PROFESSOR SPLURGESON ON PERSONALITY.
Strange Conduct of Fashionable Audience.
Professor Splurgeson delivered the first of his Claridge Lectures at the theatre of the Mayfair University yesterday. The auditorium was crowded to its utmost extent, ladies largely predominating.
Professor Peterson Prigwell, in a brief introductory speech, said that the achievements of Professor Splurgeson beggared the vocabulary of eulogy. More than any other thinker he had succeeded in reconciling high life with high thinking.
Professor Splurgeson, speaking in fluent American, began by alluding to the numerous links which bound together his country with that of his audience, and pointed out that nowhere was this affinity more pronounced than in their philosophies. Both showed a concrete cosmopolitanism indissolubly wedded to an idealistic particularism; both agreed that truth, no matter how abysmally profound, could be expressed in language sufficiently simple to attract large audiences of fashionable women; both, finally, made it clear that Pragmatism, unless allied with Feminism, was destined to be relegated to the limbo of the obsolete. (Cheers.)
Professor Splurgeson then went on to say that nowhere was this happy element of intellectual compromise more needful than in discussing the problem of personality. That problem comprised three questions: What are we? What do we think of ourselves? and What do others think of us? In regard to the first question, the philosophic pitch had been queered by the conflicting combinations of all thinkers from Corcorygus the Borborygmatic down to William James. (Applause.) Man had been defined as a gelastic apteryx, but in view of the attitude of women towards the Plumage Bill the definition could hardly be allowed to fit the requirements of the spindle side of creation. The danger of endeavouring to find some unifying concept in a multiplicity of conflicting details was only equalled by that of recognizing the essential diversity which underlay a superficial homogeneity. (Loud cheers.)
At this point the Professor paused for a few minutes while kümmel and caviare sandwiches were handed round.
Resuming, Professor Splurgeson discussed with great eloquence the secular duel between the Will and the Understanding. It was ex hypothesi impossible for the super-man, à fortiori the super-woman, to yield to the dictates of the understanding. The question arose whether we might not profitably invert metaphysic and, instead of trying to locate personality in totality, begin with personality and work outwards. (Applause.) Otherwise the process of endeavouring to effect a synthesis of centripetal and centrifugal tendencies would invariably result in an indefinite deadlock.
Professor Splurgeson then proceeded to give a brief outline of what we usually think of ourselves. It was true that the expression of the face held a great place in the idea we had of other personalities, but how was it that in the idea of ourselves it played so small a part? The reason was that we did not know our own countenances. (Sensation.) If we were to meet ourselves in the street we should infallibly pass without a recognition. More than that, we did not wish to know them. (Murmurs.) Whenever we looked at ourselves in the glass we systematically ignored the most individual features—(cries of dissent)—and that was why we never, or very seldom, agreed that a photograph resembled or rendered justice to us. The explanation was to be found in the fact that we thought it undesirable to have too individual features, just as we thought it undesirable to wear too individual clothes.
At this point a violent uproar broke out, many of those present protesting against these statements as involving a libel on the entire female sex. It being impossible to restore order, Professor Splurgeson had to be escorted to his hotel by policemen, the date of his second lecture being indefinitely postponed.