THE CRUELTY OF GOOD PEOPLE
THE cruelty of bad people is easily explained. They are cruel because they enjoy watching the pain of others. There are also the ignorant and half-formed, to whom the word “inhumanity” applies literally. They have not yet been really humanized. Before they can habitually yield to feelings of compassion there is much to be done in developing their higher natures. They must be urged to
Move upward, working out the beast,And let the ape and tiger die.
Move upward, working out the beast,And let the ape and tiger die.
Move upward, working out the beast,And let the ape and tiger die.
Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die.
The beast has a long start, and the ape and tiger die hard.
But this is only half the story. We are continually surprised at the cruelty that is possible in those in whom there seems to be no tigerish survival. It is intimately associated with the higher rather than with the lower part of the nature. It is spiritual, rational, and moral. The cruelty ofwomen and priests is proverbial—and they are good women and good priests.
Listen to the talk in a drawing-room when some question involving the fate of thousands is introduced. There is a strike or lock-out. It means that the hostile parties are struggling on a narrow ledge between two precipices. The workmen are trying to push the employers into the abyss of bankruptcy; the employers are exerting every means in their power to hurl their antagonists into the abyss of starvation. It is a battle to the death, and in many a home pale-faced women are watching it with despairing eyes. But what says my lady who likes to talk about current events? It is evident when she begins to speak that she is not touched by the tragedy of it all. Nero watching the burning of Rome could not assume an air of more complete detachment. She talks as if it were nothing to her. Or the talk turns to the affairs of state. Issues that involve the fate of nations awake in her only a languid curiosity. The diplomacy of prudent statesmen who are endeavoring to keep the peace strikes her as mere dilly-dallying. She wants to see something doing. She enjoys a romantic sensation, and urges on those who wouldgive her this pleasure. Was there ever a useless war without fair faces looking down upon it approvingly—at least at the beginning?
I saw pale kings, and princes too,Pale warriors, death pale were they all;They cried, “La Belle Dame sans MerciHath thee in thrall.”
I saw pale kings, and princes too,Pale warriors, death pale were they all;They cried, “La Belle Dame sans MerciHath thee in thrall.”
I saw pale kings, and princes too,Pale warriors, death pale were they all;They cried, “La Belle Dame sans MerciHath thee in thrall.”
I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death pale were they all;
They cried, “La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall.”
Yet she who in regard to the great affairs which involve millions may appear as “La Belle Dame sans Merci” may be to all those whom she knows a minister of purest kindness. It is only towards those whom she does not know that she is pitiless.
******
Philosophers are usually cruel in their judgments of the persons and events of the passing day, and that is perhaps the reason why no nation has been willing to take the hint from Plato and allow the philosophers to rule. It would be too harsh a despotism. Flesh and blood could not endure it. For the philosopher is concerned with general laws and is intolerant of exceptions, while it is the quality of mercy to treat each person as in some degree an exception. Fancy the misery that would be involved in the attempt tolevel us all up to the cold heights of abstract virtue on which Spinoza dwelt. One shudders to think of the calamity that would ensue were all our lawmakers to be suddenly Hegelianized. All the attempts to alleviate the hard conditions under which people are living would cease. The energy that is now spent in trying to abolish abuses would then be directed toward explaining them. What wailings would go up from earth’s millions on the proclamation of the rule of unlimited Spencerianism! We should look back with envy to the good old times of Nero and Tamerlane.
As the Inquisition handed its victims over to the secular arm and disclaimed all further responsibility, so this new tyrant would hand over all the unfit to the unobstructed working of natural law. No attention would be paid to our sentimental preferences for particular persons. Those merciful interferences which have been the contrivance of mankind for the protection of weakness must be swept aside. The unfit must take the full penalty justly visited on their unfitness. The moment we begin to particularize we rebel. Pity revolts against a too cold philosophy.
It is needless to say that the theologians have often attained refinements of cruelty unknown even to the most severely logical of the secular philosophers. They have been able to distill out of the purest religious affections a poison capable of producing in the sensitive soul unutterable agony. Then they have watched the writhing of the victim with a cold benevolence. The worst of it was that the benevolence was real in spite of the fact that it froze all the fountains of natural pity.
Jonathan Edwards was not merely a good man in the ordinary sense. His goodness rose into ideal heights. He had a genius for ethics as well as for religion. He is still a teacher of teachers. But this wonderful man, who must ever have a high place among the leaders and inspirers of mankind, has an equally high place among the torturers of the spirit. To understand the kind of pain which he inflicted we must not be content with the threatenings of torment in sermons like that on “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” The pictorial imagery which now startles us was common enough in his day. The torments of sinners was an ordinary theme; Edwards addedappreciably to the torments of the saints. His vivisection of the human soul was without compunction. In the hearts and desires of the innocent he discovered guilt for which there was no pardon. Every resting-place for natural human affection was torn away, and when at last from the clear heaven the love of God shone down in dazzling splendor, it shone upon a desert.
The cruelty of it all is seen in its effects on minds naturally prone to melancholy. Read the journal of a disciple of Edwards, David Brainerd, and remember that for several generations that journal was esteemed a proper book to put into the hands of youth. The editor of the Journal says, “As an example of a mind tremulously apprehensive of sin, loathing it in every form and for its own sake, avoiding even the appearance of evil, rising above all terrestrial considerations, advancing rapidly in holiness, and finding its only enjoyment in the glory of God, probably no similar work in any language can furnish a parallel.” Poor Brainerd! Every step along the heavenly way cost him a pang. He never could forget for more than a few hours at a time that he was human, and to be human was to be vile. The groansfollow one another with monotonous iteration. He loved God, but he felt his guilt in not loving him more. He was not only afraid of hell, but of a heaven of which he was unworthy.
“I seem to be declining with respect to my life and warmth in divine things. I deserve hell every day for not loving my Lord more.... I saw myself very mean and vile, and wondered at those who showed me respect.”
We all feel that way sometimes, but to have the feelings set down day by day for years at a time seems hardly profitable. We are relieved when occasionally the editor summarizes the spiritual conflicts of a week or two without going into details, as in the latter part of December, 1744. “The next twelve days he was for the most part extremely dejected, discouraged and distressed, and was evidently much under the power of melancholy. There are from day to day most bitter complaints of exceeding vileness, ignorance, and corruption; an amazing load of guilt, unworthiness even to creep on God’s earth, everlasting uselessness, fitness for nothing, etc., and sometimes expressions even of horror at the thoughts of ever preaching again. But yet in thistime of dejection he speaks of several intervals of divine help and comfort.”
The pitiful thing about it all was that Brainerd’s distress arose not from the consciousness of any particular shortcoming of his own, which after all was finite. He was endeavoring to realize the meaning of that infinite guilt which was his as a child of Adam. That guilt must be infinite because it was a sin against infinite purity and power. When he had repented to the very utmost of his ability, he was conscious that he had not repented enough.
When he went to New Jersey as a missionary to the Indians, it was this abnormal spiritual sensitiveness which he endeavored to impart to the aboriginal mind.
He found it difficult to bring the Indians to that degree of spiritual anguish which, in his view, was necessary to their salvation. He could make them understand the meaning of actual transgression, but they were dull of comprehension when he urged them to repent of original sin.
“Another difficulty,” he says, “which I am now upon, is that it is next to impossible to bring them to a rational conviction that they are sinnersby nature, and that their hearts are corrupt and sinful, unless one can charge them with some gross act of immorality such as thelight of naturecondemns.”
One would suppose that the missionary might have found among his untutored Indians enough actual transgressions to have brought to them a conviction of sin and a desire for a better life. But no, that was not enough, it would have fallen far short of what he had in mind. It would have only convinced them that they were sinners individually considered, and would not have overwhelmed them with the guilt of the race. So he hit upon a device to turn their minds from the incidental trangressions of mature life to the central fact that depravity was innate and universal.
“The method which I take to convince them that we are sinners by nature is to lead them to an observation of their little children: how they will appear in a rage, fight and strike their mothers before they are able to speak or walk, while they are so young that they are incapable of learning such practices.... As children have never learned these things, they must have been in their natures;and consequently they must be allowed to be by nature the children of wrath.”
It did not seem to occur to Brainerd that in thus setting the child in the midst of them as an illustration of the kingdom of wrath he was not imitating the method of Jesus. Even in his treatment of the sins of later life there is something illustrative of the cruel system which dominated him.
“I then mention all the vices I know the Indians to be guilty of, and so make use of these sinfulstreamsto convince them that thefountainis corrupt. This is the end for which I mention their wicked practices to them; not because I expect to bring them to an effectual reformation merely by inveighing against their immoralities, but hoping that they may hereby be convinced of the corruption of their hearts, and awakened to a sense of the depravity and misery of their fallen state.”
Brainerd had in mind a profound truth; every great moral awakening is accompanied by pain. But he was not content with that which comes naturally. All specific reformation in morals and manners was subordinated to that which he conceivedto be the essential thing,—that they should feel to its full extent the misery of being human.
******
In every readjustment of thought or advance in the manner of life there is involved a vast amount of unescapable pain. There is also a great deal of pain that is gratuitously inflicted. In the contest between the forces of conservatism and progress it is difficult to say which side is more open to the charge of cruelty.
In reading history our sympathies are usually with the bold innovator. He stands alone against the world and proclaims an unpopular truth. He is misunderstood, reviled, persecuted for righteousness’ sake. The defenders of the old order are hard-hearted persecutors who hound him to death.
But this is only half the story. A glimpse of the other side is given in the very term we use. We speak of thedefendersof the old order. We only understand their feelings when we remember that they were really on the defensive. The things they held most sacred were attacked by a ruthless power which they could not understand. They flew to the rescue of sanctuaries about tobe violated. They often fought as those in mortal agony, using blindly such weapons as came to their hands.
In “The Faerie Queene” Una, the fair symbol of Truth, wanders through the forest protected by her lion. He is a good lion and faithful to his lady.
The lyon would not leave her desolate,But with her went along, as a strong gardOf her chast person, and a faythfull mateOf her sad troubles and misfortunes hard:Still when she slept, he kept both watch and ward;And when she wakt, he wayted diligentWith humble service to her will prepard;From her fayre eyes he took commandëmentAnd ever by her lookes conceived her intent.
The lyon would not leave her desolate,But with her went along, as a strong gardOf her chast person, and a faythfull mateOf her sad troubles and misfortunes hard:Still when she slept, he kept both watch and ward;And when she wakt, he wayted diligentWith humble service to her will prepard;From her fayre eyes he took commandëmentAnd ever by her lookes conceived her intent.
The lyon would not leave her desolate,But with her went along, as a strong gardOf her chast person, and a faythfull mateOf her sad troubles and misfortunes hard:Still when she slept, he kept both watch and ward;And when she wakt, he wayted diligentWith humble service to her will prepard;From her fayre eyes he took commandëmentAnd ever by her lookes conceived her intent.
The lyon would not leave her desolate,
But with her went along, as a strong gard
Of her chast person, and a faythfull mate
Of her sad troubles and misfortunes hard:
Still when she slept, he kept both watch and ward;
And when she wakt, he wayted diligent
With humble service to her will prepard;
From her fayre eyes he took commandëment
And ever by her lookes conceived her intent.
That is the picture that comes to the adherent of the old order. The pure virgin Truth walked unharmed, with her strong protector by her side. At length a proud Paynim attacked the gentle lady. Then it was that
her fiers servant, full of kingly awAnd high disdaine, whenas his soveraine DameSo rudely handled by her foe he saw,With gaping jawes full greedy at him came,And, ramping on his shield, did weene the sameHave reft away with his sharp rending clawes.
her fiers servant, full of kingly awAnd high disdaine, whenas his soveraine DameSo rudely handled by her foe he saw,With gaping jawes full greedy at him came,And, ramping on his shield, did weene the sameHave reft away with his sharp rending clawes.
her fiers servant, full of kingly awAnd high disdaine, whenas his soveraine DameSo rudely handled by her foe he saw,With gaping jawes full greedy at him came,And, ramping on his shield, did weene the sameHave reft away with his sharp rending clawes.
her fiers servant, full of kingly aw
And high disdaine, whenas his soveraine Dame
So rudely handled by her foe he saw,
With gaping jawes full greedy at him came,
And, ramping on his shield, did weene the same
Have reft away with his sharp rending clawes.
But it was a losing battle. The lion’s sudden fierceness was all in vain.
O then, too weake and feeble was the forseOf salvage beast.
O then, too weake and feeble was the forseOf salvage beast.
O then, too weake and feeble was the forseOf salvage beast.
O then, too weake and feeble was the forse
Of salvage beast.
Now that her defender is slain, what is to become of Lady Truth?
Who now is left to keepe the forlorn maidFrom raging spoile of lawless victor’s will?
Who now is left to keepe the forlorn maidFrom raging spoile of lawless victor’s will?
Who now is left to keepe the forlorn maidFrom raging spoile of lawless victor’s will?
Who now is left to keepe the forlorn maid
From raging spoile of lawless victor’s will?
The lover of the old order does not stop to ask whether the lion may not have made a mistake, and whether the object of his attack may not have been, instead of a proud Paynim, only a Christian knight who had approached to ask his way. Nor does he feel pity for the pains inflicted by the lion’s “sharp rending clawes.” He only cries, “Poor lion! Poor Lady Truth!”
“But,” says the careful reader, “are you not getting away from your subject? You proposed the question, ‘Why are good people so cruel?’ You began with the conversation of excellent ladies in the drawing-room, and now you have wandered off into faery land, and are talking about the Lady Truth and the noble lion who died in her defense. I fear you are losing your way.”
On the contrary, dear reader, I think, as the children say when they are hunting the thimble, we are “getting warm.” We started out to find a cause for the obliviousness of good people to the pain which they inflict on others, and we have come into the region of allegory. Now, one of the chief reasons why good people are cruel is that it is so easy for them to allegorize.
In an allegory virtues and vices are personified. Each is complete in itself, and when it once has been set going it follows a preordained course. It does not grow into something else, and it is incapable of repentance or improvement. In the morality plays a virtue is as virtuous and a vice as vicious at the beginning as at the end. Spenser prefixes to “The Faerie Queene” a prose explanation of the meaning of each important character. “The first of the Knight of the Red-crosse, in whom I set forth Holynes; the second of Sir Guyon, in whome I sette forth Temperance; the third of Britomartis, a lady knight, in whom I picture Chastity.” Now, after this explanation we are relieved of all those anxieties which beset us when we watch creatures of flesh and blood setting out in the world to try their souls. Everythingis as much a matter of invariable law as the reactions of chemical elements. The Knight of the Red-cross may appear to be tempted, but he is really immune. He cannot fall from grace. From that disaster he is protected by the definition. We have only to learn what the word holiness means to know what he will do. As for Sir Guyon, when once we learn that he is Temperance, we would trust him anywhere. For such characters there is nothing possible but ultimate triumph over their foes. And what of their foes? Being allegorical characters, they cannot be reformed. There is nothing to do but to kill them without compunction, or if we can catch them in the traps which they have set for others, and make them suffer the torments they have themselves invented, so much the better. We welcome the knight—
Who slayes the Gyaunt, wounds the Beast,And strips Duessa quight.
Who slayes the Gyaunt, wounds the Beast,And strips Duessa quight.
Who slayes the Gyaunt, wounds the Beast,And strips Duessa quight.
Who slayes the Gyaunt, wounds the Beast,
And strips Duessa quight.
We have no compunctions as we watch the administration of poetical justice. Whatever happens to the false Duessa and to such miscreants as Sansfoy and Sansjoy and Sansloy, we say that it serves them right.
If we can only hold fast to the allegorical clue, and be assured that he is dealing with sins and not with persons, we can follow Dante through purgatory without flinching. The moral always is a good one, and full of suggestiveness.
But the moment we mistake an allegorical character for a person of flesh and blood we get into trouble. Even the most perfect parable represents only a certain phase of reality. When it is forced beyond its real intention and taken literally it shocks our sense of humanity. It needs to be interpreted by the same wise spirit that conceived it. We repeat the story of the symbolic virgins who had forgotten to put oil in their lamps, or of the servant who was too timid to put his master’s money out to usury. The child asks, “Wasn’t it cruel of those wise virgins not to give the others just a little of their oil? And after the door was shut and the foolish virgins knew how foolish they were and were sorry, couldn’t the people inside have opened the door just a little bit? And just because the servant was afraid to go to the bank with the money, because it was so little, ought the master to have been so hard with him as to say, ‘Cast ye the unprofitable servantinto the outer darkness; there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth?’ Why didn’t he give him another chance?”
Then the parent will explain that these are symbolic characters. Or perhaps he may not try to explain, but change the subject and read a story of real people like that of the prodigal son or the good Samaritan. The child may be made to understand that while the door is always shut against a sin, it is always open for the sinner who repents.
The sensitive child takes up the “Pilgrim’s Progress” and reads of the way Christian went on his way to the heavenly city, meeting all kinds of people, yet apparently without sympathy for most of them. “Why did he leave his wife and little children in the City of Destruction and go off alone? If he knew that the city was to be burned up, why didn’t he stay with them? He doesn’t seem to care very much for what happens to people who are not of his set.” So it seems to be. Mr. Hold-the-world, Mr. Money-love, and Mr. Save-all walk along with him, and then they go off the path to look into a silver-mine. Christian doesn’t take the trouble to find out what becameof them. Bunyan says coolly, “Whether they fell into the pit by looking over the brink or whether they went down to dig, or whether they were smothered by the damps that commonly arise, of these things I am not certain; but this I observed, that they were never seen that way again.” Christian goes on after the tragedy perfectly unconcerned, singing a cheerful hymn. It was none of his business what happened to those who wandered off the road. He is rather pleased than otherwise when Vain-Confidence falls into the pit. When “the brisk young lad,” Ignorance, joins him Christian converses with him only long enough to find out his name and where he came from. Then instead of trying to improve him he leaves him behind. Poor Ignorance trudges after, but he never can catch up.
All this is right in an allegory. Ignorance must be left behind, Vain-Confidence must perish in the pit; from the City of Destruction we must flee without waiting for others to follow. This is a very simple lesson in the way of life. The next lesson is more difficult and it is quite different,—how to treat ignorant and vainglorious and otherwise imperfectpersons.
The first thing we have to remember is that they are persons, and that persons are quite different from allegorical characters. Persons can change their minds, they can repent and aspire after a better life, and above all they have feelings,—which abstract virtues and vices do not have. Does not the cruelty of the good chiefly arise from the fact that they do not see all this?
In a preceding essay we have considered Hawthorne’s judgment on the characters which he himself created. His most powerful story of sin and retribution wears to his eyes “a stern and sombre aspect too much ungladdened by the tender and familiar influences which soften almost every scene of Nature and real life.” He was aware that he was depicting not all of life, but only one aspect of it. He saw the characters of the “Scarlet Letter,” as they saw themselves, “in a kind of typical illusion.” He was fully aware that his treatment was symbolic rather than realistic. Real life is infinitely more complex and therefore more full of possibilities of good than any symbolic representation of it.
I do not think that good people are really as cruel at heart as one would be led to think fromtheir words, or even from their acts. I remember a good professor of theology who was discoursing on the way in which the Canaanites were destroyed in order that Israel might possess the land.
“Professor,” asked a literal-minded student, “why did the Lord create the Canaanites, anyhow?”
“The Lord created the Canaanites,” answered the professor, “in order that Israel might have something on which to whet his sword.”
The words were bloodthirsty enough; and yet had I been a Canaanite in distress I should have made my way at once to the good professor’s house. I am sure that the moment he saw me he would have taken me in and ministered tenderly to my distresses and protected me from an unkindly world. But I should have taken the precaution to let him see me before he learned my name. A Canaanite in the abstract would be an abomination to him, and I would have to take pains to make him understand that I was a human being.
The word “cruel” is in its derivation akin to “crude;” it is that which is raw and unripe. Like all other good things, righteousness at first iscrude. Crude righteousness takes no account of the difference between a sinner and his sin; it hates both alike with a bitter hatred, and visits on each the same condemnation. It is harsh and bitter. For all that it is a good thing, this unripe fruit of righteousness. Give it time and sunshine, and it will grow sweet and mellow.
The Riverside PressElectrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Transcriber’s Notes:Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.Perceived typographical errors have been changed.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.