If you will apply this test to the professions of what is especially called fashionable society it is probable that you will arrive at the conclusions of the minority, which I have endeavored to express. You will find that the fashionable world remains very contentedly outside the true working intellectual life, and does not really share either its labors or its aspirations.
Another kind of evidence, which tells in the same direction, is the mobility of fashionable taste. At one time some studies are fashionable, at another time these are neglected and others have taken their place. You will not find this fickleness in the true intellectual world, which steadily pursues all its various studies, and keeps them well abreast, century after century.
If I insist upon this distinction with reference to you, do not accuse me of hostility even to fashion itself. Fashion is one of the great Divine institutions of human society, and the best philosophy rebels against none of the authorities that be, but studies and endeavors to explain them. The external deference which Society yields to culture is practically of great service, although (I repeat the epithet) it is external. The sort of good effect is in the intellectual sphere what the good effect of a general religious profession is in the moral sphere. All fashionable society goes to church. Fashionable religion differs from the religion of Peter and Paul as fashionable science differs from that of Humboldt and Arago, yet, notwithstanding this difference, the profession of religion is useful to Society as some restraint, at least during one day out of seven, upon its inveterate tendency to live exclusively for its amusement. And if any soul happens to come into existence in the fashionable world which has the genuine religious nature, that nature has a chance of developing itself, and of finding ready to hand certain customs which are favorable to its well-being. So it is, though in quite a different direction, with the esteem which Society professes for intellectual pursuits. It is an esteem in great part merely nominal, as fashionable Christianity is nominal, and still it helps and favors the early development of the genuine faculty where it exists. It is certainly a great help to us that fashionable society, which has such a tremendous, such an almost irresistible power for good or evil, does not openly discourage our pursuits, but on the contrary regards them with great external deference and respect. The recognition which Society has given to artists has been wanting in frankness and in promptitude, though even in this case much may be said to excuse a sort of hesitation rather than refusal which was attributable to the strangeness and novelty of the artistic caste in England; but Society has far more than a generation professed a respect for literature and erudition which has helped those two branches of culture more effectually than great subsidies of money. The exact truth seems to be that Society is sincere in approving our devotion to these pursuits, but is not yet sufficiently interested in them to appreciate them otherwise than from the outside, just as a father and mother applaud their boys for reading Thucydides, yet do not read him themselves, either in the original or in a translation.
All that I care to insist upon is that there is a degree of incompatibility between the fashionable and the intellectual lives which makes it necessary, at a certain time, to choose one or the other as our own. There is no hostility, there need not be any uncharitable feeling on one side or the other, but there must be a resolute choice between the two. If you decide for the intellectual life, you will incur a definite loss to set against your gain. Your existence may have calmer and profounder satisfactions, but it will be less amusing, and even in an appreciable degree less human; less in harmony, I mean, with the common instincts and feelings of humanity. For the fashionable world, although decorated by habits of expense, has enjoyment for its object, and arrives at enjoyment by those methods which the experience of generations has proved to be most efficacious. Variety of amusement, frequent change of scenery and society, healthy exercise, pleasant occupation of the mind without fatigue—these things do indeed make existence agreeable to human nature, and the science of living agreeably is better understood in the fashionable society of England than by laborious students and savans. The life led by that society is the true heaven of the natural man, who likes to have frequent feasts and a hearty appetite, who enjoys the varying spectacle of wealth, and splendor, and pleasure, who loves to watch, from the Olympus of his personal ease, the curious results of labor in which he takes no part, the interesting ingenuity of the toiling world below. In exchange for these varied pleasures of the spectator the intellectual life can offer you but one satisfaction, for all its promises are reducible simply to this, that you shall come at last, after infinite labor, into contact with some great reality—that you shall know, and do, in such sort that you will feel yourself on firm ground and be recognized—probably not much applauded, but yet recognized—as a fellow-laborer by other knowers and doers. Before you come to this, most of your present accomplishments will be abandoned by yourself as unsatisfactory and insufficient, but one or two of them will be turned to better account, and will give you after many years a tranquil self-respect, and, what is still rarer and better, a very deep and earnest reverence for the greatness which is above you. Severed from the vanities of the Illusory, you will live with the realities of knowledge, as one who has quitted the painted scenery of the theatre to listen by the eternal ocean or gaze at the granite hills.
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.