Florida Pier : writings and about / jmcvey.net
Capitulating to Popularity
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (February 25, 1911) : 35
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The heroism of being true to one’s type is such a lonely, misinterpreted one. To wait on one’s highest elevation for future encounters with one’s kind, knowing that the compensation of their finding you worthy will make all right, does not banish utterly the occasional temptations to be warmly, if a little indiscriminately, human, nor does the compensation make one in the least unconscious of assailing criticism. It is disquieting to be accused of having no friends, the implication being that our calibre is established by nothing so much as the familiar approval of the many, it mattering not in the least of what calibre the many be. There come moments when to wait for what we have only seen a few times and may have warped in remembering, or perhaps may never see again, seems doubtful wisdom; and the desire to be met, if only a quarter of the way, and heartily liked, even for something one is not and would scorn to be, is strong upon us. Then if we do capitulate it is to hurry back, for the time immune to reproaches, chilled by advances that were not comprehensions and so affected us as mere rude jostlings, in a panic that during our absence those for whom we have waited have come, and, seeing us airing our lesser selves, passed on, feeling no glow of the ready freemasonry which we forfeited, when by refusing to capitulate it would have been the sign by which we could be identified.
Every time that we refuse the too easy intercourse or remain dumbly unresponsive to the over-hardy appeal, by just so much churlish misunderstanding as we let ourselves in for do we establish our right to what we await, until by a law of nature it seems as though our staunch routing of the half good must create a high vacuum into which the wholly best will rush deliciously. To have it said we have had nothing when we made our stand — why our entire lives have been illumined by the knowledge that because of that we have had ourselves. If, unfortunately enough, things work out otherwise, and we are told that because we were not satisfied with what was at hand and could be easily, laxly had, we, by going without, have had nothing, what a spirited denial it is in our power to make! To have it said we have had nothing when we made our stand — why our entire lives have been illumined by the knowledge that because of that we have had ourselves. It was more than we asked for. It was overwhelming. We demanded others, but others of a certain fibre and fire, and for the insistence of our demand we were rewarded with ourselves. Here is matter for exultation.
To come upon people who for years have not lived the life of their circumstances, who have never shielded themselves with the ready excuse of, “My life has been such that” — and the string of things they have limply not been follows — is to come upon one of the most inspiriting and precious of finds. Because bodies will be dust in the end is hardly sufficient excuse for the over-common habit of scattering our entire selves in dust-like particles from the very beginning. To touch with one’s surroundings where one can, and that happily, but not to feel the calls from every side so loud that one’s shape is distorted in the process of too constantly adapting until one is so on a level with one’s surroundings that one is on a level with nothing else, that is to have avoided a spiritless succumbing from which one sadly turns away one’s eyes. Because bodies will be dust in the end is hardly sufficient excuse for the over-common habit of scattering our entire selves in dust-like particles from the very beginning.We chose to be mere annoying fragments which obscure the vision of clearer-seeing people when, if we had made half an attempt, we might have had whole moments of being fine porcelain, vessels fit to catch who knows what supreme glimpse?
To postpone disciplining selectiveness is to make ourselves incapable of it. If we remain dull too long a change comes over our metal and we can no longer sharpen, temper, and refine our powers. We cannot even repeat the exclusive withdrawal. We have given ourselves to the dilution of the crowd and with the crowd we must remain. All the avenues leading to those for whom we intended waiting when we had had a little more of the social, comfortable befuddlement are irretrievably closed. Not only can we no longer hail them when they come, but they would fail to recognize us if we did, for we are not now of their kind and have no claims of kinship upon them.
It is no compliment to one’s brother to rub elbows with him. It leads to leaning and a dependency on arm-in-arm support. The better way is for every man to walk apart at times, with the result that he will be far too imposing a presence to elbow. A firm hand will be substituted for a part of the anatomy much overrated and instinctively plebeian, or, if his voluntary isolation has been used to the highest purpose, he will have become a symbol to salute and capable of giving forth much rarer matter than hand-clasps, hobnobbings, and feeble support to the feeble.
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