Lessons in Life; A Series of Familiar Essays

by J. G. Holland

I have said that there are some men who are punctiliously proper for the purpose of covering their moral obliquities. The virtue of a prude is always to be suspected. "So you have been looking after the bad words," was savage old Dr. Johnson's reply to the very proper woman who found fault with him for introducing so many indecent words into his dictionary. There are few men who have not frequently, during their lives, broken their way through a crust of punctilious propriety into hearts full of all the blackness of sensuality and sin. The world is full of hypocrisy, and hypocrisy is nothing more than appearing to be what one is not. Indeed, I believe that one of the strongest motives operative in the world to render men scrupulously proper in their deportment and behavior is sin. I make no hesitation in saying that shallowness and sensuality are the leading ingredients in the majority of the exceedingly proper characters with which I am acquainted.

Leaving this particular phase of my subject, I wish to call attention to the well-recognized fact that all perfect people are bores. A perfect character in a novel has no more power over a reader—no more foothold among his sympathies—than a proposition in mathematics would have. Of all stupid creations that the brain of man has given birth to, there are none so stupid as the perfect men and women whom we find upon the pages of fiction. Sometimes we find in actual life a character so symmetrical, so rounded off at the corners, and smoothed at the edges, and polished on the sides, and unexceptionable in all its manifestations, that we cannot find fault with it; yet we find it impossible for us to love it. Such a character gets beyond the reach of our sympathies. Human affection is like ivy. It cannot cling to glass; it must plant its feet in imperfections. It is not to be denied that imperfection is the true flavor of humanity. The mind refuses to sympathize where it does not exist. What the world would call a perfect man—what would be adjudged a perfect man by the best standards—would be as tasteless as a last year's apple. A perfect woman could no more be loved than she could be hated. I never saw a man with a perfect face—a face modelled so symmetrically and so perfectly that no fault could be found with it—who was not more or less a numskull. A pretty man is always a pretty fool; and the more symmetrical the features of a woman are, the more does she approach to the style of beauty and expression and native gifts of a porcelain doll. The mind and the character can be so symmetrical that they will lose all charm and all significance. They descend into simple prettiness, which is simple insipidity.

I say that imperfection is the true flavor of humanity. In explanation, I ought to say that all individuality is either based upon it or pre-supposes it. For instance: the preponderance of certain powers and qualities of mind and character in me, over certain other powers and qualities, and the weakness and imperfection of these latter as related to the former, and to the individualities of others, make my individuality what it, is. If in me all mental and moral powers were in equipoise—if I were a symmetrical man, as the first Adam may possibly have been—I should have no individuality, no qualities that would distinguish me—no weaknesses that would furnish footholds for human sympathy—no freshness and flavor. A whole world full of perfect men and women, each one like every other, would be unutterably stupid. Where there is no weakness there is no individuality; where there is no individuality there is no true humanity; where there is no true humanity there is no sympathy; and where there is no sympathy there is no pleasure. We demand that a man shall live according to his law—develop himself according to his law— manifest and express himself according to his law; and then he will become the object of our sympathy or antipathy, according to our law. We demand that the true flavor of every individuality shall be declared, and not be masked by the imposition of conventional regulations.

If every tree in the world were perfect, according to any recognized standard, then all the trees would be alike, and would cease to be attractive and picturesque. We keep all perfect things out of pictures, because they are formal and tasteless. A bran new cottage, with a picket fence around it, and every thing cleaned up about it, is too perfect to be picturesque. An old, tumble-down mill, with rude and rotten timbers, and a wheel outside, is decidedly picturesque, because its imperfections make it informal. The most unattractive of all houses is a model house. A house that no man can find fault with, is a house that no man can love. It is precisely thus with human character and with men. A proper, perfect, "model" man, is an unlovable man. A sphere cannot be made to fit an angle, and a spherical character has no point of sympathy with one that is thrown into the angles necessary for individuality. So we neither love symmetry and perfection in men, according to any recognized standard, nor the appearance of them. We demand not only that men shall have individuality, but that they shall express it in their language and their lives. In society we demand variety; and in order to have it, men must act out themselves. The harmony and sweetness of social life consist in the adjustment of the strong points of some to the weak points of others.

With these facts so very evident as they must be to all thoughtful minds, it is strange that such an effort is made to bring all men to a certain standard and style of life. I do not believe there is a country on the face of the earth where public opinion and fashion and conventional and individual notions, exercise so despotic a sway as they do in America. There is, in this "free country," no play to individuality tolerated. No room is made for the peculiarities of a man—no freedom is given to his mode of manifestation. A man who has peculiar manners, and whose style of individuality is marked, has no room allowed to him at all. He is very likely to be called a fool, and laughed at by his inferiors. We take no pains to look through the outside to find the heart and soul, and refuse to see excellence behind manifestations that offend our notions or our tastes. We go to hear a preacher, and if he do not happen to have the externals, and the style of delivery which we most admire, we condemn him at once. We make no room for his individuality, and allow to it no freedom of manifestation. Room and freedom—that which the ocean has, that which the rivers have, that which the forest has, and that from which all of them derive their beauty and their glory—room and freedom are denied to men by men who need both, quite as much as their fellows.

The choicest food of the gossips is the personal peculiarities of their acquaintances. The grand staple of ridicule is this same individuality, whose importance I have endeavored to illustrate. All the small wits of society busy themselves upon the eccentricities of those around them. Church and creed, party and platform, fashion and custom, all direct themselves against the development of individuality. Sensitive natures shrink before such an array of influences, and retire into themselves, drawing back and keeping in check all their out-reaching individuality. Many a man, indeed, who would face a cannon's mouth without trembling, flinches when beset by ridicule. It is not the fault of society that the whole race of mankind are not reduced to a dead level of character, and a tasteless uniformity of life. Were it not that God does His work so strongly, it would have been undone long ago. As it is, we always have a few men and women who are true enough to God and themselves to keep the world from stagnation, and give zest to life. They sometimes shock Miss Nancy, but as they do not happen to care what Miss Nancy thinks of them, they manage to live and do something to keep Miss Nancy's friends from settling into chronic inanity.

LESSON XXII.

THE POETIC TEST.

"I walked on, musing with myself
On life and art, and whether, after all,
A larger metaphysics might not help
Our physics—a completer poetry
Adjust our daily life and vulgar wants
More fully than the special outside plans,
Phalansteries, material institutes,
The civil conscriptions and lay monasteries,
Preferred by modern thinkers." MRS. BROWNING.

The highest poetry is the purest truth. To learn whether any thing is as it ought to be, we have only to learn whether it is truly poetical. It is a popular fallacy to suppose that poetical things are necessarily fanciful, or imaginative, or sentimental in other words, that poetry resides in that which is both baseless and valueless. In the popular thought, poetry is shut out of the realm of truth and reality. The reason, I suppose, is, that poetry demands more of truth and harmony and beauty than is commonly found in the actualities of human life.