THE CHARM OF ASSENT.
WISEACRES know what an inscrutable thing is the mind of the public. All we ordinary people, however, think that we can read it, and in these days of stress and conscious corporate feeling we daily, we might say hourly, declare it. But the odd thing is we all differ about it. " Every one says so-and-so," exclaims one man ; " Every one thinks such-and-such," says another ; and the two assertions do not coincide. " All the soldiers say this," says a third; "All the soldiers say that," maintains a fourth. Each man reports quite sincerely what he hears or overhears in clubs, trains, and 'buses, at work or leisure, in every circle or circum- stance. He cannot doubt, he says, what the public think about this person, or that measure, or the other situation. Neither can the man who has given a diametrically opposite account. What is the reason of this divergent evidence ? All the witnesses are trustworthy, perhaps all live under much the same conditions. It is not a ease of each man repeating the opinion of his own separate circle. Their means of knowledge are equal, and they are equally conscientious. It is impossible altogether to account for the disparity, but we believe that the subtle charm of assent casts a light upon the mystery. It is a charm which can never be logically explained, but it is always making itself felt. Setting aside a few detached observers and a few mental swashbucklers who are for
ever seeking whom they may contradict, we are all listening always to hear something that we can agree with. Nothing else makes any impression upon our memories unless it is put in some startling form,
in which case we regard it as eccentric and negligible, or perverse and insincere. Our ear is caught by the sound of our own opinions,
just as it may be caught by the sound of our own names. Many of us, too, hear the sound of assent when no real assent was intended. We miss our interlocutor's attempts at qualification, and do not perceive that in all his talk he is keeping open a door through which he can at a pinch slip away to an opposite conclusion. An audience may very likely take quite a different view of the upshot of his words from the one by which his immediate listener is impressed.
All this, it may be said, has some truth in it ; but it is a rosy partial explanation of the puzzle confronting us, and sometimes, when we hear educated men contradicting themselves about the opinions of an uneducated public, we find it difficult to banish the cynical suggestion that they have been purposely deceived by persons who desired to placate them, and so pretended agreement. No doubt frankness is a rarer quality than frank people are apt to suppose, and a vast number of people in all ranks of life who would not lie think no harm whatever of concealment. Wo heard the other day of a small tradesman who, being asked by a customer to sign a political petition on the ground that he had frequently expressed agreement with it, refused point-blank to lend his name to any such an expression of opinion. He made a practice, he said, of agreeing with every customer who crossed the threshold of his shop, but when it came to so definite an expression of conviction as was in- volved in the signing of a document he always declined, preferring not to divulge his private sentiments. We believe that to a large extent people in different strata of society do refuse their true minds to each other, and as a rule their method of refusal takes tho form of a vague assent. It is by no means the less-educated class who have a monopoly of that form of conventional deception. How often have we heard an employer confess a like expedient. " I was very much put to it to answer a man in may employ the other day," he will say. "I did not want to bo misunderstood," ho will continue; by which he moans, as a rule, " I did not want to be definitely under- stood at all."
Whenever a person is conscious of a lesser fund of information than the person ho is talking to, he will of course be more inclined to feign assent than if he felt himself to be upon the same intellectual plane. We should all think twice before correcting the figures of a great mathematician, though we know he is just as likely to make a slight mistake in common arithmetic as we are. Again, we may often see an able man, whose knowledge is chiefly from books, hesi- tate to contradict a comparatively ignorant speaker who has some practical experience upon the subject in question. Assent is by far the best vehicle of reserve. The man who contradicts is on his way to confide. He owes his confidence to the man he has corrected. When we speak of reserve, we mean as a rule pride. If we think of the most popular and sympathetic men and women of our acquaintance, we shall find that a very large proportion of them are extremely reserved, though they have a superficial reputation for frankness. They talk little of themselves, their ideas or thoir convictions, and it is often with something of a shock that we find out after years of intimacy what these are. We thought that they agreed with us, but they do not. Some duty, or some sudden sense of indignation or distress, wrings from them their real thoughts, and wo are startled. We mistook the nature of their sympathy. They have assented, but they have not asserted, and we have been in a measuro deceived. This form of reserve always goes with charm, about which there is of its very nature something incomprehensible. There are a few very delightful and healthy-minded persons who are born wrestlers. They love to bo in opposition ; thoy throw down the glove to every talker ; they would as soon think of taking up an attitude of sympathetic agreement as they would think of spending their free time in dozing by the fire. Such men and women have a tonic effect, but there aro not very many of them. Most people who seek occasion to differ are very unpopular. Tho man whose instinct it is to agree with what is said to him, and to enhance the proposition by corroborative evidence, is usually accounted good company. " Do not contradict," we say to children when we are seeking to enter them in the art of life ; and Kings, before whom that art must be practised to perfection, are, we suppose, never openly contradicted by any one. The privilege, we imagine, would greatly smooth life, and throws some light upon that rather dark saying, " as happy as a King."
A man very eager for the truth will, especially in youth, feel the temptation to wrangle, both in the original and the modern signifi- cance of the word. On the other hand, every one who is eager to be taught must to some extent assume assent. If we want to know what tome one has to tell us, wo must talk to him in his own
language, and find means to agree with him. The word " agree- able," as it is commonly used, is a perpetual witness to the charm of assent.
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