The sensitive child takes up the “Pilgrim’s Progress” and reads of the way Christian went on his way to the heavenly city, meeting all kinds of people, yet apparently without sympathy for most of them. “Why did he leave his wife and little children in the City of Destruction and go off alone? If he knew that the city was to be burned up, why didn’t he stay with them? He doesn’t seem to care very much for what happens to people who are not of his set.” So it seems to be. Mr. Hold-the-world, Mr. Money-love, and Mr. Save-all walk along with him, and then they go off the path to look into a silver-mine. Christian doesn’t take the trouble to find out what became of them. Bunyan says coolly, “Whether they fell into the pit by looking over the brink or whether they went down to dig, or whether they were smothered by the damps that commonly arise, of these things I am not certain; but this I observed, that they were never seen that way again.” Christian goes on after the tragedy perfectly unconcerned, singing a cheerful hymn. It was none of his business what happened to those who wandered off the road. He is rather pleased than otherwise when Vain-Confidence falls into the pit. When “the brisk young lad,” Ignorance, joins him Christian converses with him only long enough to find out his name and where he came from. Then instead of trying to improve him he leaves him behind. Poor Ignorance trudges after, but he never can catch up.
All this is right in an allegory. Ignorance must be left behind, Vain-Confidence must perish in the pit; from the City of Destruction we must flee without waiting for others to follow. This is a very simple lesson in the way of life. The next lesson is more difficult and it is quite different,—how to treat ignorant and vainglorious and otherwise imperfect persons.
The first thing we have to remember is that they are persons, and that persons are quite different from allegorical characters. Persons can change their minds, they can repent and aspire after a better life, and above all they have feelings,—which abstract virtues and vices do not have. Does not the cruelty of the good chiefly arise from the fact that they do not see all this?
In a preceding essay we have considered Hawthorne’s judgment on the characters which he himself created. His most powerful story of sin and retribution wears to his eyes “a stern and sombre aspect too much ungladdened by the tender and familiar influences which soften almost every scene of Nature and real life.” He was aware that he was depicting not all of life, but only one aspect of it. He saw the characters of the “Scarlet Letter,” as they saw themselves, “in a kind of typical illusion.” He was fully aware that his treatment was symbolic rather than realistic. Real life is infinitely more complex and therefore more full of possibilities of good than any symbolic representation of it.
I do not think that good people are really as cruel at heart as one would be led to think from their words, or even from their acts. I remember a good professor of theology who was discoursing on the way in which the Canaanites were destroyed in order that Israel might possess the land.
“Professor,” asked a literal-minded student, “why did the Lord create the Canaanites, anyhow?”
“The Lord created the Canaanites,” answered the professor, “in order that Israel might have something on which to whet his sword.”
The words were bloodthirsty enough; and yet had I been a Canaanite in distress I should have made my way at once to the good professor’s house. I am sure that the moment he saw me he would have taken me in and ministered tenderly to my distresses and protected me from an unkindly world. But I should have taken the precaution to let him see me before he learned my name. A Canaanite in the abstract would be an abomination to him, and I would have to take pains to make him understand that I was a human being.
The word “cruel” is in its derivation akin to “crude;” it is that which is raw and unripe. Like all other good things, righteousness at first is crude. Crude righteousness takes no account of the difference between a sinner and his sin; it hates both alike with a bitter hatred, and visits on each the same condemnation. It is harsh and bitter. For all that it is a good thing, this unripe fruit of righteousness. Give it time and sunshine, and it will grow sweet and mellow.
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