LETTER V.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO KEPT ENTIRELY OUT OF COMPANY.
That Society which is frivolous in the mass contains individuals who are not frivolous—A piece of the author’s early experience—Those who keep out of Society miss opportunities—People talk about what they have in common—That we ought to be tolerant of dulness—The loss to Society if superior men all held aloof—Utility of the gifted in general society—They ought not to submit to expulsion.
I willingly concede all that you say against fashionable society as a whole. It is, as you say, frivolous, bent on amusement, incapable of attention sufficiently prolonged to grasp any serious subject, and liable both to confusion and inaccuracy in the ideas which it hastily forms or easily receives. You do right, assuredly, not to let it waste your most valuable hours, but I believe also that you do wrong in keeping out of it altogether.
The society which seems so frivolous in masses contains individual members who, if you knew them better, would be able and willing to render you the most efficient intellectual help, and you miss this help by restricting yourself exclusively to books. Nothing can replace the conversation of living men and women; not even the richest literature can replace it.
Many years ago I was thrown by accident amongst a certain society of Englishmen who, when they were all together, never talked about anything worth talking about. Their general conversations were absolutely empty and null, and I concluded, as young men so easily conclude, that those twenty or thirty gentlemen had not half a dozen ideas amongst them. A little reflection might have reminded me that my own talk was no better than theirs, and consequently that there might be others in the company who also knew more and thought more than they expressed. I found out, by accident, after awhile, that some of these men had more than common culture in various directions; one or two had travelled far, and brought home the results of much observation; one or two had read largely, and with profit; more than one had studied a science; five or six had seen a great deal of the world. It was a youthful mistake to conclude that, because their general conversation was very dull, the men were dull individually. The general conversations of English society are dull; it is a national characteristic. But the men themselves are individually often very well informed, and quite capable of imparting their information to a single interested listener. The art is to be that listener. Englishmen have the greatest dread of producing themselves in the semi-publicity of a general conversation, because they fear that their special topics may not be cared for by some of the persons present; but if you can get one of them into a quiet corner by himself, and humor his shyness with sufficient delicacy and tact, he will disburden his mind at last, and experience a relief in so doing.
By keeping out of society altogether you miss these precious opportunities. The wise course is to mix as much with the world as may be possible without withdrawing too much time from your serious studies, but not to expect anything valuable from the general talk, which is nothing but a neutral medium in which intelligences float and move as yachts do in sea-water, and for which they ought not to be held individually responsible. The talk of Society answers its purpose if it simply permits many different people to come together without clashing, and the purpose of its conventions is the avoidance of collision. In England the small talk is heavy, like water; in France it is light as air; in both countries it is a medium and no more.
Society talks, by preference, about amusements; it does so because when people meet for recreation they wish to relieve their minds from serious cares, and also for the practical reason that Society must talk about what its members have in common, and their amusements are more in common than their work. As M. Thiers recommended the republican form of government in France on the ground that it was the form which divided his countrymen least, so a polite and highly civilized society chooses for the subject of general conversation the topic which is least likely to separate the different people who are present. It almost always happens that the best topic having this recommendation is some species of amusement; since amusements are easily learnt outside the business of life, and we are all initiated into them in youth.
For these reasons I think that we ought to be extremely tolerant of the dulness or frivolity which may seem to prevail in any numerous company, and not to conclude too hastily that the members of it are in any degree more dull or frivolous than ourselves. It is unfortunate, certainly, that the art of general conversation is not so successfully cultivated as it might be, and there are reasons for believing that our posterity will surpass us in this respect, because as culture increases the spirit of toleration increases with it, so that the great questions of politics and religion, in which all are interested, may be discussed more safely than they could be at the present day, by persons of different ways of thinking. But even the sort of general conversation we have now, poor as it may seem, still sufficiently serves as a medium for human intercourse, and permits us to meet on a common ground where we may select at leisure the agreeable or instructive friends that our higher intellect needs, and without whom the intellectual life is one of the ghastliest of solitudes.
And now permit me to add a few observations on another aspect of this subject, which is not without its importance.
Let us suppose that every one of rather more than ordinary capacity and culture were to act as you yourself are acting, and withdraw entirely from general society. Let us leave out of consideration for the present the loss to their private culture which would be the consequence of missing every opportunity for forming new intellectual friendships. Let us consider, this time, what would be the consequence to Society itself.
If all the cultivated men were withdrawn from it, the general tone of Society would inevitably descend much lower even than it is at present; it would sink so low that the whole national intellect would undergo a sure and inevitable deterioration. It is plainly the duty of men situated as you are, who have been endowed by nature with superior faculties, and who have enlarged them by the acquisition of knowledge, to preserve Society by their presence from an evil so surely prolific of bad consequences. If Society is less narrow, and selfish, and intolerant, and apathetic than it used to be, it is because they who are the salt of the earth have not disdained to mix with its grosser and earthier elements. All the improvement in public sentiment, and the advancement in general knowledge which have marked the course of recent generations, are to be attributed to the wholesome influence of men who could think and feel, and who steadily exercised, often quite obscurely, yet not the less usefully in their time and place, the subtle but powerful attraction of the greater mind over the less. Instead of complaining that people are ignorant and frivolous, we ought to go amongst them and lead them to the higher life. “I know not how it is,” said one in a dull circle to a more gifted friend who entered it occasionally, “when we are left to ourselves we are all lamentably stupid, but whenever you are kind enough to come amongst us we all talk very much better, and of things that are well worth talking about.” The gifted man is always welcome, if only he will stoop to conquer, and forget himself to give light and heat to others. The low Philistinism of many a provincial town is due mainly to the shy reserve of the one or two superior men who fancy that they cannot amalgamate with the common intellect of the place.
Not only would I advocate a little patient condescension, but even something of the sturdier temper which will not be driven out. Are the Philistines to have all the talk to themselves forever; are they to rehearse their stupid old platitudes without the least fear of contradiction? How long, O Lord? how long? Let us resolve that even in general society they shall not eternally have things their own way. Somebody ought to have the courage to enlighten them even at their own tables, and in the protecting presence of their admiring wives and daughters.