There is no ratio or proportion at all between the cause of irritation and the ensuing state of mind. In our moments of ferment we lose the faculty of discrimination. We hardly ever refer our exasperation to the trivial detail that brought it on. We feel that the detail is simply an indication of the great flaws in the whole situation. We have a crow to pluck, not only with our friend, but—to use the words of Quiller-Couch—with everything that appertains to that potentate.
For example, suppose that we are at loggerheads with a fellow-member of a public-welfare committee. He opposes a measure that we endorse. He will not see reason. We therefore refer him to his class: he is a typical politician, a single-track mind, a combination of Mugwump and Boss Tweed. We ourselves, meanwhile, are a blend of Martin Luther, John Huss, and the prophet Isaiah, with tongs from the altar.
Or perhaps we are irritated with a colleague on a teaching-staff after the events of a varied day. Irrelevant matters have happened all the morning in amazing succession: an itinerant janitor filling inkwells; an inkwell turning turtle—blotters rushed to flood-sufferers; an electrician with tall step-ladder and scaling-irons to repair the electric clock; a fire-drill in examination period; one too many revolutions of the pencil-sharpener; one too many patriotic “drives” involving the care of public moneys kept in a candy-box. And now our zealous academic friend calls an unexpected committee meeting to tabulate the results of intelligence-tests.
We are in no mood for intelligence-tests. We object. He persists. We take umbrage. He still calls the meeting. Then, up rears the wave of dislike and irritation, not at the details that have brought us to our crusty state—not dislike of ink and electricity and patriotism and intelligence—but dislike of our friend and of the Art of Teaching that he represents. The trouble with our friend, we decide, is his academic environment. He is over-educated—attenuated; a Brahmin. Nobody in touch with Real Life could be so thoroughly a mule and an opinionist. Better get out of this ultra-civilized atmosphere before our own beautiful catholicity of thought is cramped, crippled, like his. At these moments we do not stop to remember that people are opinionated also on the island of Yap.
Most frequently of all, we apply our dudgeon to the kind of community in which we live. We are nettled at a bit of criticism that has reached our ears. Instantly we say cutting things about the narrow ways of a small community, with page-references to “Main Street” and the Five Towns. We forget that our friends in great cities might be quite as chatty. Margot Asquith lives and thrives in crowds.
We refer our irritation, also, to types. Any skirmish in a women's organization is referred to women and their catty ways. Any Church or Red Cross breeze is an example of the captious temper of the godly. All friction between soldiers of different nations is a sign of Race Antagonism; the French are not what we had inferred from Lafayette.
In short, the whole history and literature of dissension shows that people have always tried to make their irritations prove something about certain types, or situations, or nations, or communities. Whereas the one thing that has been eternally proved is the fact that human beings are irritable.
If we accept that fact as a normal thing, we find ourselves ready for one more great truth. Violent irritation produced on small means is a deeply human thing, a delicately unbalanced thing, something to reckon with, and something from which we eventually recover on certain ancient and well-recognized lines. When our feeling is at its height, we are ready to throw away anything, smash anything, burn all bridges. Nothing is too valuable to cast into the tall flame of our everlasting bonfire. This sounds exaggerated. Emotion remembered in tranquillity is a pallid thing, indeed. But it is hot enough at the time. The whole range of sensation and emotion may be travelled in an hour, at a pace incredible—a sort of round-trip survey of the soul.
The father of a large family sat in church at one end of a long pew. His wife sat at the other end of the pew, with a row of sons, daughters, and guests ranged in the space between. Near the close of the sermon one morning, the father glanced down the line, gazed for a horrified moment at his eldest daughter, Kate, got out his pencil, wrote a few words on a scrap of paper, put the paper into his hat, and passed the hat down the line. As the hat went from hand to hand, each member of the family peered in, read the message, glanced at Kate, and began to shake as inconspicuously as is ever possible in an open pew. Kate, absorbed in the sermon, was startled by a nudge from her brother, who offered her the hat, with note enclosed. She looked in and read, “Tell Kate that her mouth is partly open.”
Kate remembered that it must have been. The whole pew was quivering with seven concentrated efforts at self-control.