Classic Philosophy for the Modern Man Read online

  As there is a degree of dullness and phlegm, which, in the long run, sometimes succeeds better than the more noble and aspiring impulses of our nature (as the beagle by its sure tracing overtakes the bounding stag), so there is a degree of animal spirits and showy accomplishment which enables its possessors ‘to get the start of the majestic world’ and bear the palm alone. How often do we see vivacity and impertinence mistaken for wit; fluency for argument; sound for sense; a loud or musical voice for eloquence! Impudence again is an equivalent for courage; and the assumption of merit and the possession of it are too often considered as one and the same thing. On the other hand, simplicity of manner reduces the person who cannot so far forego his native disposition as by any effort to shake it off, to perfect insignificance in the eyes of the vulgar, who, if you do not seem to doubt your own pretensions, will never question them; and on the same principle, if you do not try to palm yourself on them for what you are not, will never be persuaded you can be any thing. Admiration, like mocking, is catching; and the good opinion which gets abroad of us begins at home. If a man is not as much astonished at his own acquirements, as proud of and as delighted with the bauble, as others would be if put into sudden possession of it, they hold that true dessert and he must be strangers to each other; if he entertains an idea beyond his own immediate profession or pursuit, they think very wisely he can know nothing at all; if he does not play off the quack or the coxcomb upon them at every step, they are confident he is a dunce and a fellow of no pretensions. It has been sometimes made a matter of surprise that Mr Pitt did not talk politics out of the House; or that Mr Fox conversed like any one else on common subjects; or that Walter Scott is fonder of an old Scotch ditty or antiquarian record than of listening to the praises of the author of Waverley.[8] On the contrary, I cannot conceive how any one who feels conscious of certain powers should always be labouring to convince others of the fact; or how a person to whom their exercise is as familiar as the breath he draws should think it worth his while to convince them of what to him must seem so very simple, and at the same time so very evident. I should not wonder, however, if the author of the Scotch novels laid an undue stress on the praises of the monastery. We nurse the rickety child and prop up our want of self-confidence by the opinion of friends. A man (unless he is a fool) is never vain but when he stands in need of the tribute of adulation to strengthen the hollowness of his pretensions; nor conceited but when he can find no one to flatter him, and is obliged secretly to pamper his good opinion of himself to make up for the want of sympathy in others. A damned author has the highest sense of his own merits, and an inexpressible contempt for the judgment of his contemporaries; in the same manner that an actor who is hissed or hooted from the stage, creeps into exquisite favour with himself, in proportion to the blindness and injustice of the public. A prose writer, who has been severely handled in the reviews, will try to persuade himself that there is nobody else who can write a word of English; and we have seen a poet of our time, whose works have been much, but not (as he thought) sufficiently admired, undertake formally to prove that no poet who deserved the name of one was ever popular in his lifetime, or scarcely after his death!

  There is nothing that floats a man sooner into the tide of reputation, or oftener passes current for genius, than what might be called constitutional talent. A man without this, whatever may be his worth or real powers, will no more get on in the world than a leaden Mercury will fly into the air; as any pretender with it, and with no one quality beside to recommend him, will be sure either to blunder upon success, or will set failure at defiance. By constitutional talent I mean, in general, the warmth and vigour given to a man’s ideas and pursuits by his bodily stamina, by mere physical organisation. A weak mind in a sound body is better, or at least more profitable, than a sound mind in a weak and crazy conformation. How many instances might I quote! Let a man have a quick circulation, a good digestion, the bulk, and thews, and sinews of a man, and the alacrity, the unthinking confidence inspired by these; and without an atom, a shadow of the mens divinior,[9] he shall strut and swagger and vapour and jostle his way through life, and have the upper hand of those who are his betters in every thing but health and strength. His jests shall be echoed with loud laughter because his own lungs begin to crow like chanticleer[10] before he has uttered them; while a little hectic nervous humourist shall stammer out an admirable conceit that is damned in the doubtful delivery – vox faucibus haesit.[11] The first shall tell a story as long as his arm, without interruption, while the latter stops short in his attempts from mere weakness of chest; the one shall be empty and noisy and successful in argument, putting forth the most commonplace things ‘with a confident brow and a throng of words, that come with more than impudent sauciness from him’, while the latter shrinks from an observation ‘too deep for his hearers’, into the delicacy and unnoticed retirement of his own mind. The one shall never feel the want of intellectual resources, because he can back his opinions with his person; the other shall lose the advantages of mental superiority, seek to anticipate contempt by giving offence, court mortification in despair of popularity, and even in the midst of public and private admiration, extorted slowly by incontrovertible proofs of genius, shall never get rid of the awkward, uneasy sense of personal weakness and insignificance, contracted by early and long-continued habit. What imports the inward to the outward man, when it is the last that is the general and inevitable butt of ridicule or object of admiration? It has been said that a good face is a letter of recommendation. But the finest face will not carry a man far unless it is set upon an active body and a stout pair of shoulders. The countenance is the index of a man’s talents and attainments; his figure is the criterion of his progress through life. We may have seen faces that spoke ‘a soul as fair –

  Bright as the children of yon azure sheen’ –

  yet that met with but an indifferent reception in the world – and that being supported by a couple of spindle-shanks and a weak stomach, in fulfilling what was expected of them,

  Fell flat, and shamed their worshippers.

  Hence the successes of such persons did not correspond with their deserts. There was a natural contradiction between the physiognomy of their minds and bodies! The phrase, ‘a good-looking man’, means different things in town and country; and artists have a separate standard of beauty from other people. A country squire is thought good looking, who is in good condition like his horse: a country farmer, to take the neighbours’ eyes, must seem stall-fed, like the prize ox; they ask, ‘how he cuts up in the caul, how he tallows in the kidneys’. The letter-of-recommendation face, in general, is not one that expresses the finer movements of thought or of the soul, but that makes part of a vigorous and healthy form. It is one in which Cupid and Mars take up their quarters, rather than Saturn or Mercury. It may be objected here that some of the greatest favourites of fortune have been little men. ‘A little man, but of high fancy’, is Sterne’s description of Mr Hammond Shandy. But then they have been possessed of strong fibres and an iron constitution. The late Mr West said that Bonaparte was the best-made man he ever saw in his life. In other cases, the gauntlet of contempt which a puny body and a fiery spirit are forced to run may determine the possessors to aim at great actions; indignation may make men heroes as well as poets, and thus revenge them on the niggardliness of nature and the prejudices of the world. I remember Mr Wordsworth’s saying that he thought ingenious poets had been of small and delicate frames, like Pope; but that the greatest (such as Shakespeare and Milton) had been healthy, and cast in a larger and handsomer mould. So were Titian, Raphael, and Michelangelo. This is one of the few observations of Mr Wordsworth’s I recollect worth quoting, and I accordingly set it down as his, because I understand he is tenacious on that point.

  In love, in war, in conversation, in business, confidence and resolution are the principal things. Hence the poet’s reasoning:

  For women, born to be controll’d,

  Affect the loud, the vain,
the bold.

  Nor is this peculiar to them, but runs all through life. It is the opinion we appear to entertain of ourselves, from which (thinking we must be the best judges of our own merits) others accept their idea of us on trust. It is taken for granted that everyone pretends to the utmost he can do, and he who pretends to little is supposed capable of nothing. The humility of our approaches to power or beauty ensures a repulse, and the repulse makes us unwilling to renew the application; for there is pride as well as humility in this habitual backwardness and reserve. If you do not bully the world, they will be sure to insult over you, because they think they can do it with impunity. They insist upon the arrogant assumption of superiority somewhere, and if you do not prevent them, they will practise it on you. Some one must top the part of Captain in the play. Servility, however, chimes in, and plays Scrub[12] in the farce. Men patronise the fawning and obsequious, as they submit to the vain and boastful. It is the air of modesty and independence, which will neither be put upon itself, nor put upon others, that they cannot endure – that excites all the indignation they should feel for pompous affectation, and all the contempt they do not show to meanness and duplicity. Our indolence and perhaps our envy take part with our cowardice and vanity in all this. The obtrusive claims of empty ostentation, played off like the ring on the finger, fluttering and sparkling in our sight, relieve us from the irksome task of seeking out obscure merit; the scroll of virtues written on the bold front, or triumphing in the laughing eye, save us the trouble of sifting the evidence and deciding for ourselves; besides, our self-love receives a less sensible shock from encountering the mere semblance than the solid substance of worth; folly chuckles to find the blockhead put over the wise man’s head, and cunning winks to see the knave, by his own good leave, transformed into a saint.

  Doubtless, the pleasure is as great

  In being cheated, as to cheat.

  In all cases, there seems a sort of compromise, a principle of collusion between imposture and credulity. If you ask what sort of adventurers have swindled tradesmen of their goods, you will find they are all likely men, with plausible manners or a handsome equipage, hired on purpose – if you ask what sort of gallants have robbed women of their hearts, you will find they are those who have jilted hundreds before, from which the willing fair conceives the project of fixing the truant to herself – so the bird flutters its idle wings in the jaws of destruction, and the foolish moth rushes into the flame that consumes it! There is no trusting to appearances, we are told; but this maxim is of no avail, for men are the eager dupes of them. Life, it has been said, is ‘the art of being well deceived’; and accordingly, hypocrisy seems to be the great business of mankind. The game of fortune is, for the most part, set up with counters; so that he who will not cut in because he has no gold in his pocket, must sit out above half his time, and lose his chance of sweeping the tables. Delicacy is, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, considered as rusticity; and sincerity of purpose is the greatest affront that can be offered to society. To insist on simple truth, is to disqualify yourself for place or patronage – the less you deserve, the more merit in their encouraging you; and he who, in the struggle for distinction, trusts to realities and not to appearances will, in the end, find himself the object of universal hatred and scorn. A man who thinks to gain and keep the public ear by the force of style will find it very uphill work; if you wish to pass for a great author, you ought not to look as if you were ignorant that you had ever written a sentence or discovered a single truth. If you keep your own secret, be assured the world will keep it for you. A writer, whom I know very well, cannot gain an admission to Drury Lane Theatre, because he does not lounge into the lobbies, or sup at the Shakespeare – nay, the same person having written upwards of sixty columns of original matter on politics, criticism, belles-lettres, and virtù in a respectable morning paper, in a single half-year, was, at the end of that period, on applying for a renewal of his engagement, told by the editor ‘he might give in a specimen of what he could do!’ One would think sixty columns of the Morning Chronicle were a sufficient specimen of what a man could do. But while this person was thinking of his next answer to Vetus,[13] or his account of Mr Kean’s performance of Hamlet, he had neglected ‘to point the toe’, to hold up his head higher than usual (having acquired a habit of poring over books when young), and to get a new velvet collar to an old-fashioned great coat. These are ‘the graceful ornaments to the columns of a newspaper – the Corinthian capitals of a polished style!’ This unprofitable servant of the press found no difference in himself before or after he became known to the readers of the Morning Chronicle, and it accordingly made no difference in his appearance or pretensions. ‘Don’t you remember’, says Gray, in one of his letters, ‘Lord C and Lord M who are now great statesmen, little dirty boys playing at cricket? For my own part, I don’t feel myself a bit taller, or older, or wiser, than I did then.’ It is no wonder that a poet, who thought in this manner of himself, was hunted from college to college, has left us so few precious specimens of his fine powers, and shrunk from his reputation into a silent grave!

  ‘I never knew a man of genius a coxcomb in dress’, said a man of genius and a sloven in dress. I do know a man of genius who is a coxcomb in his dress, and in everything else. But let that pass.

  C’est un mauvais métier que celui de médire.[14]

  I also know an artist who has at least the ambition and the boldness of genius, who has been reproached with being a coxcomb, and with affecting singularity in his dress and demeanour. If he is a coxcomb that way, he is not so in himself, but a rattling hair-brained fellow, with a great deal of unconstrained gaiety, and impetuous (not to say turbulent) life of mind! Happy it is when a man’s exuberance of self-love flies off to the circumference of a broad-brimmed hat, descends to the toes of his shoes, or carries itself off with the peculiarity of his gait, or even vents itself in a little professional quackery – and when he seems to think sometimes of you, sometimes of himself, and sometimes of others, and you do not feel it necessary to pay to him all the finical devotion, or to submit to be treated with the scornful neglect of a proud beauty, or some Prince Prettyman. It is well to be something besides the coxcomb, for our own sake as well as that of others; but to be born wholly without this faculty or gift of Providence, a man had better have had a stone tied about his neck, and been cast into the sea.

  In general, the consciousness of internal power leads rather to a disregard of, than a studied attention to, external appearance. The wear and tear of the mind does not improve the sleekness of the skin, or the elasticity of the muscles. The burthen of thought weighs down the body like a porter’s burthen. A man cannot stand so upright or move so briskly under it as if he had nothing to carry in his head or on his shoulders. The rose on the cheek and the canker at the heart do not flourish at the same time; and he who has much to think of, must take many things to heart; for thought and feeling are one. He who can truly say, Nihil humani a me alienum puto,[15] has a world of cares on his hands, which nobody knows anything of but himself. This is not one of the least miseries of a studious life. The common herd do not by any means give him full credit for his gratuitous sympathy with their concerns; but are struck with his lacklustre eye and wasted appearance. They cannot translate the expression of his countenance out of the vulgate; they mistake the knitting of his brows for the frown of displeasure, the paleness of study for the languor of sickness, the furrows of thought for the regular approaches of old age. They read his looks, not his books; have no clue to penetrate the last recesses of the mind, and attribute the height of abstraction to more than an ordinary share of stupidity. ‘Mr. Hazlitt never seems to take the slightest interest in any thing,’ is a remark I have often heard made in a whisper. People do not like your philosopher at all, for he does not look, say, or think as they do; and they respect him still less. The majority go by personal appearances, not by proofs of intellectual power; and they are quite right in this, for they are better judges of
the one than of the other. There is a large party who undervalue Mr. Kean’s[16] acting (and very properly, as far as they are concerned) for they can see that he is a little ill-made man, but they are incapable of entering into the depth and height of the passion in his Othello. A nobleman of high rank, sense, and merit, who had accepted an order of knighthood, on being challenged for so doing by a friend, as a thing rather degrading to him than otherwise, made answer – ‘What you say, may be very true; but I am a little man, and am sometimes jostled, and treated with very little ceremony in walking along the streets; now the advantage of this new honour will be that when people see the star at my breast, they will every one made way for me with the greatest respect.’ Pope bent himself double and ruined his constitution by over-study when young. He was hardly indemnified by all his posthumous fame, ‘the flattery that soothes the dull cold ear of death’, nor by the admiration of his friends, nor the friendship of the great, for the distortion of his person, the want of robust health, and the insignificant figure he made in the eyes of strangers, and of Lady Mary Wortley Montague.[17] Not only was his diminutive and misshapen form against him in such trivial toys, but it was made a set-off and a bar to his poetical pretensions by his brother-poets, who ingeniously converted the initial and final letters of his name into the invidious appellation A.P.E. He probably had the passage made underground from his garden to his grotto, that he might not be rudely gazed at in crossing the road by some untutored clown; and perhaps started to see the worm he trod upon writhed into his own form, like Elshie the Black Dwarf.[18] Let those who think the mind everything and the body nothing, ‘ere we have shuffled off this mortal coil’, read that fine moral fiction, or the real story of David Ritchie – believe and tremble![19]