Diplomats, the choicest scapegoats to-day, are accused, not without justice, of playing callously with the lives of millions; using them like pawns on a chess-board is, I believe, the accepted figure. But what else, given the power, should we ourselves do, who live equally among abstractions, and are capable of reading the account of an earthquake in Colombia and then turning without emotion to the history of the latest movie scandal in Los Angeles? I do not say that we ought to feel emotion in learning that thousands have been killed in an earthquake. The lack of imagination displayed in our failure to do so is doubtless a necessary protective trait. Without it, to read any newspaper would be anguish; and we should, like those imaginative persons called cowards, die many times before our death. The intensest suffering of Jesus, the Man, must have been not His crucifixion, but His lifelong sympathy for the suffering of others. It is only this lack of imagination, plus the tradition in whichthey are bred, that makes diplomats what they notoriously are. There has been a good deal of amateur diplomacy of late years; yet one is not aware of any great improvement on the old, either in results or in methods.
Here, suddenly, however roundabout the way may have seemed, we find ourselves back at the subject of self and knowledge of self. We (and by ‘we’ I no longer mean only ‘we Americans,’ whose world, after all, is but a little more crudely black-and-white than that of other peoples)—we lack the imagination to project ourselves into others’ lives chiefly because we know so little about ourselves. We may feel pity, even shed tears, at the sight of a man crushed by a motor car, because we have all felt physical pain; but we remain cold toward the feelings of a man caught in embezzlement, because we are unaware of the latent possibility of embezzlement in ourselves, given sufficiently impelling circumstances.
Yet even were we gifted with imagination, we could learn directly almost nothing of other people. There is a wall that shuts us off. We can know so infinitely little about any of them that it is a wonder we trouble to divide such strangers into friends and enemies; and, indeed, as one grows older he finds his enmities dwindling to indifference, and his friendships fading or congealing into mere habit. In that very imperfect book,L’Enfer, Barbusse’s observer, watching (with a desperate, almost sick desire to get inside other people’s lives), through thehole in his chamber wall, what takes place in the room beyond, perceives only the impenetrable loneliness of the individual—in birth, in death, even in love.
We are always being told that we should go directly to life for real knowledge, not get it at second hand from books. And this is no doubt true enough for certain impressions. What it means to be hungry, for instance, cannot be learned from the printed page; nor can vivid impressions of nature be gained in that way. But I suspect that we can learn more about other men and women from books than from direct intercourse with them. In a book the writer has, presumably, set out to say something long meditated, and has deleted all excrescences in the saying. Such chatter as we indulge in, and listen to, when, instead, we talk directly with our neighbours!—aimless, pointless, its rare bright spots extinguished in a sea of words! Read the court stenographer’s record of any trial, where, at least, the questions and answers are supposed to be held rigidly to a certain subject, and then consider what the dictagraph report of any purposeless conversation would be like! But that is by the way. The important point is that one learns a little about others from books because from any worthwhile book one learns a little about oneself. Just as surely as in a novel, an essay, or a poem the writer reveals himself, so surely do I in reading it reveal myself, weighing the author’s opinions, likening them to or contrasting themwith my own, and, to the extent of that self-revelation, perceiving his. Thus, it is better to read difficult books than easy ones, not as puritanism teaches, because whatever is unpleasant is good for us, but because the fact that a book is difficult for me means that in my response to it I am forced down into obscure and unknown regions of myself. On the other hand, there are for every one, I suppose, certain books that he is permanently unable to read, certain authors who remain for him as unknowable as any one met in flesh-and-blood. I, for example, simply cannot readLavengroor get to know Borrow. Nowhere in me is there any response to his thoughts and emotions. It is true that I feel a vivid distaste for his style, which perhaps ought to be something to start on; but it does not seem to be enough to melt my icy indifference to the man and his work. I can learn nothing of myself fromLavengro, and so I can learn nothing of Borrow. It is a pity. My world might be by just so much the richer, less black-and-white.
Given this profound isolation of the individual, his inability to learn of others except through learning of himself, it is hard at first to understand men’s passion for gregariousness. But if you will listen to almost any conversation you will presently note that each individual in the loquacious group is but asserting his own opinions, the more blatantly the less he knows what they really are. In primitive circles this is done frankly, often with every one talkingat once: ‘WhatIsay is——,’ ‘Nowmynotion is——,’ ‘Well, now, just listen to me——.’ It is as though all were shouting: ‘How black-and-white the world is!’ Among more civilized persons there is greater suavity, a pretence of listening to others’ opinions while awaiting an opportunity to express one’s own. But it is only a pretence. Still, there is something in civilization. For in very, very civilized circles conversation becomes a dainty game. Nothing really felt is ever said, and ideas are played with as amusing toys; which is both sensible and delightful.
But if we would really learn about our fellow-men, and exchange our silly black-and-white world for a subtler, richer, kinder one, we had best go and live alone on mountain tops. Ten years of such solitude would give us a deeper, tenderer and more tolerant understanding of humanity than a lifetime of jostling contacts in the market-place.
THE END
FOOTNOTES:[1]No longer true, alas, since the complete suppression by the Fascista government of all freedom of speech and of the press.[2]I do not happen to have read anything by Valéry Larbaud, but from what I read about him I conclude that possibly Monsieur Maurois may find a little relief from loneliness in his company.
FOOTNOTES:
[1]No longer true, alas, since the complete suppression by the Fascista government of all freedom of speech and of the press.
[1]No longer true, alas, since the complete suppression by the Fascista government of all freedom of speech and of the press.
[2]I do not happen to have read anything by Valéry Larbaud, but from what I read about him I conclude that possibly Monsieur Maurois may find a little relief from loneliness in his company.
[2]I do not happen to have read anything by Valéry Larbaud, but from what I read about him I conclude that possibly Monsieur Maurois may find a little relief from loneliness in his company.
[The image of the book's back cover is unavailable.]