elected to make his residence. He does not consult the rights or convenience of any one, but bores straight through his father or his mother-in-law. There are many persons who do the same thing. There is the subtle and picturesque devil fish, who hides himself in the sedge and opens his mouth like a railway tunnel. With the fishing-rod which Nature attaches to his nose, the end of which is contrived like a bait, he switches the bright water until fish run forward, when he draws it cleverly up, and the foolish, impetuous, and unobservant creatures rush down his cavernous and treacherous throat He offers a bait, not to feed them, but to feed himself. If people had only eyes to see, there are devil fish about in the sedges of daily life—political, clerical, and social. There is the octopus, with its long, aimless arms, as silent and lifeless as seaweed. It lies about as idle, as soft, as flexible, and as easy as error, or intemperance, or dishonesty. But let any edible thing approach it, and every limb starts into energy, every fibre is alive, every muscle contracts, and the thing seized dies in its inextricable and iron arms. People abound of the octopus species, and it is prudent to avoid them. However, the bad are not so many as are supposed. Yet, when we consider that, upon a moderate calculation, a fool a day is born—and doubtless a knave a day to keep him company—there must be some dubious people about.
A common mistake is that of taking offence at some unpleasant quality, and never looking to see whether there be not others for which we may tolerate and even respect a man. A person is often judged by a single quality, and sometimes by a single word. Persons who have lived long years in amity take offence at one expression. It may be uttered in passion; it may be spoken in mere lightness of heart, with no intention and no idea of offending—yet it enters into the foolish blood of those who hear it, and poisons the mind evermore. Nevertheless every man who reflects knows that those are fortunate and even miraculously skilful people, who can always say exactly what they intend to say, and no more. What resource of language—what insight of the minds of others—what mastery of phrases—what subtlety of discrimination—what perspicuity of statement must he possess who can express his every idea with such unerring accuracy that no word shall be redundant, or deficient, or ambiguous; and that another shall understand the speaker precisely as he understands himself! Yet by a chance phrase what friendships have been severed—what enmity has arisen—what estrangements, even in households, have occurred from these small and incidental causes? All memory of the tenderness, the kindness, the patient and generous service of years is often obliterated by a single word! The error people make is—that everything said is intended. Yet out of the many qualities every man has, and by which any man may be moved, a single passion may go mad in a mind unwatchful. Not only hatred or anger, but love will go mad and commit murder, which is often but the insanity of a minute. Yet nobody remembers that all are liable to insanity of speech.
What a wonderful thing is perfection! It must be very rare. Yet some people are always looking for it in others who never offer any example of it in themselves. It is not, however, to be had anywhere. All we are entitled to look for is that the good in any individual shall in some general way predominate over the bad. We have need to be thankful if we find this. The late George Peabody was not a mean man, though he would stand in the rain at Charing Cross, waiting for a cheap omnibus to the City. There was a threepenny one waiting, but one with a twopenny fare would come up soon—Mr. Peabody would wait for it Making money was the habit of his mind, and he made it in the street as well as the office, and having made it, gave it away with a more than royal hand.
One Sunday I rode in a Miles Platting tram car, amid decorous, well-dressed chapel-going people—several of them young and active. A child fell out of the tram, whose mother was too feeble to follow it. No one moved, save a woman of repulsive expression, with whom any one might suppose her neighbours had a bad time. She seemed the least desirable person to know of all the passengers; yet this woman, on seeing the child lying in the road, at once leapt out of the tram, brought the child back and put it tenderly into its mother's arms. Intrepid humanity may dwell in a very rough exterior.
There goes a man with a hard, forbidding face, and a headachy Evangelical complexion. Like the man mentioned in the last paper, he is not an alluring person to know—those at his fireside have a dreary time of it. His children have joyless Sundays. He is a street preacher. His voice is harsh and painful. He howls "glad tidings" at the street corner. He is wanting in the first elements of reverence—those of modesty and taste. Yet this same man has kindness and generosity in his heart After his hard day's work is done he will give the evening, which others spend in pleasure, to try and save some casual soul in the street.
Though we continually forget it, we know that men are full of mixed qualities and unequal passions. Ignorance of this renders one of the noblest passages of Shakespeare dangerous if misapplied:
But what is a man's "own self"? It all lies there. Tell the liar, the thief, the forger, or the ruffian to be true to himself, and any one knows what will follow. Polonius knew the heart of Laertes, and to him he could say, "to thine own self be true." We must be sure of the nature of him whom we advise to follow himself.*
What is or what can be the object of education but to strengthen by precept, habit and environment the better qualities of human nature; and to divert, repress, or subordinate where we cannot extinguish hereditary, unethical tendencies? Though we deny—or do not steadily see—that nations as well as individuals have capacities for good as well as evil, we admit it when we attempt to create international influences, which shall promote civilisation.
If any would avoid the disappointment of ignorance and the alarms of the foolish, let him learn to look with unamazed expectancy at what will appear on the ocean of Society. Do not look in men for the qualities you want to find, or for qualities you imagine they ought to have, but look with unexpectant eyes for what you can find. Do not expect perfection, but a few good points only, and be glad if you find them, and be tolerant of what is absent. Of him of this way of thinking it may be said, as was said of Charles Lamb: "He did not merely love his friends in spite of their errors, he loved them errors and all." Whoever remains under the delusion that nations and men possess only special qualities, and not all qualities in different stages of development, will hate them foolishly, praise them without reason, and will never know men. But whoever understands the trend of things in this ever-changing, uncontrollable world, where
will utter the prayer of Sadi, the Persian poet: "O God! have pity on the wicked, for Thou hast done everything for the good in having made them good." A prayer worth remembering.