Pleiades
On Being "At
Home In Life" I SAW a phrase in a letter which was shown me the other day that set me off at a tangent, and made me describe a parabola of probably irrelevant reflection. " Interesting and charm- ing," ran the phrase in the letter (it was part of-a description of an American girl)—" interesting and nharming ; 1)4 she is teo much at home in life." Is it possible, I began to wonder, ever tp be, too much.* home in life ? Life is an obscure sort of thing : most of us wander about it obscurely and shyly, as if we were straying in a wood at night, per incertam lunam ; it must, after all, be a great thing to walk clearly and com- posedly, " at home." Poets have written of the burden of the mystery :—
The heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, but need the burden and the weight always be carried ? There have been philosophers who were inclined to answer " No." The Stoics, for example, thought that they had a way, as Mr. Bevan has said, " to make men at home in the Uni- verse." They could give you a clear working theory of life and the world which would make you walk with an easy composure, released from shyness and doubt, rid of all mystery, finding nothing unintelligible. The followers of Aristippus, philosophers more Epicurean than Epicurus himself, had also an easy and familiar grasp of life. They remembered the way of their master : Omais Aristippum decuit color et status et res, and like him, they found every form of life, every cendition, every circumstance, an easy and becoming glove to which they readily fitted their hand.
The American of our days is neither a Stoic nor a follower of Aristippus ; but he has generally a way of being at home in life. It is a national characteristic of which you soon become aware. Life and the world and time, as a rule, provide the American with no great puzzles. He is a ready cosmopolitan—provided that the Cosmopolis (as it shows itself increasingly inclined to do) Americanizes itself to meet his tastes and his comprehension ; and he is thoroughly at home in his Cosmopolis. He wanders in China and India and Persia : he carries with him his clear working theory of life in general and the world as a whole ; and as he is at home himself, so he is ready to set others at their ease, to make them feel " good " and at home, to throw light on their problems and to dissipate their mysteries. In all this there is a good deal of earnest good will : there is a fund of genuine kindliness ; and yet it is all, on occasion, a little trying to those who are perhaps no less sincere, but are very far from being equally clear. Many an Englishman must be wrestling in secrets cordis sui with the rights and wrongs of India, and with the problem of England's duty in this grave hour of decision ; but there are. few who will feel really helped by facile pro- nouncements of American divines and doctors. There were letters in the Times a week ago written on the text, " Physician, heal thyself "—letters suggesting that Americans might set their own house in order, before they produced specifications for the restoration of order in the houses of others. We need not go so far as that. England is too old a grandmother to resent any proffer of teaching about the right way of dealing with eggs. At the same time, it is difficult not to wonder about this facility of advice. After all, the world is not so easy a place as all that. There are problems that go down to the painful roots of life ; and if an old people, rich in cen- turies of experience, is bewilderedby such problems, it is perhaps hardly likely that, any other people will see much further. We are handicapped, of course, in judging a case in which we are ourselves involved.; but at any rate we know something about the case.
* * * * * * * Nobody who knows America. and Americans can have anything but a profound _ interest in the one, and a deep affection for many—very many—of the others. (It is curious, by the way, how most of us distinguish between America and Americans, whatever the basis on which we make our .distinction.) But the interest and the affection
exist side by side with no little. .puzzlement. Why is it that the United States has such a fund of curiosity; of interest; of study about foreign relations and questions, and at the same time fights so shy of incurring any burdens of external obligation—Mandates, guarantees, and the. like ? Without answering the question (which, in any case, is a question that might well be put in another form, and a form morefavourable to America), there are some considerations that we ought to bear in mind if we are to do justice to America. One is that the international burdens which we in England have assumed are burdens that we have rather been driven into assuming than have assumed of our own proper and spontaneous motion. We have never been in the position of America, who has to decide, by, an act of free volition; whether to abandon a great natural gift of independence and isolation, and to assume external burdens, or whether to cherish her gift. Another is that America is forced by the world's pressure into interest and concern about international questions. Struggling causes will make them- selves heard at the bar of the public opinion of the great and wealthy Republic of the West ; and, willy nilly, America is drawn into making herself "at home" in all the questions of the world's life.
* * * * * * * " Too much at home in life." Perhaps the phrase goes too far, and cuts deeper than ever the writer intended. It is one of the great charms of America that her men and her women—and not least her women—are so much at home in life. They meet one another freely, in a bright intimacy ; and the intimacy is not exclusive. The visiting stranger is drawn into its =warmth and glow : there is no country in the world where you are made to feel equally at home : the cities of men are open to you—et large diffuse lumfne rident. You feel this sense, of men who are at home in life, wherever you go, and not least in the American universities, with all their easy intercourse, their clear organization, the understand- able charm of their welcoming society. Men "mix " readily with one another in the New World ; and the subtleties, the nuances, the intricacies of the older life of European countries must often be a puzzle, and may well be an annoyance, to a people who take life in a friendlier, simpler, easier way.
And yet we cannot but feel, on our side of the ocean, that, after all, there is a sort of abiding mystery in things (sunt aenigmata rerun), and that shyness has its own perpetual raison d'être. We in England, who are shy to the verge of awkwardness, and beyond, naturally console ourselves by this way of thinking. We are puzzled, as it were, when we have no mysteries to puzzle us : we become shyer than ever, when all shyness has fled away. We like to feel that we are moving about in worlds not realized ; perhaps it consoles us for our natural habit of " blundering through ." the hidden ways along which our feet have to wander. For our young people particularly we dream of a grace of shyness which is the greatest of all the graces of youth. We dream—but is it there ? Are not our own young people terribly at home at life, and at least as American as any American that was ever voted a good fellow and a great " mixer " ? That is the worst of us to-day. We' are espousing only too readily some obvious charms of American life, at the risk of losing our own, and of losing in the process the attraction,. and the suggestion, that we might otherwise have for Americans. It would be foolish to cling to our defects. But it- would also be foolish not to cling to our qualities—such as they are, and so far as they are really ours. These qualities are the children of time, slow-working time, which, if it breeds experience, breeds also a cautious reverence, and, if it leaves behind precedents, leaves also behind deep riddles. . . . And yet, whatever the qualities of time, one cannot but admire the bold, free qualities of a new people. " The Greeks, are always young," Plato makes an Egyptian priest exclaim.. The exclamation was a superb compliment. It is the compliment which one always
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