The one great anxiety that torments thoughtful Englishmen, and still more thoughtful Frenchmen, in the present day, is the establishment of an accepted moral authority. I am able to perceive only one that might be efficacious, and that is a severe public opinion. It may be answered that public opinion exists already; and so no doubt it does, but chiefly to reward conformity and punish nonconformity in externals. We want a public opinion that would sustain and encourage every one in the practice of unostentatious virtues, especially in temperance, self-denial, and simplicity of life. As an example of what might be I may mention the French disapproval of debt. That is extremely strong, and as it is accompanied by the permission to live simply it does really operate as an effective restraint upon extravagance, at least in provincial life. The American disapproval of idleness, even in the rich, is another case in point, and in the English upper classes there is a general and salutary disapproval of everything that is held to be ungentlemanly. Notwithstanding what has been said in this chapter about the want of moral authority in laymen, they can effect something by combination. For example, military men are laymen, yet they keep up amongst themselves a splendid spirit of courage and self-sacrifice, and so do physicians and surgeons, with the addition of a manly charity and tenderness.
CHAPTER V
THE EDUCATION OF THE FEELINGS
Mill’s Opinion on French Feeling.
English Stoicism.
The Frenchman’s love for his Mother.
Euryalus.
Ascanius and his Sentiments of Friendship.
Un-English.
John Mill pointed out long ago the advantage that the French have in the cultivation of the feelings. This is very much an affair of utterance in language, for it is utterance which best keeps feelings alive. French sympathy is often, no doubt, assumed; that is inevitable where so much sympathy is expressed; still, it is certain that in France all true sympathy does get expressed, and in this way people live surrounded by an atmosphere in which feeling remains active. In England the national reserve and the sharp distinction of classes are both against the cultivation of feelings, but besides this there is the pride of stoicism, the fear of seeming soft. The Frenchman’s love for his mother is ridiculous in England; in France it is only natural. In truth, perhaps, it is not so much the sentiment that is ridiculous for Englishmen as the association of it with French expressions. The English do not laugh at it in Latin. The affection of Euryalus for his mother is thought beautiful in the Æneid, but turn it into French and it comes in those very phrases that Englishmen cannot abide. “J’ai une mère issue de l’antique race de Priam, une mère infortunée qui a voulu me suivre et que n’ont pu retenir le rivage natal d’Ilion ni les mûrs hospitaliers d’Aceste. Cette mère je la quitte sans l’instruire des dangers où je cours et sans l’embrasser. Non, j’en prends à témoin et la Nuit et votre main sacrée, je ne pourrais soutenir les larmes de ma mère. Mais vous, je vous en conjure, consolez-la dans sa douleur, soutenez-la dans son abandon.” The words that I have italicised are so perfectly French that they might be quoted from the last yellow-backed novel. The warm promise of friendship from Ascanius is also excessively French in sentiment. “Pour toi, Euryale, dont l’âge se rapproche plus du mien, admirable jeune homme, dès ce jour mon cœur est à toi, et je t’adopte à jamais comme compagnon de ma fortune: sans toi je n’irai plus chercher la gloire, et, soit dans la paix, soit dans la guerre, ma confiance reposera sur ton bras et sur tes conseils.” One young Englishman would never speak like that to another, he might possibly go so far as to say, “Hope you’ll come back all right.”
Effect of English Usages.