These recriminations go on endlessly. Because we do not see certain qualities in action, we deny their existence. The owl has a reputation for sedentary habits and unpractical wisdom, simply because he keeps different business hours from those to which we are accustomed. Could we look in on him during the rush time, we would find him a hustling fellow. He has no time to waste on unremunerative meditation. This is his busy night. How ridiculous is the sleepiness of the greater part of the animal world! There is the lark nodding for hours on his perch. They say he never really wakes up—at least, nobody has seen him awake.
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There is a pedagogical theory according to which each individual in his early life repeats quite accurately the history of mankind up to date. He passes through all the successive stages in the history of the race, with a few extra flourishes now and then to indicate the surprises which the future may have in store for us. The history of civilization becomes, for the initiated, the rehearsal of the intensely interesting drama of the nursery and the schoolroom. It lacks the delicacy of the finished performance, but it presents the argument clearly enough and suggests the necessary stage business. The young lady who attempts to guide a group of reluctant young cave-dwellers from one period in human culture to another is not surprised at any of their tantrums. Her only anxiety is lest some form of barbarism appropriate to their condition may have been skipped. Her chief function is like that of the chorus in the Greek tragedy, to explain to the audience each dramatic situation as it unfolds.
I should not like to take the responsibility of running such an excellent theory into the ground, yet it does seem to me that it might be carried further. Granted that childhood is innocent savagery and that adolescence is gloriously barbaric, what is the matter with mature life? Does it not have any remnants of primitiveness? Does not Tennyson write of “the gray barbarian”?
The transitions from primitive savagery to civilization which took the race centuries to accomplish are repeated by the individual, not once but many times. After we get the knack of it, we can run over the alphabet of human progress backwards as well as forwards.
Exit Troglodyte. Enter Philosopher discoursing on disinterested virtue. Reënter Troglodyte. Such dramatic transformations may be expected by merely changing the subject of the conversation.
I remember sitting, one Sunday afternoon, on a vine-covered piazza reading to a thoughtful and irascible friend. The book was Martineau’s “Endeavors after the Christian Life.” In the middle of the second discourse my friend’s dog rushed into the street to attack the dog of a passer-by. It was one of those sudden and unpredictable antipathies to which the members of the canine race are subject. My friend, instead of preserving a dignified neutrality, rushed into the fray in the spirit of offensive partisanship, and instantly became involved in an altercation with the gentleman on the sidewalk. Canes were brandished, fierce threats were exchanged, and only by the greatest efforts were the Homeric heroes separated. Returning to his chair, my friend handed me the book, saying, “Now let us go on with our religion.” The religion went on as placidly as aforetime. There was no sense of confusion. The wrath of Achilles did not disturb the calm spirituality of Martineau. Each held the centre of the stage for his own moment, and there was no troublesome attempt to harmonize them. Why should there be? Martineau was not talking about dogs.
I know no greater luxury than that of thinking well of my fellow-men. It is a luxury which a person in narrow circumstances, who is compelled to live within the limits of strict veracity, sometimes feels to be beyond his means. Yet I think it no harm to indulge in a little extravagance in this direction. The best device for seeing all sorts and conditions of men to advantage is to arrange them in their proper chronological order.
For years it was the custom to speak disparagingly of the “poor whites” of our Southern mountains. Shut off from the main currents of modern life, they seemed unpardonably unprogressive. They were treated as mere degenerates. At last, however, a keener and kindlier observer hit upon a happy phrase. These isolated mountaineers, he said, have retained the characteristic habits of a former generation. They are our “contemporary ancestors.” Instantly everything was put in a more favorable light; for we all are disposed to see the good points in our ancestors. After all, the whole offense with which these mountain people are charged is that they are behind the times. In our bona-fide contemporaries this is a grave fault, but in our ancestors it is pardonable. We do not expect them to live up to our standards, and so we give them credit for living up to their own.
In this case we agree to consider fifty miles of mountain roads, if they be sufficiently bad, as the equivalent of rather more than a hundred years of time. Behind the barrier the twentieth century does not yet exist. Many things may still be winked at for which the later generation may be sternly called to repentance. Then, too, the end of the eighteenth century has some good points of its own. These contemporary ancestors of ours are of good old English stock, and we begin to look upon them with a good deal of family pride.