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Handicapping Virtues, Etc.
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (October 28, 1911) : 26
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People who insist that what should be is — that is, scientists, moralists, and others of a dogmatic turn of mind — have long declared that good is stronger than evil. Stronger, they imply, to conquer and vanquish, so that where good contends with evil the former inevitably wins. This doctrine has so charming an air that it is little wonder there exists a deep-rooted prejudice against having it inquired into. To cast as much as a glance at it demonstrates sharply its regrettable fallibility in the small affairs of life. Almost any incident chosen at hazard will prove it. One infinitesimal baby without mind or manners will reduce a group of intellectual dignified adults to the lowest permissible stage of capering vacuity. They make no attempt to raise the baby to their high level. In strength and numbers, not to mention the formidable panoply of their intellect, they outdo him immeasurably, but by instantly capitulating they avow their attainments to be but cumbersome embarrassments. They throw aside all they have garnered by years of studious care and make hearty efforts to achieve a partial imitation of the infant’s babbling blankness. Every adult asset they have is a handicap in communicating with one whose chief characteristic is his lacks, and it is naught but cowardice if they fail to see in their visit to the baby a comically depressing allegory.
The higher your evolution, the more unfitted you are to live with people of a contented crassness. Most virtues are but high negatives. They are the things we will not say or do or think. They consist in a thousand refusals to employ the rough implement All ruefully you see your virtues turn to absurdities on your hands as Cinderella’s coach and four turned into mice and a pumpkin on the stroke of twelve. The mice scampered away and the pumpkin was an awkwardly compromising object to have about. Delicacies, sensibilities, shades, and courtesies only fit one for encounters with those armed in the same way. When one’s adversary comes accoutered in a heavy armor of bluntness and blindness every virtue which at other times aids one turns into vulnerable points and receives the painful stamp of that colossal heavy-handedness. What are adornments in the eyes of the few are objectionable whimsies in the eyes of the many, and it is the many who surround us. Most virtues are but high negatives. They are the things we will not say or do or think. They consist in a thousand refusals to employ the rough implement so that when in the society of those who fill the air with the clatter of their heavy intruding steps and vulgarly dense words the finer virtues are apt to cut a sorry figure.
It is a lonely affair being too far ahead on the road of evolution. Ahead are the dark questionings and uncertainties, with the light so distant as to seem at times a will-o’-the-wisp, while behind come the taunts and missiles of those following, directed at one’s exposed rear and instigated by the fondness for stagnating retention of worn-out prejudices. The majority have so many comforts. If one has sheltered spots which are entered roughly, one is but made to feel the bitterness of being penalized for what should bring pleasure and respect. There is no redress possible for wounds received, as to use the only weapon that would be understood sufficiently to be effective would sicken one in the enunciating and again in the remembering. It is a lonely affair being too far ahead on the road of evolution. Ahead are the dark questionings and uncertainties, with the light so distant as to seem at times a will-o’-the-wisp, while behind come the taunts and missiles of those following, directed at one’s exposed rear and instigated by the fondness for stagnating retention of worn-out prejudices. The majority have so many comforts.
When a fellow-traveler is apart there is always the possibility that he must be in front, and when we complain that a companion is not human, who knows but that he may be nearer the superhuman than we? Our contention that, though looking at him attentively, we cannot see all the natural homely attributes of a man is silenced if we wonder even for a moment whether it be not because he has his face turned toward something far in the distance.
If we (not that large impersonal body called for convenience “we,” but just the blundering, hotly indignant, and frequently remorseful human) find ourselves apart, and are assisted by the egotism we can cach call to aid to interpret our position as being one of advance, the solace of the interpretation is small. We may be ahead, but sheepishly and shame-facedly we feel our condition to be much like that of a figure in a nightmare, isolated in the midst of the public glare by his inadequate costume of a short shift and one tight riding-boot. With density pushing against us we need a strong counter-thrust of such an old-fashioned thing as patience; and, unless the opposite wall is to fall with a choking clatter and carry us with it into the mêlée of tumbling bricks, we must be buttressed with the remembrance that every one is in a rather worse predicament than ours. If we are to bear incorrigible humanity it must be with the assistance of something equally strong — a laugh at its powerlessness to hurt unless we cry “a touch,” or a negative so big that it annuls small pricks and prevents our minor negatives, those hothouse virtues of our tenderest care, from spoiling woefully on our hands.
A landscape of stunted trees and stubble fields, or a stretch of smoke-stacks and house tops...
Then comes a day... A landscape of stunted trees and stubble fields, or a stretch of smoke-stacks and house tops, is as ill at ease in brilliant sunshine as a slave in the presence of a courtier — if so mutually trying an encounter may be supposed and used as a simile. They are dully irritating in their resignation to their own ugliness and one turns away half from acquiescence in their opinion of themselves, half from vexation at the lack of spirit in letting themselves so go. To be plain and made uncomfortable by beauty is to have two drawbacks. One might at least have the courage of one’s ugliness.
Then comes a day as dull as the scene and the gray roof-tops meet the gray mist, and, melted by their shared lack of loveliness, they exhibit such an interchange of sympathy that countless delicacies result. It is as though they said, “We are all just failures together, we might as well get what gaiety we can out of it;” and so, tenderly, with such a world of soft enhancing lights and gently veiling shadows, they quietly and wistfully create a kindly beauty in each other.
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