THE OTHER SIDE.
THAT there is another side to most questions is the great discovery of modern times. It has changed society more than railway trains. Of course, many men of genius have known it since the world began; but not till the un- shakable certainties of science were set forth to the world did the world realise that outside the realm of science absolutism is absurd. In the shock of the discovery many bad things
were swept away; persecutions and " " belong to the past—so do some great types of mind whose loss the world can ill afford. Nowadays every one of all opinions admits the existence of the "other side" in the abstract, but many men and women, if they spoke the truth, would be obliged to admit also that they accept the fact on the authority of an assured public opinion. They know very little about the matter of their own knowledge, having never seen any side to any subject except their own.
Perhaps nothing affords so much insight into a man's personality as an opportunity to observe his attitude towards opinions which lie does not hold. On the other band, the current rules-of-thumb for judging him by that attitude are none of them infallible. Perhaps the least trustworthy of all is the one which openly or secretly determines the mental verdict of so many modern men and women upon their fellows,—i.e., that the more intense a man's convictions the narrower must be his mind. Of course, certainty and stupidity do often go together, but there is no one so firmly convinced as the able man who has tried and failed to shake his own conclusions, and who comes away from his inward conflict assured that upon his own side lies not the monopoly, but the balance of truth. A few such men are necessary to the strength of every party, whether in philosophy or the State, for they alone have any chance of converting the cool heads among their opponents. All conviction is persuasive; but there is persuasion and persuasion,—the persuasion of argument and the persuasion of the military band. The one attracts the few, the other the many; the one appeals to the reason, the other to the emotion. Both are essential to the creation of a strong "side."
On the other hand, if the axiom we have been considering is not always true, neither is its opposite. The man who halts between two opinions, who ranges himself upon neither side in the great controversies of the day, is not necessarily a weak man. He is often far stronger than the one who will not look upon the other side because he dare not, and thousands of such have a reputation for strength, and he is almost always abler than the man who has but one idea in his head, and that the one he was born with and has never been able to get out. The man who refuses to give in his adhesion upon the right band or the left can always take shelter under the huge shadow of Shakespeare, who wrote " To be, or not to be ? " with the smoke of the Smithfield fires still pungent in men's memory and the dogmatism of Calvin clanging in their ears. He could describe the spell of an anointed King and at the same time discover the vital force of the public mind. Neither Puritan nor Cavalier could look back to him as a spiritual progenitor; both could quote him as the wizard who had comprehended their opposing points of view. If the men of whose adhesion no party can be certain are not seldom small men, and sometimes very silly ones, from among them have stood out the great representatives of wisdom. Shallowness is, however, a commoner characteristic than either wisdom or folly of the man incapable of dogmatic assurances. A great many people pride themselves on seeing all sides, only because they have never seen any. They are so short-sighted that the various pros and cons look very much alike to them. They cannot descry the ultimate issue of any line of thought; for them all lines vanish together into the mist. Even such a wretched mental position as this, however, can be more easily defended upon moral grounds than that of those who wilfully refuse to see the other side because they dare not look.
Whoever has not courage to face facts will soon succeed in convincing himself that it is rather disloyal to do so. He will create an unholy alliance between prejudice and conscience, and for the future he will unjustly condemn every honest searcher after truth. " What is So-and-so doing ? " he will say to himself. " Why, he is running open-eyed into temptation to desert. Such action," he will go on to say, moralising smoothly upon a false basis, "becomes neither a strong man nor a gentleman." "But I cannot help seeing," his friend may plead. "You can help looking," he will reply ; " turn your back, and then you will never turn your coat." Every coward goes from bad to worse, and soon the mental shirker begins to doubt the bona fides of his opponents. It is such a comfort to know that they are all self-interested rogues. True men, he persuades himself, agree with him—all those, indeed, who have the courage of their convictions. There may be a few good fellows upon the other side—as it were, by accident; en bloc, however, they are all greedy dreamers. By reiterated assertion the man who dare only look before his nose keeps his sham certainties from the wholesome sug- gestions of doubt, and finally the coward becomes a braggart and the dogmatist a hopeless bore. It is no doubt true that certain minds are only able to do their best work between certain lines, but paradoxical as it may sound, it is only intellectual struggle which can give them a right to their predestined opinions. A refusal to think is visited by instant mental degeneracy.
But there are good, useful, and plucky people in the world who cannot be blamed for their narrowness of vision. They are only constructed to see one side. It is not their fault in the least. If we may borrow a simile from the world of toys, their minds are not of the best make; they are not jointed, but none the less they may be very strong. If they have the good luck to be cast in the conventional mould, if their lives are hemmed in by the fine traditions of the past, they make excellent members of society, walking always in the straight conventional road, which, dull as it may be, leads past count- less opportunities for good. But the one-sided, stiff-made man, with a strong proclivity towards unconventionality, is an almost unbearable person, and his counterpart of the opposite sex is insupportable altogether. She can only see one small eccentric ideal, and for that she makes, laying about her blindfold as she goes with sharp. unusual weapons. Her co-believers flee when they see her coming, almost faster than her opponents, and it is difficult to imagine of what value she can be to the body politic. Perhaps some charitable person might put her down among the counter-irritants of life. Still, we must admit she means well—just as well as her somewhat less offensive brother, who knows at the back of his mind that however clever he may be, the brute force of the stupid is still above him, and he must conform at least in manner to the good common way.
No conclusion, but at least two questions are, we think, suggested by these cogitations. The first and most important is : Would it not have been much happier to have lived before the "other side" came into such awkward prominence ? It is difficult to say. One might have lived in perfect peace. One might have been burnt at the stake. The roller of progress levels all things, among them the outstanding terrors and joys of the world. The other question is also, we think, unanswerable. Has not every man a right to his own convictions ? One cannot say, " Yes " or " No." It all depends upon how he came by them.
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