Men of the average sort very much resemble fishes, except that they are less quiet and not so graceful in their movements. There is the Pholas Dactylus, which resembles a small, animated sausage with a pudding head. His plan of life is to bore a perfectly tubular passage in the soft sand rock on the sea-side, and lie there with his cunning head at the mouth of his dwelling and snap up the smaller creatures who wander heedlessly by. Sometimes a near relative has made a dwelling-place at right angles to the direction in which he has elected to make his residence. He does not consult the rights or convenience of any one, but bores straight through his father or his mother-in-law. There are many persons who do the same thing. There is the subtle and picturesque devil fish, who hides himself in the sedge and opens his mouth like a railway tunnel. With the fishing-rod which Nature attaches to his nose, the end of which is contrived like a bait, he switches the bright water until fish run forward, when he draws it cleverly up, and the foolish, impetuous, and unobservant creatures rush down his cavernous and treacherous throat He offers a bait, not to feed them, but to feed himself. If people had only eyes to see, there are devil fish about in the sedges of daily life—political, clerical, and social. There is the octopus, with its long, aimless arms, as silent and lifeless as seaweed. It lies about as idle, as soft, as flexible, and as easy as error, or intemperance, or dishonesty. But let any edible thing approach it, and every limb starts into energy, every fibre is alive, every muscle contracts, and the thing seized dies in its inextricable and iron arms. People abound of the octopus species, and it is prudent to avoid them. However, the bad are not so many as are supposed. Yet, when we consider that, upon a moderate calculation, a fool a day is born—and doubtless a knave a day to keep him company—there must be some dubious people about.
A common mistake is that of taking offence at some unpleasant quality, and never looking to see whether there be not others for which we may tolerate and even respect a man. A person is often judged by a single quality, and sometimes by a single word. Persons who have lived long years in amity take offence at one expression. It may be uttered in passion; it may be spoken in mere lightness of heart, with no intention and no idea of offending—yet it enters into the foolish blood of those who hear it, and poisons the mind evermore. Nevertheless every man who reflects knows that those are fortunate and even miraculously skilful people, who can always say exactly what they intend to say, and no more. What resource of language—what insight of the minds of others—what mastery of phrases—what subtlety of discrimination—what perspicuity of statement must he possess who can express his every idea with such unerring accuracy that no word shall be redundant, or deficient, or ambiguous; and that another shall understand the speaker precisely as he understands himself! Yet by a chance phrase what friendships have been severed—what enmity has arisen—what estrangements, even in households, have occurred from these small and incidental causes? All memory of the tenderness, the kindness, the patient and generous service of years is often obliterated by a single word! The error people make is—that everything said is intended. Yet out of the many qualities every man has, and by which any man may be moved, a single passion may go mad in a mind unwatchful. Not only hatred or anger, but love will go mad and commit murder, which is often but the insanity of a minute. Yet nobody remembers that all are liable to insanity of speech.
What a wonderful thing is perfection! It must be very rare. Yet some people are always looking for it in others who never offer any example of it in themselves. It is not, however, to be had anywhere. All we are entitled to look for is that the good in any individual shall in some general way predominate over the bad. We have need to be thankful if we find this. The late George Peabody was not a mean man, though he would stand in the rain at Charing Cross, waiting for a cheap omnibus to the City. There was a threepenny one waiting, but one with a twopenny fare would come up soon—Mr. Peabody would wait for it Making money was the habit of his mind, and he made it in the street as well as the office, and having made it, gave it away with a more than royal hand.
One Sunday I rode in a Miles Platting tram car, amid decorous, well-dressed chapel-going people—several of them young and active. A child fell out of the tram, whose mother was too feeble to follow it. No one moved, save a woman of repulsive expression, with whom any one might suppose her neighbours had a bad time. She seemed the least desirable person to know of all the passengers; yet this woman, on seeing the child lying in the road, at once leapt out of the tram, brought the child back and put it tenderly into its mother's arms. Intrepid humanity may dwell in a very rough exterior.
There goes a man with a hard, forbidding face, and a headachy Evangelical complexion. Like the man mentioned in the last paper, he is not an alluring person to know—those at his fireside have a dreary time of it. His children have joyless Sundays. He is a street preacher. His voice is harsh and painful. He howls "glad tidings" at the street corner. He is wanting in the first elements of reverence—those of modesty and taste. Yet this same man has kindness and generosity in his heart After his hard day's work is done he will give the evening, which others spend in pleasure, to try and save some casual soul in the street.
Though we continually forget it, we know that men are full of mixed qualities and unequal passions. Ignorance of this renders one of the noblest passages of Shakespeare dangerous if misapplied:
"To thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
But what is a man's "own self"? It all lies there. Tell the liar, the thief, the forger, or the ruffian to be true to himself, and any one knows what will follow. Polonius knew the heart of Laertes, and to him he could say, "to thine own self be true." We must be sure of the nature of him whom we advise to follow himself.*
* Cicero appears to have thought of this when he said:
"Every roan ought carefully to follow out his peculiar
character, provided it is only peculiar, and not vicious,"
What is or what can be the object of education but to strengthen by precept, habit and environment the better qualities of human nature; and to divert, repress, or subordinate where we cannot extinguish hereditary, unethical tendencies? Though we deny—or do not steadily see—that nations as well as individuals have capacities for good as well as evil, we admit it when we attempt to create international influences, which shall promote civilisation.