AN HOUR WITH OUR PREJUDICES
WE may compare the human mind to a city. It has its streets, its places of business and amusement, its citizens of every degree. When one person is introduced to another it is as if the warder drew back the bolts, and the gates were thrown open. If he comes well recommended he is given the freedom of the city. In the exercise of this freedom, however, the stranger should show due caution.
There is usually a new quarter. Here the streets are well lighted and policed, the crowds are cosmopolitan, and the tourist who wanders about looking at the shop windows is sure of a civil reply to his questions. There is no danger of highway robbers, though of course one may be taken in by confidence men. But if he be of an inquiring mind and a lover of the picturesque, he is not satisfied with this. After all, the new quarters are very much alike, and one tires after awhile of shop windows. The visitor longs to explore the old town, with its winding ways, with its overhanging houses, and its mild suggestions of decay.
But in the mental city the lover of the picturesque must remember that he carries his life in his hands. It is not safe to say to a casual acquaintance, “Now I have a fair idea of that part of your mind which is like that of any other decently educated person. I have seen all the spick and span show places, and admired all the modern improvements. Where are your ruins? I should like to poke around a while in the more dilapidated section of your intellect.”
Ah, but that is the Forbidden City. It is inhabited, not by orderly citizens, under the rule of Right Reason, but by a lawless crowd known as the Prejudices. They are of all sorts and conditions. Some are of aristocratic lineage. They come from a long line of hereditary chiefs, who, as their henchmen have deserted them, have recreated into their crumbling strongholds. Some are bold, roistering blades who will not stand a question; dangerous fellows, these, to meet in the dark! The majority, perhaps, are harmless folk,against whom the worst that can be said is that they have a knack of living without visible means of support.
A knowledge of human nature, as distinguished from a knowledge of moral philosophy, is a perception of the important part played by instinctive likes and dislikes, by perverse antipathies, by odd ends of thought, by conclusions which have got hopelessly detached from their premises—if they ever had any. The formal philosopher, judging others by himself, works on the assumption that man is naturally a reasoning animal, whereas experience teaches that the craving for the reasonable is an acquired taste.
Of course we all have reasons for our opinions,—plenty of them! But in the majority of cases they stand not as antecedents, but as consequents. There is a reversal of the rational order like that involved in Dr. Hale’s pleasant conceit of the young people who adopted a grandmother. In spite of what intellectual persons say, I do not see how we can get along without prejudices. A prejudice is defined as “an opinion or decision formed without due examination of the facts or arguments which are necessary to a just and impartialdetermination.” Now, it takes a good deal of time to make a due examination of facts and arguments, even in regard to a small matter. In the meantime our minds would be sadly unfurnished. If we are to make a fair show in the world, we must get our mental furniture when we set up housekeeping, and pay for it on the installment plan.
Instead of taking a pharisaic attitude toward our neighbor’s prejudices, it is better to cultivate a wise tolerance, knowing that human intercourse is dependent on the art of making allowances. This is consistent with perfect honesty. There is always something to admire if the critic is sufficiently discriminating. When you are shown a bit of picturesque dilapidation, it is quite possible to enjoy it. Said the Hebrew sage, “I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding; and, lo, it was all grown over with thorns, and nettles had covered the face thereof, and the stone wall thereof was broken down. Then I saw, and considered it well: I looked upon it, and received instruction.”
His point of view was that of a moralist. Had he also been a bit of an artist, the sight of the oldwall with its tangle of flowering briers would have had still further interest.
When one’s intellectually slothful neighbor points with pride to portions of his untilled fields, we must not be too hard upon him. We also have patches of our own that are more picturesque than useful. Even if we ourselves are diligent husbandmen, making ceaseless war on weeds and vermin, there are times of relenting. Have you never felt a tenderness when the ploughshare of criticism turned up a prejudice of your own? You had no heart to harm the
Wee sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie.
Wee sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie.
Wee sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie.
Wee sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie.
It could not give a good account of itself. It had been so long snugly ensconced that it blinked helplessly in the garish light. Its
wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin’!And naething now to big a new ane.
wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin’!And naething now to big a new ane.
wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin’!And naething now to big a new ane.
wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin’!
And naething now to big a new ane.
You would have been very angry if any one had trampled upon it.
This is the peculiarity about a prejudice. It is very appealing to the person who holds it. A man is seldom offended by an attack on his reasonedjudgments. They are supported by evidence and can shift for themselves. Not so with a prejudice. It belongs not to the universal order; it is his very own. All the chivalry of his nature is enlisted in its behalf. He is, perhaps, its only defense against the facts of an unfriendly world.
We cannot get along without making allowances for these idiosyncrasies of judgment. Conversation is impossible where each person insists on going back, all the time, to first principles, and testing everything by an absolute standard. With a person who is incapable of changing his point of view we cannot converse; we can only listen and protest. We are in the position of one who, conscious of the justice of his cause, attempts to carry on a discussion over the telephone with “Central.” He only hears an inhuman buzzing sound indicating that the line is busy. There is nothing to do but to “hang up the ’phone.”
When a disputed question is introduced, one may determine the true conversationalist by applying the method of Solomon. Let it be proposed to divide the subject so that each may have his own. Your eager disputant will be satisfied, your genial talker is aghast at the proposition, forhe realizes that it would kill the conversation. Instead of holding his own, he awaits developments. He is in a mood which can be satisfied with something less than a final judgment. It is not necessary that his friend’s opinions should be just; it is sufficient that they are characteristic. Whatever turn the talk may take, he preserves an easy temper. He is a heresy-hunter,—not of the grim kind that goes hunting with a gun; he carries only a camera. If he stirs up a strange doctrine he does not care to destroy it. When he gets a snap-shot at human nature he says,—
Those things do best please meThat befall preposterously.
Those things do best please meThat befall preposterously.
Those things do best please meThat befall preposterously.
Those things do best please me
That befall preposterously.
An English gentleman relates a conversation he had with Prince Bismarck. The prince was inclined to take a pessimistic view of the English people. He thought that there was a degeneration in the race, which he attributed to the growing habit of drinking water. “Not that he believed that there was any particular virtueper seinherent in alcoholic drink; but he was sorry to hear that the old ‘three bottle men’ were dying out and leaving no successors. He had a suspicion that it meant shrinkage in those qualities of the Englishwhich had made them what they were in the past, and for which he had always felt a sincere admiration.”
It would have been very easy to drift into debate over this proposition. The English gentleman, however, defended his countrymen more diplomatically. “I replied that with regard to the water-drinking proclivities of my countrymen there was a good deal of calumny connected with the story. It is true that a certain section of English society has indeed taken to water as a beverage. But to argue therefrom that the English people have become addicted to water would be to draw premature conclusions from insufficient data. In this way I was able to calm Prince Bismarck’s fears in regard to what the future might bring forth, and our conversation reverted to Royalty.”
Each nation has its own set of preconceptions. We must take them altogether, or not at all. They are as compact and as natural a growth as the concentric layers of an onion. Here is a sentence from Max Müller’s “Autobiography,” thrown out quite incidentally. He has been telling how strange it seemed, when first coming to Oxford,to find that the students got along without dueling. Fighting with swords seemed to him the normal method of developing manliness, though he adds that in the German universities “pistol duels are generally preferred by theological students, because they cannot easily get a living if the face is scarred all over.”
This remark must be taken as one would take a slice of the national onion. One assumption fits into another. To an Englishman or an American there is an incongruity that approaches the grotesque,—because our prejudices are different. It all becomes a matter-of-fact statement when we make the proper assumptions in regard to dueling in general and theological duels in particular. Assuming that it is necessary for theological students to fight duels, and that the congregations are prejudiced against ministers whose faces have been slashed by swords, what is left for the poor theologues but pistols? Their method may seem more dangerous than that adopted by laymen, but Max Müller explains that the danger is chiefly to the seconds.
Individual peculiarities must be taken into account in the same way. Prince Bismarck, indining with the Emperor, inquired the name of the brand of champagne, which proved to be a cheap German article. “The Emperor explained, ‘I drink it from motives of economy, as I have a large family; then again I drink it from patriotic motives.’ Thereupon I said to the Emperor, ‘With me, your Majesty, patriotism stops short in the region of my stomach.’”
It is evident that here was a difference not to be arbitrated by reason. If the Emperor could not understand the gastronomic limitations to the Chancellor’s patriotism, neither could the Chancellor enter into the Emperor’s anxieties, as he economized for the sake of his large family.
One cannot but wonder at the temerity of a person who plunges into conversation with a stranger without any preliminary scouting or making sure of a line of retreat. Ordinary prudence would suggest that the first advances should be only in the nature of a reconnoissance in force. You may have very decided prejudices of your own, but it is not certain that they will fraternize with those of your new acquaintance. There is danger of falling into an ambush. There are painful occasions when we remember the wisdom ofthe Son of Sirach: “Many have fallen by the edge of the sword, but not so many as have fallen by the tongue.” The mischief of it is that the most kindly intent will not save us. The path of the lover of mankind is beset by difficulties for which he is not prepared. There are so many antagonisms that are unpredictable.
When Nehemiah came to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem he remarked grimly, “When Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, heard of it, it grieved them exceedingly that there was come a man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel;” and the trouble was that a large number of the children of Israel themselves seem to have resented the interference with their habitual misfortunes. The experience of Nehemiah is that of most reformers. One would suppose that the person who aims at the greatest good for the greatest number would be greeted with instant applause. The difficulty is that the greatest good is just what the greatest number will not tolerate. One does not need to believe in human depravity to recognize the prejudice which most persons have against anything which is proposed as good for them. The most successfulphilanthropists are those who most skillfully conceal their benevolent intent.
In Coleman’s “Life of Charles Reade” there is a paragraph which gives us a glimpse of a prejudice that has resisted the efforts of the most learned men to eradicate it. An incident is there recorded that took place when Reade was a fellow in Magdalen College. “Just as I was about to terminate my term of office (I hope with credit to myself and the ’Varsity), an untoward incident occurred which embittered my relations for life with two very distinguished men. Professor Goldwin Smith and his friend John Conington, who belonged to us, had attempted to inaugurate a debating society. A handful of unmannerly young cubs, resenting the attempt to teach them political economy, ducked poor Conington under the college pump.”
“Resenting the attempt to teach them political economy!”—What is the source of that resentment? What psychologist has fathomed the abyss of the dark prejudice which the natural man has against those who would improve his mind? It is a feud which reaches back into hoar antiquity. Doubtless the accumulated grievances of generationsof schoolboys have intensified the feud, but no amelioration of educational methods has put an end to it. In the most successful teacher you may detect a nervous strain like that which the trainer of wild beasts in the arena undergoes. His is a perilous position, and every faculty must be on the alert to hold the momentary ascendency. A single false motion, and the unmannerly young cubs would be upon their victim.
Must we not confess that this irrational resentment against our intellectual benefactors survives, in spite of all discipline, into mature life? We may enlarge the area of our teachableness, but there are certain subjects in regard to which we do not care to be set right. The polite conventionality according to which a person is supposed to know his own business is an evidence of this sensitiveness. Of course the assumption is not justified by facts. A man’s own business is just the thing he is conscious of not knowing, and he would give anything in a quiet way to find out. Yet when a candid friend ventures to instruct him, the old irrational resentment flashes out. What we call tact is the ability to find before it is too late what it is that our friends do not desire to learn fromus. It is the art of withholding, on proper occasions, information which we are quite sure would be good for them.
The prejudice against our intellectual superiors, which leads us to take their well-meant endeavors in our behalf as of the nature of personal insults, is matched by the equally irrational repulsion which many superior people have for their inferiors. Nothing can be more illogical than the attitude of these gifted ones who use their gifts as bludgeons with which to belabor the rest of us. When we read the writings of men who have a stimulating sense of their own genius, we are struck by their nervous irritability whenever they mention “mediocrity.” The greater number of the quarrels of the authors, which the elder Disraeli chronicled, arose from the fact that the authors had the habit of accusing one another of this vice. One would suppose mediocrity to be the sum of all villainies, and that the mediocre man was continually plotting in the night watches against the innocent man of genius; and yet what has the mediocre man done to deserve this detestation? Poor fellow, he has no malice in him! His mediocrity is only an afterthought. He has done hislevel best; his misfortune is that several million of his fellowmen have done as well.
The superior man, especially if his eminence be accidental, is likely to get a false notion of those who stand on the level below him. The biographer of an English dignitary says that the subject of his memoir was not really haughty, but “he was apt to be prejudiced against any one who seemed to be afraid of him.” This is a not uncommon kind of prejudice; and in nine cases out of ten it is unfounded. The great man should remember that most of those whose manners seem unduly respectful mean nothing personal.
As great Pompey passes through the streets of Rome, he may be pardoned for thinking meanly of the people. They appear to be a subservient lot, with no proper interests of their own, their happiness dependent on his passing smile,—and he knows how little that is worth. He sees them at a disadvantage. Let him leave his triumphal chariot, and, in the guise of Third Citizen, fall into friendly chat with First Citizen and Second Citizen, and his prejudices will be corrected. He will find that these worthy men have a much more independent and self-respecting point ofview than he had thought possible. They are out for a holiday; they are critics of a spectacle, easily pleased, they will admit; but if no one except Pompey is to be seen to-day, why not make the most of him? Pompey or Cæsar, it matters not; “the play’s the thing.”
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The origin of some of our prejudices must be sought in the childhood of the race. There are certain opinions which have come down from the cave-dwellers without revision. They probably at one time had reasons to justify them, though we have no idea what they were. There are others, which seem equally ancient, which originated in the forgotten experiences of our own childhood. The prehistoric age of myth and fable does not lie far behind any one of us. It is as if Gulliver had been educated in Lilliput, and, while he had grown in stature, had never quite emancipated himself from the Lilliputian point of view. The great hulking fellow is always awkwardly trying to look up at things which he has actually outgrown. He tries to make himself believe that his early world was as big as it seemed. Sometimes he succeeds in his endeavors, and the result is a curious inversion of values.
Mr. Morley, in speaking of Lord Palmerston’s foreign policy, says: “The Sultan’s ability to speak French was one of the odd reasons why Lord Palmerston was sanguine of Turkish civilization.” This association of ideas in the mind of the Prime Minister does seem odd till we remember that before Lord Palmerston was in the cabinet he was in the nursery. The fugitive impressions of early childhood reappear in many curious shapes. Who would be so hard-hearted as to exorcise these guiltless ghosts?
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, suggestionsin 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 favorablydisposed 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 qualifyingwords. 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 theopportunity 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 tomeremorality, 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 surethat 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 becomethe 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 madeall 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 moreopportunities 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 someextraordinary 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 interestingreading. 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!
Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber!Holy angels guard thy bed!
Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber!Holy angels guard thy bed!
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 storyHow the Jews abused their King,How they served the Lord of Glory,Makes me angry while I sing.
Yet to read the shameful storyHow the Jews abused their King,How they served the Lord of Glory,Makes me angry while I sing.
Yet to read the shameful storyHow the Jews abused their King,How they served the Lord of Glory,Makes me angry while I sing.
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.
******
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 quoteda 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. Heis 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 manwhen 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.