Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 by Various

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CONCERNING THINGS SLOWLY LEARNT.

You will see in a little while what sort of things they are which I
understand by _Things Slowly Learnt_. Some are facts, some are moral
truths, some are practical lessons; but the great characteristic of all
those which are to be thought of in this essay is, that we have to learn
them and act upon them in the face of a strong bias to think or act in
an opposite way. It is not that they are so difficult in themselves,
not that they are hard to be understood, or that they are supported by
arguments whose force is not apparent to every mind. On the contrary,
the things which I have especially in view are very simple, and for the
most part quite unquestionable. But the difficulty of learning them lies
in this: that, as regards them, the head seems to say one thing and the
heart another. We see plainly enough what we ought to think or to do;
but we feel an irresistible inclination to think or to do something
else. It is about three or four of these things that we are going, my
friend, to have a little quiet talk. We are going to confine our view
to a single class, though possibly the most important class, in the
innumerable multitude of Things Slowly Learnt.

The truth is, a great many things are slowly learnt. I have lately had
occasion to observe that the Alphabet is one of these. I remember,
too, in my own sorrowful experience, how the Multiplication Table was
another. A good many years since, an eminent dancing-master undertook
to teach a number of my schoolboy companions a graceful and easy
deportment; but comparatively few of us can be said as yet to have
thoroughly attained it. I know men who have been practising the art of
extempore speaking for many years, but who have reached no perfection in
it, and who, if one may judge from their confusion and hesitation
when they attempt to speak, are not likely ever to reach even decent
mediocrity in that wonderful accomplishment. Analogous statements might
be made, with truth, with regard to my friend Mr. Snarling's endeavors
to produce magazine articles; likewise concerning his attempts to skate,
and his efforts to ride on horseback unlike a tailor. Some folk learn
with remarkable slowness that Nature never intended them for wits. There
have been men who have punned, ever more and more wretchedly, to the end
of a long and highly respectable life. People submitted in silence to
the infliction; no one liked to inform those reputable individuals that
they had better cease to make fools of themselves. This, however, is
part of a larger subject, which shall be treated hereafter.

On the other hand, there are things which are very quickly
learnt,--which are learnt by a single lesson. One liberal tip, or even
a few kind words heartily said, to a manly little schoolboy, will
establish in his mind the rooted principle that the speaker of the words
or the bestower of the tip is a jolly and noble specimen of humankind.
Boys are great physiognomists: they read a man's nature at a glance.
Well I remember how, when going to and from school, a long journey of
four hundred miles, in days when such a journey implied travel by sea as
well as by land, I used to know instantly the gentlemen or the railway
officials to whom I might apply for advice or information. I think that
this intuitive perception of character is blunted in after years. A man
is often mistaken in his first impression of man or woman; a boy hardly
ever. And a boy not only knows at once whether a human being is amiable
or the reverse, he knows also whether the human being is wise or
foolish. In particular, he knows at once whether the human being always
means what he says, or says a great deal more than he means. Inferior
animals learn some lessons quickly. A dog once thrashed for some offence
knows quite well not to repeat it. A horse turns for the first time down
the avenue to a house where he is well fed and cared for; next week,
or next month, you pass that gate, and though the horse has been long
taught to submit his will to yours, you can easily see that he knows the
place again, and that he would like to go back to the stable with which,
in his poor, dull, narrow mind, there are pleasant associations. I
would give a good deal to know what a horse is thinking about. There is
something very curious and very touching about the limited intelligence
and the imperfect knowledge of that immaterial principle in which the
immaterial does not imply the immortal. And yet, if we are to rest
the doctrine of a future life in any degree upon the necessity of
compensation for the sufferings and injustice of the present, I think
the sight of the cab-horses of any large town might plead for the
admission of some quiet world of green grass and shady trees, where
there should be no cold, starvation, over-work, or flogging. Some one
has said that the most exquisite material scenery would look very
cold and dead in the entire absence of irrational life. Trees suggest
singing-birds; flowers and sunshine make us think of the drowsy bees.
And it is curious to think how the future worlds of various creeds are
described as not without their lowly population of animals inferior to
man. We know what the "poor Indian" expects shall bear him company in
his humble heaven; and possibly various readers may know some dogs who
in certain important respects are very superior to certain men. You
remember how, when a war-chief of the Western prairies was laid by
his tribe in his grave, his horse was led to the spot in the funeral
procession, and at the instant when the earth was cast upon the dead
warrior's dust, an arrow reached the noble creature's heart, that in the
land of souls the man should find his old friend again. And though it
has something of the grotesque, I think it has more of the pathetic, the
aged huntsman of Mr. Assheton Smith desiring to be buried by his master,
with two horses and a few couples of dogs, that they might all be ready
to start together when they met again far away.

This is a deviation; but that is of no consequence. It is of the essence
of the present writer's essays to deviate from the track. Only we must
not forget the thread of the discourse; and after our deviation we must
go back to it. All this came of our remarking that some things are
very quickly learnt; and that certain inferior classes of our
fellow-creatures learn them quickly. But deeper and larger lessons are
early learnt. Thoughtful children, a very few years old, have their own
theory of human nature. Before studying the metaphysicians, and indeed
while still imperfectly acquainted with their letters, young children
have glimpses of the inherent selfishness of humanity. I was recently
present when a small boy of three years old, together with his sister,
aged five, was brought down to the dining-room at the period of dessert.
The small boy climbed upon his mother's knee, and began by various
indications to display his affection for her. A stranger remarked what
an affectionate child he was. "Oh," said the little girl, "he suspects
(by which she meant _expects_) that he is going to get something to
eat!" Not Hobbes himself had reached a clearer perception or a firmer
belief of the selfish system in moral philosophy. "He is always very
affectionate," the youthful philosopher proceeded, "when he suspects he
is going to get something good to eat!"

By _Things Slowly Learnt_ I mean not merely things which are in their
nature such that it takes a long time to learn them,--such as the Greek
language, or the law of vendors and purchasers. These things indeed take
long time and much trouble to learn; but once you have learnt them, you
know them. Once you have come to understand the force of the second
aorist, you do not find your heart whispering to you, as you are lying
awake at night, that what the grammar says about the second aorist is
all nonsense; you do not feel an inveterate disposition, gaining force
day by day, to think concerning the second aorist just the opposite of
what the grammar says. By _Things Slowly Learnt_, I understand things
which it is very hard to learn at the first, because, strong as the
reasons which support them are, you find it so hard to make up your mind
to them. I understand things which you can quite easily (when it is
fairly put to you) see to be true, but which it seems as if it would
change the very world you live in to accept. I understand things you
discern to be true, but which you have all your life been accustomed to
think false, and which you are extremely anxious to think false. And by
_Things Slowly Learnt_ I understand things which are not merely very
hard to learn at the first, but which it is not enough to learn for once
ever so well. I understand things which, when you have made the bitter
effort and admitted to be true and certain, you put into your mind to
keep (so to speak); and hardly a day has passed, when a soft, quiet hand
seems to begin to crumble them down and to wear them away to nothing.
You write the principle which was so hard to receive upon the tablet of
your memory; and day by day a gentle hand comes over it with a bit of
india-rubber, till the inscription loses its clear sharpness, grows
blurred and indistinct, and finally quite disappears. Nor is the gentle
hand content even then; but it begins, very faintly at first, to trace
letters which bear a very different meaning. Then it deepens and darkens
them day by day, week by week, till at a month's or a year's end the
tablet of memory bears, in great, sharp, legible letters, just the
opposite thing to that which you had originally written down there.
These are my _Things Slowly Learnt_: things you learn at first in the
face of a strong bias against them; things, when once taught, you
gradually forget, till you come back again to your old way of thinking.
Such things, of course, lie within the realm to which extends the
influence of feeling and prejudice. They are things in the accepting of
which both head and heart are concerned. Once convince a man that two
and two make four, and he learns the truth without excitement, and
he never doubts it again. But prove to a man that he is of much less
importance than he has been accustomed to think,--or prove to a woman
that her children are very much like those of other folk,--or prove to
the inhabitant of a country parish that Britain has hundreds of parishes
which in soil and climate and production are just as good as his
own,--or prove to the great man of a little country town that there
are scores of towns in this world where the walks are as pleasant,
the streets as well paved, and the population as healthy and as well
conducted; and in each such case you will find it very hard to convince
the individual at the time, and you will find that in a very short space
the individual has succeeded in entirely escaping from the disagreeable
conviction. You may possibly find, if you endeavor to instil such belief
into minds of but moderate cultivation, that your arguments will be
met less by force of reason than by roaring of voice and excitement of
manner; you may find that the person you address will endeavor to change
the issue you are arguing, to other issues, wholly irrelevant, touching
your own antecedents, character, or even personal appearance; and you
may afterwards be informed by good-natured friends, that the upshot of
your discussion had been to leave on the mind of your acquaintance the
firm conviction that you yourself are intellectually a blockhead and
morally a villain. And even when dealing with human beings who have
reached that crowning result of a fine training, that they shall have
got beyond thinking a man their "enemy because he tells them the truth,"
you may find that you have rendered a service like that rendered by the
surgeon's amputating knife,--salutary, yet very painful,--and leaving
forever a sad association with your thought and your name. For among the
things we slowly learn are truths and lessons which it goes terribly
against the grain to learn at first, which must be driven into us time
after time, and which perhaps are never learnt completely.

One thing very slowly learnt by most human beings is, that they are
of no earthly consequence beyond a very small circle indeed, and
that really nobody is thinking or talking about them. Almost every
commonplace man and woman in this world has a vague, but deeply-rooted
belief that they are quite different from anybody else, and of course
quite superior to everybody else. It may be in only one respect they
fancy they are this, but that one respect is quite sufficient. I
believe, that, if a grocer or silk-mercer in a little town has a hundred
customers, each separate customer lives on under the impression that
the grocer or the silk-mercer is prepared to give to him or her certain
advantages in buying and selling which will not be accorded to the other
ninety-nine customers. "Say it is for Mrs. Brown," is Mrs. Brown's
direction to her servant, when sending for some sugar; "say it is for
Mrs. Brown, and he will give it a little better." The grocer, keenly
alive to the weaknesses of his fellow-creatures, encourages this notion.
"This tea," he says, "would be four-and-sixpence a pound _to any one
else_, but _to you_ it is only four-and-threepence." Judging from my own
observation, I should say that retail dealers trade a good deal upon
this singular fact in the constitution of the human mind, that it is
inexpressibly bitter to most people to believe that they stand on the
ordinary level of humanity,--that, in the main, they are just like their
neighbors. Mrs. Brown would be filled with unutterable wrath, if it were
represented to her that the grocer treats her precisely as he does Mrs.
Smith, who lives on one side of her, and Mrs. Snooks, who lives on the
other. She would be still more angry, if you asked her what earthly
reason there is why she should in any way be distinguished beyond Mrs.
Snooks and Mrs. Smith. She takes for granted she is quite different
from them, quite superior to them. Human beings do not like to be
classed,--at least, with the class to which in fact they belong. To be
classed at all is painful to an average mortal, who firmly believes
that there never was such a being in this world. I remember one of
the cleverest friends I have--one who assuredly cannot be classed
intellectually, except in a very small and elevated class--telling
me how mortified he was, when a very clever boy of sixteen, at being
classed at all. He had told a literary lady that he admired Tennyson.
"Yes," said the lady, "I am not surprised at that: there is a class of
young men who like Tennyson at your age." It went like a dart to my
friend's heart. _Class of young men_, indeed! Was it for _this_ that I
outstripped all competitors at school, that I have been fancying myself
a unique phenomenon in Nature, _different_ at least from every other
being that lives, that I should be spoken of as one of _a class of
young men_? Now in my friend's half-playful reminiscence I see the
exemplification of a great fact in human nature. Most human beings fancy
themselves, and all their belongings, to be quite different from all
other beings and the belongings of all other beings. I heard an old
lady, whose son is a rifleman, and just like all the other volunteers
of his corps, lately declare, that, on the occasion of a certain grand
review, her Tom looked so entirely different from all the rest. No doubt
he did to her, poor old lady,--for he was her own. But the irritating
thing was, that the old lady wished it to be admitted that Tom's
superiority was an actual fact, equally patent to the eyes of all
mankind. Yes, my friend: it is a thing very slowly learnt by most men,
that they are very much like other people. You see the principle which
underlies what you hear so often said by human beings, young and old,
when urging you to do something which it is against your general rule to
do. "Oh, but you might do it _for me_!" Why for you more than for any
one else? would be the answer of severe logic. But a kindly man would
not take that ground: for doubtless the _Me_, however little to every
one else, is to each unit in humankind the centre of all the world.

Arising out of this mistaken notion of their own difference from all
other men is the fancy entertained by many, that they occupy a much
greater space in the thoughts of others than they really do. Most folk
think mainly about themselves and their own affairs. Even a matter which
"everybody is talking about" is really talked about by each for a
very small portion of the twenty-four hours. And a name which is "in
everybody's mouth" is not in each separate mouth for more than a few
minutes at a time. And during those few minutes, it is talked of with an
interest very faint, when compared with that you feel for yourself. You
fancy it a terrible thing, when you yourself have to do something which
you would think nothing about, if done by anybody else. A lady grows
sick, and has to go out of church during the sermon. Well, you remark
it; possibly, indeed, you don't; and you say, "Mrs. Thomson went out of
church to-day; she must be ill"; and there the matter ends. But a day
or two later you see Mrs. Thomson, and find her quite in a fever at the
awful fact. It was a dreadful trial, walking out, and facing all the
congregation: they must have thought it so strange; she would not run
the risk of it again for any inducement. The fact is just this: Mrs.
Thomson thinks a great deal of the thing, because it happened to
herself. It did not happen to the other people, and so they hardly think
of it at all. But nine in every ten of them, in Mrs. Thomson's place,
would have Mrs. Thomson's feeling; for it is a thing which you, my
reader, slowly learn, that people think very little about you.

Yes, it is a thing slowly learnt,--by many not learnt at all. How many
persons you meet walking along the street who evidently think that
everybody is looking at them! How few persons can walk through an
exhibition of pictures at which are assembled the grand people of the
town and all their own grand acquaintances, in a fashion thoroughly free
from self-consciousness! I mean without thinking of themselves at all,
or of how they look; but in an unaffected manner, observing the objects
and beings around them. Men who have attained recently to a moderate
eminence are sometimes, if of small minds, much affected by this
disagreeable frailty. Small literary men, and preachers with no great
head or heart, have within my own observation suffered from it severely.
I have witnessed a poet, whose writing I have never read, walking along
a certain street. I call him a poet to avoid periphrasis. The whole
get-up of the man, his dress, his hair, his hat, the style in which he
walked, showed unmistakably that he fancied that everybody was looking
at him, and that he was the admired of all admirers. In fact, nobody was
looking at him at all. Some time since I beheld a portrait of a very,
very small literary man. It was easy to discern from it that the small
author lives in the belief, that, wherever he goes, he is the object of
universal observation. The intense self-consciousness and self-conceit
apparent in that portrait were, in the words of Mr. Squeers, "more
easier conceived than described." The face was a very commonplace and
rather good-looking one: the author, notwithstanding his most strenuous
exertions, evidently could make nothing of the features to distinguish
him from other men. But the length of his hair was very great: and, oh,
what genius he plainly fancied glowed in those eyes! I never in my life
witnessed such an extraordinary glare. I do not believe that any human
being ever lived whose eyes habitually wore that expression: only by a
violent effort could the expression be produced, and then for a very
short time, without serious injury to the optic nerves. The eyes were
made as large as possible; and the thing after which the poor fellow
had been struggling was that peculiar look which may be conceived to
penetrate through the beholder, and pierce his inmost thoughts. I never
beheld the living original, but, if I saw him, I should like in a kind
way to pat him on the head, and tell him that _that_ sort of expression
would produce a great effect on the gallery of a minor theatre. The
other day I was at a public meeting. A great crowd of people was
assembled in a large hall: the platform at one end of it remained
unoccupied till the moment when the business of the meeting was to
begin. It was an interesting sight for any philosophic observer seated
in the body of the hall to look at the men who by-and-by walked in
procession on to the platform, and to observe the different ways in
which they walked in. There were several very great and distinguished
men: every one of these walked on to the platform and took his seat in
the most simple and unaffected way, as if quite unconscious of the many
eyes that were looking at them with interest and curiosity. There were
many highly respectable and sensible men, whom nobody cared particularly
to see, and who took their places in a perfectly natural manner, as
though well aware of the fact. But there were one or two small men,
struggling for notoriety; and I declare it was pitiful to behold their
entrance. I remarked one, in particular, who evidently thought that
the eyes of the whole meeting were fixed upon himself, and that, as
he walked in, everybody was turning to his neighbor, and saying with
agitation, "See, that's Snooks!" His whole gait and deportment testified
that he felt that two or three thousand eyes were burning him up: you
saw it in the way he walked to his place, in the way he sat down, in the
way he then looked about him. If anyone had tried to get up three cheers
for Snooks, Snooks would not have known that he was being made a fool
of. He would have accepted the incense of fame as justly his due. There
once was a man who entered the Edinburgh theatre at the same instant
with Sir Walter Scott. The audience cheered lustily; and while Sir
Walter modestly took his seat, as though unaware that those cheers were
to welcome the Great Magician, the other man advanced with dignity
to the front of the box, and bowed in acknowledgment of the popular
applause. This of course was but a little outburst of the great tide of
vain self-estimation which the man had cherished within his breast for
years. Let it be said here, that an affected unconsciousness of the
presence of a multitude of people is as offensive an exhibition of
self-consciousness as any that is possible. Entire naturalness, and a
just sense of a man's personal insignificance, will produce the right
deportment. It is very irritating to see some clergymen walk into church
to begin the service. They come in, with eyes affectedly cast down, and
go to their place without ever looking up, and rise and begin without
one glance at the congregation. To stare about them, as some clergymen
do, in a free and easy manner, befits not the solemnity of the place
and the worship; but the other is the worse thing. In a few cases it
proceeds from modesty; in the majority from intolerable self-conceit.
The man who keeps his eyes downcast in that affected manner fancies that
everybody is looking at him; there is an insufferable self-consciousness
about him; and he is much more keenly aware of the presence of other
people than the man who does what is natural, and looks at the people
to whom he is speaking. It is not natural nor rational to speak to
one human being with your eyes fixed on the ground; and neither is
it natural or rational to speak to a thousand. And I think that the
preacher who feels in his heart that he is neither wiser nor better than
his fellow-sinners to whom he is to preach, and that the advices he
addresses to them are addressed quite as solemnly to himself, will
assume no conceited airs of elevation above them, but will unconsciously
wear the demeanor of any sincere worshipper, somewhat deepened in
solemnity by the remembrance of his heavy personal responsibility in
leading the congregation's worship; but assuredly and entirely free
from the vulgar conceit which may be fostered in a vulgar mind by the
reflection, "Now everybody is looking at me!" I have seen, I regret to
say, various distinguished preachers whose pulpit demeanor was made to
me inexpressibly offensive by this taint of self-consciousness. And I
have seen some, with half the talent, who made upon me an impression a
thousandfold deeper than ever was made by the most brilliant eloquence;
because the simple earnestness of their manner said to every heart, "Now
I am not thinking in the least about myself, or about what you may think
of me: my sole desire is to impress on your hearts these truths I
speak, which I believe will concern us all forever!" I have heard great
preachers, after hearing whom you could walk home quite at your ease,
praising warmly the eloquence and the logic of the sermon. I have heard
others, (infinitely greater in my poor judgment,) after hearing whom you
would have felt it profanation to criticize the literary merits of their
sermon, high as those were: but you walked home thinking of the lesson
and not of the teacher, solemnly revolving the truths you had heard, and
asking the best of all help to enable you to remember them and act upon
them.

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