The Silent Isle by Arthur Christopher Benson (books to read this summer txt) 📕

I do not wish to see him or to be near him, nor can I desire that he should continue to exist.

It is an interesting question how far it is allowable to dislike other people. Of course we are bound to love our enemies if we can, but even the Gospel sets us an example of unbounded and uncompromising denunciation, in the case of the Pharisees. It is the habit of preachers to say that when we are dealing with detestable and impossible people we should perform that subtle metaphysical process that is described as hating the sin and loving the sinner. But that is surely a very difficult thing to do? It is like saying that when one is contemplating a very ugly and repulsive face, we are to dislike the ugliness of it but admire the face; and the fact remains that it is an extremely difficult and complicated thing to do to separate an individual from his qualities. The most one can say is that one might like him if he were different from what he is; but as long as that remains what the grammarians call an unfulfilled condition, one's liking is of a very impersonal nature. Such a statement as that one would like a person well enough if he were only not what he is, is like the speech that was parodied by Archbishop Whately in the House of Lords. A speaker was recommending a measure on the ground that it would be a very satisfactory one if only the conditions which it was meant to meet were different. "As much as to say," said Whately to his neighbour on the conclusion of the speech, "that if my aunt were a man, he would be my uncle."

Of course the thing is easy enough when one is dealing, say, with a fine and generous nature which is disfigured by a conspicuous fault. If a man who is otherwise lovable and admirable has occasional outbursts of spiteful and vicious ill-temper, it is possible to love him, because one can conceive of him without the particular fault. But there are some faults that permeate and soak through a man's whole character, as in the Cornish squab pie, where an excellent pasty of bacon, potatoes, and other agreeable commodities is penetrated throughout with the oily flavour of a young cormorant which is popped in at the top just before the pie is baked.

If a man is malignant or unreliable or mean or selfish, the savour of his fault has a way of noisomely imbuing all his qualities, especially if he is not aware of the deficiency. If a man is humbly and sadly aware of the thing that is vile, if he makes clumsy and lamentable attempts to get rid of it, one may pity him so much that one may almost find oneself admiring him. One feels that he is made so, that he cannot wholly help it, and we lose ourselves in wondering why a human being should be so strangely hampered. But if a man displays an odious fault complacently; if he takes mean advantage of other people, and frankly considers people fools who do not condescend to the same devices; if he gives one to understand that he dislikes and despises one; if he reserves a spiteful respect only for those who can beat him with his own weapons; if he is vulgar, snobbish, censorious, unkind, and self-satisfied into the bargain, it is very hard to say what the duty of a Christian is in the matter. I met the other day, at a country house, a man whom I will frankly confess that I disliked. He was a tall, grim-looking man, of uncompromising manners, who told interminable stories, mostly to the discredit of other people--"not leaving Lancelot brave or Galahad clean." His chief pleasure seemed to be in making his hearers uncomfortable. His stories were undeniably amusing, but left a bad taste in the mouth. He had an attentive audience, mainly, I think, because most of us were afraid to say what we thought in his presence. He was a man of wide and accurate knowledge, and delighted in showing up other people's ignorance. I suppose the truest courage would have been to withstand him boldly, or, better still, to attempt to convert him to a more generous view of life. But it did not seem worth the trouble; it was impossible to argue with him successfully, and his conversion seemed more a thing to be prayed for than to be attempted. One aged and genial statesman who was present did indeed, by persistent courtesy, contrive to give him a few moments of uneasiness; and the sympathies of the party were so plainly on the side of the statesman that even our tyrant appeared to suspect that urbanity was sometimes a useful quality. We all breathed more freely when he took his departure, and there was a general sense of heightened enjoyment abroad.

Yet it is impossible to compassionate such a man, because he does not need compassion. He is perfectly satisfied with his position; he does not want people to like him--he would consider that to be sentimental, and for sentiment of every kind he has a profound abhorrence. His view of himself is, I suppose, of a brilliant and capable man who holds his own and makes himself felt. The only result on the mind, from contemplating him, is that one revels in the possibility of metempsychosis and pictures him as being born again to some dreary and thankless occupation, a scavenger or a sewer-cleaner, or, better still, penned in the body of some absurd and inefficient animal, a slug or a jelly-fish, where he might learn to be passive and contemptible.

Meanwhile it is true, of course, that the most detestable people generally do improve upon acquaintance. I have seldom spent any length of time in the enforced society of a disagreeable person without finding that I liked him better at the end than at the beginning. Very often one finds that the disagreeable qualities are used as a sort of defensive panoply, and that they are the result, to a certain extent, of unhappy experiences. Since I met our friend I have learnt a fact about him, which makes me view him in a somewhat different light, I have discovered that he was bullied at school. I am inclined to believe that his fondness for bullying other people is mainly the result of this, and that it arises partly from a rooted belief that other people are malevolent, and that the only method is to exhibit his own spines; partly also from a perverted sense of justice; on the ground that, as he had to bear undeserved persecution in the days when he was defenceless, it is but just that others should bear it in their turn. He is like the cabin-boy Ransome in Kidnapped, who, being treated with the grossest brutality by the officers, kept a rope's end of his own to wallop the little ones with. I do not say that this is a generous or high-hearted view of life. It would be better if he could say Miseris succurrere disco. What he rather says, to parody the words of the hermit in Edwin and Angelina, is--


"The flocks that range the valley free,
To slaughter I condemn;
Taught by the Power that bullies me,
I learn to bully them."


It is a poor consolation to say that the man who is not loved is miserable. He is, if he desires to be loved and cannot attain it; if he says, as Hazlitt said, "I cannot make out why everybody should dislike me so." But if he does not want love in the least, while he gets what he does desire--money, a place in the world, influence of a sort--then he is not miserable at all, and it is idle to pretend that he is.

But if, as I say, one is condemned to the society of a disagreeable person, it generally happens that on his discovering one to be harmless and friendly he will furl his spines and become, if not an animal that one can safely stroke, at least an animal whose proximity it is not necessary to dread and avoid. One can generally establish a modus vivendi, and unless the man is untrustworthy as well, one may hope to live peacefully with him. The worst point about our friend is that he is frankly jealous, and woe betide you if you gain any species of reputation on lines that he does not approve. Then indeed nothing can save you, because he resents your success as a personal injury done to his own.

The truth is that anyone who has any pronounced views at all, any definite strain of temperament, is sure to encounter people who are entirely uncongenial. What one is bound to do is to realise that there is abundant room for all kinds of personalities in the world, and it is much better not to protest and censure unless one is absolutely certain that the temperament one dislikes is a mischievous one. It is not necessarily mischievous to be quarrelsome, though a peaceable person may dislike it. There is no reason whatever why two quarrelsome people, if they enjoy it, should not have a good set-to. What is mischievous is if a man is brutal and tyrannical, and prefers a tussle with an inoffensive person who is no match for him. That is a piece of cowardice, and protest is more than justifiable. There is a fine true story of a famous head-master, who disliked a weakling, putting on a stupid, shy, and ungainly boy to construe, and making deliberate fun of him. There was a boy present, of the stuff of which heroes are made, who got up suddenly in his place and said, "You are not teaching that boy, sir; you are bullying him." The head-master had the generosity to bear his censurer no grudge for his outspokenness. But even if one is sure that one's indignation is justified and that one's contempt is deserved, it is a very dangerous thing to assume the disapproving attitude. One may know enough of a man to withstand him to the face, if one is sure that his action is base or cruel; one can hardly ever know enough of a man's temperament and antecedents to condemn him unreservedly. It is scarcely possible to be sure that a man is worse than he need have been, or that one would have done better if one had been in his place; and thus one must try to resist any expression of personal disapproval, because such an expression implies a consciousness of moral superiority, and the moment that one is conscious of that, as in the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, the position of the condemner and the condemned is instantaneously reversed. To hate people is the most dangerous luxury that one can indulge in, and the most that one is justified in doing is to avoid the society of entirely uncongenial people. It is not a duty to force yourself to try to admire and like everyone who repels you. The truth is that life is not long enough for such experiments. But one can resolutely abstain from condemning them and from dwelling in thought and speech upon their offensive qualities. Nous sommes tous condamnes, says the sad proverb, and we have most of us enough to do in rooting up the tares in our own field, without pointing out other people's tares exultantly to passers-by.


XXIII


The great fen to-day was full, far and wide, of little smouldering fires. On fallow after fallow, there lay small burning heaps of roots and fibres, carefully collected, kindled,