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The Agile Minority
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (October 8, 1910) : 26
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It is not true that it is preferable to be of the majority. Or, if it is true for some, they are of the huddling sheep brand, only comfortable when kept erect by pressure from all sides. To others the majority is a place in which they are pained to find themselves occasionally, and it is these others who devote lives of specialized agility to keeping with the minority. The minority is invariably right. It holds the opinions that the majority of the next generation will clasp comfortably. Instead of being the black sheep for its divergence, it is the advance-guard to be followed at as little distance as possible. It is generally sane to doubt any theory upheld by the greatest number of people, for its popularity is usually indicative of a shapelessness, a roundness too safe. An idea shared by millions is an idea with its edges worn off; it no longer grips and stings. It has rolled from one mind to another until its shape is such that it can be carried in a corner of the brain without ever attracting the attention of its supporter.
Or, if the minority is wrong, it is still stimulating to be of its number, for the society of those who are braced by being separated has something heady in it. Το have an uncommon amount of breathing-space all to oneself, and to inhale it with head flung back and dilating nostrils, enjoying its brisk freshness, is surely better than to pant scantily in much-used air. Το have an uncommon amount of breathing-space all to oneself, and to inhale it with head flung back and dilating nostrils, enjoying its brisk freshness, is surely better than to pant scantily in much-used air. A minority appeals to one’s valor; it suggests a losing course and the need of strong fighters. What fun is there in rallying around a standard about which so many have gathered that it looks like nothing so much as a sorry pennant flapping atop of a human pyramid? Those bees that gather on the outside of the large ball of which the queen is the centre never have our respect. When they saw how little need she had of them they really might have gone off in search of some queen with a less universal appeal.
It is not always easy to keep in the minority. A custom smartly exclusive in one country is demeaningly usual in another. One must keep one’s eyes open and jump to where the crowd is thinnest. It is imperative to certain temperaments, those living most pleasurably among the minority, to burn wood fires in Newcastle and coal fires on the frontier. They cannot delight in a thing sunk in the bog of over-usage; it must stand alone in order that the associations and ideas clinging to it can be seen and appreciated.
The minority are people of a strong sense of responsibility. They feel it incumbent on them to investigate the claims of new ideas, and the pleasure they receive in standing sponsor for the trial of the little-liked leads them in details to vary radically, to drink tea in America and cocktails in England. So dependent are they on a constant whiff of minority that to suffer inconvenience in exhibiting its trade-marks is balm to their sensitive souls. And yet it is important that the minority be of a certain size. It is like solitude; it cannot be enjoyed alone. It requires at least two; and the more the better, so long as it remains a noticeably small group with its limits sharply defined. Self-realization is the water of the minority; self-congratulation, its meat: both are dependent on seeing oneself reflected sparingly in mirrors to one’s liking. Self-realization is the water of the minority; self-congratulation, its meat: both are dependent on seeing oneself reflected sparingly in mirrors to one’s liking. To be a minority of one is to be self-distrustful and only partially compensated in one’s private moments by periods spent on a mountain-top, splendidly isolated, cut off from the valley below by one’s no-longer-to-be-held scintillations, which, when aired in public, are regarded as queer to the point of stubborn idiocy. A genius unrecognized is laughed and scorned utterly by the peasants among whom he lives.
The fear of being of the majority is much more general than would be supposed, as so many of the great multitude live and die in it, always dreading it, but kept from knowing they were of it by a gift given each of us at birth by some wise and good fairy, that of feeling ourselves to differ utterly from the rest of mankind. If we were not all armed with this (our inability to see glaring resemblances is one of the beneficent, unregarded miracles) the majority would drown itself in its own tears. If we cannot be distinguished by virtues, vices will do, but our life depends on the possession of an identifying trait. To lack it is to be lost, swamped, worse than dead, over-looked. If the majority live in the majority by the aid of this necessary self-deception, picture the intoxication of living really of the few, of keeping, though with difficulty, in a small flat surrounded by a distinctly cleared space which is flatteringly avoided, for no matter what reason, by the countless others.
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