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Two Difficulties that Confront the Seeker of Truth
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (April 22, 1911) : 23
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      It is so difficult to convince people that you have proved them to be wrong. Everything that happens they interpret as supporting their argument, when it has seemed to you that the hand of Providence pointed clearly to the pervertedness of their views. Knowing it to be a rather low final dig, as you have already so ably presented your side, you yet cannot resist handing them an article luckily happened upon, in which an expert repeats masterfully your contentions of the night before. When what should happen but the baffling and exasperating dénouement of their returning the paper with stuffy smirks and the remark “Very good, indeed. I hope you will take that to heart and act accordingly.” And it is then borne in upon you that the able argument of the expert has been completely ignored, the cutting things he said about people of their type passed over unseen, and a small irrelevant half sentence pounced upon, misinterpreted, and made to dominate everything else to such an extent that they actually believe themselves to have been proved even more firmly than ever established in the right. It is a trick of human nature almost invariable, irritating to an extreme degree, a mental blind spot corresponding to the defect which, we are told, exists in every eye.
      It does not seem possible that they should be deaf, blind, and forever unaware of all that disturbs their stability, while always keenly alive to everything that can in the least improve you, and improve you along the lines they have already pointed out as being the only proper lines — in fact, those that they have long traced by their every act. There are moments when you are embarrassed by the glaring manner in which you are being proved to be in the right, and they in the wrong. You blush for circumstance’s lack of delicacy in disarming them, but, by a miracle that comes near to driving you to a frenzy, they do not know they have even been jostled. They remain sublimely untouched, or else, grasping the spear that felled them by its pointed end, batter you with great satisfaction with the blunt butt, which to all but them has no possible bearing on the matter. Still incredulous, we suspect them of recognizing inwardly our superior wisdom, and just stubbornly refusing to grant us an inch of the advantage which they nevertheless see. It is human and likably spunky to be as stubborn as that, and we relent to the extent of a friendly approach, only to discover — and we become choleric, almost apopletic at the revelation — that they are interpreting your advances as an admission on your part of having all along been in the wrong, for never has so much as an inkling reached them that they might possibly not be in the right.
      The invariability of it all makes us conceive a different scale for the virtues, and that rarely attained one of saying frankly one was mistaken seems rightly to range itself near the top. The invariability of it all makes us conceive a different scale for the virtues, and that rarely attained one of saying frankly one was mistaken seems rightly to range itself near the top. To take on a view which has always been the opposite of one’s own implies a bigness of make-up sufficient to make beholders revere if not worship. To do it late in life is an achievement of magnitude. At any time there is a gallant and sweet virility about it, an implication of a mind and soul still so limber from use that a rearrangement is possible and not in the least dangerous, rather than the usual crusty, conglomerate mass, forever closed. If a person were to say to us, “I have thought over what you said, and, though it upsets much of the ground on which I have long acted, I believe your view to be the right one,” we would be so awe-struck, so benumbed by admiration, that the desire to fling over forever our contention would be strong upon us, for a person who was able to change must surely, from the first, have been far more right than we for a person who was able to change must surely, from the first, have been far more right than we.

      It almost seems as though patriotism is a thing difficult to feel at home, where so much of one’s time is spent in prophesying that the country is going to the dogs, until patriotism is vaguely believed to be a thing foreign to one’s nature, while the farther one goes from one’s native land and the longer one stays, the more strongly does a strange fire possess one. The query is finally forced upon whether this fire may not perhaps be — it looks so remarkably like — patriotism. It is not that the feeling is acquired consciously, as one proper and right to have; on the contrary, the supposition is held that one’s attitude toward that irritating, adorable country where one was born is impersonal and rather elevatedly detached. Then such a funny thing happens. A small, very faintly slighting remark is made by a mild-intentioned soul, and the most curious phenomenon takes place in one’s spine. If a fish began with the scale nearest its tail and ruffled them all on end right up to its neck, it would feel just as one does when America is criticised. And if the fish rapped out, in a very belligerent voice, “I do not agree with you at all,” no one could be more surprised than you, except the mildly intentioned old lady to whom you said the identical belligerent thing. You are sorry to have caused an unpleasantly strained few moments, but how could you have possibly suspected that you were going to feel so strongly on the subject of American cookery? There had never been anything in your former conduct to warn you that you would hotly, almost passionately, defend our luncheon rolls, and habit of eating fruit at breakfast. That is the danger, the discomfiting part of this patriotism which overtakes you when away from home. It tricks one into vulgar recriminations and flat contradictions on the most unreasonable provocations. No one else can know how novel it is for you to see the chip appear uninvited on your shoulder, and feel the flare of indignation take place; they only feel sat upon, while you feel as though you no longer had any knowledge of yourself. Things that all one’s life in America have been matches to ignite one’s scorn one will not permit any one of a different nationality even to touch upon. No one else can know how novel it is for you to see the chip appear uninvited on your shoulder, and feel the flare of indignation take place; they only feel sat upon, while you feel as though you no longer had any knowledge of yourself. Volunteering the information that American children are terrifying little monsters of precocity and sophistication, it is only to be expected that sincere British matrons who have visited America should agree with you, which has the unexpected effect of making you retract your words, gaze coldly on the English matrons and ask what they mean by saying such an unfounded thing. Then you proceed to prove that American children are perfect. This thing occurs frequently, and none of your dear people at home are able to see the contortions you go through. It will be out of the question to make them believe it ever happened, and while you are assuring them it did you will begin criticising freely with your old free sweep, which will give the final touch of unreality to your extraordinary tale.
 

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