[60] Autobiography of Isaac Williams, p. 132. This letter was written in 1863.
CHAPTER XII
THE MANAGEMENT OF CHARACTER
Of all the tasks which are set before man in life, the education and management of his character is the most important, and, in order that it should be successfully pursued, it is necessary that he should make a calm and careful survey of his own tendencies, unblinded either by the self-deception which conceals errors and magnifies excellences, or by the indiscriminate pessimism which refuses to recognise his powers for good. He must avoid the fatalism which would persuade him that he has no power over his nature, and he must also clearly recognise that this power is not unlimited. Man is like a card-player who receives from Nature his cards—his disposition, his circumstances, the strength or weakness of his will, of his mind, and of his body. The game of life is one of blended chance and skill. The best player will be defeated if he has hopelessly bad cards, but in the long run the skill of the player will not fail to tell. The power of man over his character bears much resemblance to his power over his body. Men come into the world with bodies very unequal in their health and strength; with hereditary dispositions to disease; with organs varying greatly in their normal condition. At the same time a temperate or intemperate life, skilful or unskilful regimen, physical exercises well adapted to strengthen the weaker parts, physical apathy, vicious indulgence, misdirected or excessive effort, will all in their different ways alter his bodily condition and increase or diminish his chances of disease and premature death. The power of will over character is, however, stronger, or, at least, wider than its power over the body. There are organs which lie wholly beyond its influence; there are diseases over which it can exercise no possible influence, but there is no part of our moral constitution which we cannot in some degree influence or modify.
It has often seemed to me that diversities of taste throw much light on the basis of character. Why is it that the same dish gives one man keen pleasure and to another is loathsome and repulsive? To this simple question no real answer can be given. It is a fact of our nature that one fruit, or meat, or drink will give pleasure to one palate and none whatever to another. At the same time, while the original and natural difference is undoubted, there are many differences which are wholly or largely due to particular and often transitory causes. Dishes have an attraction or the reverse because they are associated with old recollections or habits. Habit will make a Frenchman like his melon with salt, while an Englishman prefers it with sugar. An old association of ideas will make an Englishman shrink from eating a frog or a snail, though he would probably like each if he ate it without knowing it, and he could easily learn to do so. The kind of cookery which one age or one nation generally likes, another age or another nation finds distasteful. The eye often governs the taste, and a dish which, when seen, excites intense repulsion, would have no such repulsion to a blind man. Every one who has moved much about the world, and especially in uncivilised countries, will get rid of many old antipathies, will lose the fastidiousness of his taste, and will acquire new and genuine tastes. The original innate difference is not wholly destroyed, but it is profoundly and variously modified.
These changes of taste are very analogous to what takes place in our moral dispositions. They are for the most part in themselves simply external to morals, though there is at least one conspicuous exception. Many—it is to be hoped most—men might spend their lives with full access to intoxicating liquors without even the temptation of getting drunk. Apart from all considerations of religion, morals, social, physical, or intellectual consequences, they abstain from doing so simply as a matter of taste. With other men the pleasure of excessive drinking is such that it requires an heroic effort of the will to resist it. There are men who not only are so constituted that it is their greatest pleasure, but who are even born with a craving for drink. In no form is the terrible fact of heredity more clearly or more tragically displayed. Many, too, who had originally no such craving gradually acquire it: sometimes by mere social influence, which makes excessive drinking the habit of their circle; more frequently through depression or sorrow, which gives men a longing for some keen pleasure in which they can forget themselves; or through the jaded habit of mind and body which excessive work produces, or through the dreary, colourless, joyless surroundings of sordid poverty. Drink and the sensual pleasures, if viciously indulged, produce (doubtless through physical causes) an intense craving for their gratification. This, however, is not the case with all our pleasures. Many are keenly enjoyed when present, yet not seriously missed when absent. Sometimes, too, the effect of over-indulgence is to vitiate and deaden the palate, so that what was once pleasing ceases altogether to be an object of desire. This, too, has its analogue in other things. We have a familiar example in the excessive novel-reader, who begins with a kind of mental intoxication, and who ends with such a weariness that he finds it a serious effort to read the books which were once his strongest temptation.
Tastes of the palate also naturally change with age and with the accompanying changes of the body. The schoolboy who bitterly repines because the smallness of his allowance restricts his power of buying tarts and sweetmeats will probably grow into a man who, with many shillings in his pocket, daily passes the confectioner's shop without the smallest desire to enter it.
It is evident that there is a close analogy between these things and that collection of likes and dislikes, moral and intellectual, which forms the primal base of character, and which mainly determines the complexion of our lives. As Marcus Aurelius said: 'Who can change the desires of man?' That which gives the strongest habitual pleasure, whether it be innate or acquired, will in the great majority of cases ultimately dominate. Certain things will always be intensely pleasurable, and certain other things indifferent or repellent, and this magnetism is the true basis of character, and with the majority of men it mainly determines conduct. By the associations of youth and by other causes these natural likings and dislikings may be somewhat modified, but even in youth our power is very limited, and in later life it is much less. No real believer in free-will will hold that man is an absolute slave to his desires. No man who knows the world will deny that with average man the strongest passion or desire will prevail—happy when that desire is not a vice.