"THE MAJORITY."
THERE is something at once soothing and full of instruc- tion in the word we have chosen for our title, as a descrip- tion of those who have finished their life in this world. As each one of us grows older, it takes a new meaning. In early youth, death is a distinction, conferred upon a very few,—some dim figure, long secluded from our childish importunities in the quiet of a sick-room, which almost represented to our childish imagination the awe and mystery of the grave ; or some companion snatched away by a fate which, at the time, seemed almost historic in its tragedy. After long years, the proportion of those who arc objects of attention to sight and to memory becomes inverted. A sense of being left behind comes upon one who keeps both life and tellect beyond the span allotted to average mam—a pathetic yearning for fellowship, that no tenderness and respect from a different generation can supply. A.ud something of it we come to feel long before the time of old age, as we look back, and dis- cover that the majority of those who made the interest of youth remain images to memory only. We seem, at such moments, linked with the whole long past inn new degree. The feeling that we are trying to describe is at once strange and common-place. It is a feeling unknown to the thoughtless, to those who have felt too profoundly to reflect on their feelings, and to those for whom the present is too exacting in demand to lot the past be heard, But with these exceptions, we suppose there is no one who has not awakened, with a curious surprise that it should be possible to awaken to anything so obvious,—to the discovery that of those whom we admire, or pity, or blame, it is but an insignificant fraction to whom the admiration, pity, or blame of the whole world has. any value whatever. And if at such moments the permanent interests of life have not stood out with a new distinctness, we know not what is to bring them home to him, in this world.
If the lessons of the great revealer are not wasted, there are two things which in the moment of loss are felt to be almost equally jarring—a censure that is needless, or a tribute that is false. We do not, at such moments, want words of criticism. We do not want to hear the whole truth about any ono. But at no time do we so much desire to hear nothing but the truth. Indeed, it is at such moments, it appears to us, that the very meaning of truth is brought out to the mind with a new weight and dis- tinctness. We see what it is, and we see what it is not; how true words may miss it, and even how untrue, or at least inaccurate, words may, on the whole, suggest it. We often feel facts mis- leading, we sometimes even feel fancies instructive, but false- hood is more abhorrent at that time than at any other. And this we should have thought would have been the verdict of admiration, as well as of affection. But we must confess that obituary notices, even when they come from those who have felt admiration in its purest form—admiration untouched by that egotistic or servile feeling which is so often its alloy—do not bear out this expectation. And it is, in fact, against this misuse of the flood-tide of sympathy that follows the departure of a great man that we would now bring forward the reminder that he has "joined the majority ;" that it is impossible to be more than just to one without being less than just to " an exceeding great multitude, which no man may number."
It is wasting a greet opportunity not to be just to the dead. We may almost say that we lose thereby our only opportunity of justice. In many ways it is more important to be just to the living than to the dead. But it is also infinitely more difficult. What wonderful imagination it would need to see in a man's lifetime all the excuses for his faults that come out,
like the stars in the twilight, as we stand beside his gm-aye! Or again, in looking back on a finished life, how distinctly the shadow of its failures falls on its ideal ! And though, perhaps, this is more obviously true of ordinary men and women than of those who have deeply influenced their generation, it is surely true of them also. There is a double meaning in the saying, "After death, the judgment." Death sets a man at the distance from us at which we see him in his true .proportions ; it shuts off the influences that confuse and bewilder the judgment, and shows us life as a whole. The judgment can only be delayed ; it comes sooner or later. But we believe that it is a great evil to delay it,—we believe that those who disturb either way the true balance of feeling at the moment that a people's attention is concentrated on a flnishea life, have much to answer for. Whether they give undue praise or undue blame, they defraud some lofty spirit of its mood of honour. Undue blame is unjust to one, undue praise is unjust to many. But, indeed, undue praise always involves undue blame. If you insist that grey is white, you tempt us to call it almost black. We may be quite satisfied with pointing out the greatness of a great man, with- out inquiring into his goodness. But if you assume that great- ness implies goodness, you force upon our recollection, in a very large proportion of cases, the proofs that they arc separable companions,—perhaps, if the truth must be spoken, not con- genial allies.
There are many reasons why people are slow to recognise that truth. It is not given by a wide knowledge of literature. A mean's own works reveal his ideal, not his character, and the accounts of him given by others reveal only a part of his character. We do not read that the hero of a biography was selfish towards his wife, or overbearing to his friends; we learn nothing. of his self-indulgence in trifles, or unscrupulousness about money matters. Some of those defects are as little suited to any permanent record of a life as roughnesses of skin to being copied in marble, and even when they must be regarded as features of the character, we rarely find any contemporary representation give them truly. And then, whenever we meet with an exception to the rule that great gifts in one part of the character imply great deficiencies in another, we are apt (as with many other exceptions) to mistake its impressiveness for its frequency. Nevertheless, we believe that both experience and rational expectation would concur in warning us, as a rule, not to look for pre-eminent moral beauty and pro-eminent intellectual power together. Genius, we are certain, whether it be more or less, is a difiturbing influence to the moral nature. Whenever we ignore this law of the spiritual world, we become unjust both to genius and to ordinary humanity. We become unjust to genius, in forgetting its difficulties Consider, for in- stance, how the life of a Coleridge would appear to any one who came upon its details with the preconceived belief that in- tellectual greatness implied goodness ! We require to judge such a life with the constant recollection that genius, though it tends to purify and elevate all natural impulses, by giving a rival to every merely animal instinct, yet also increases— immeasurably increases, we believe—the difficulty of resisting the natural impulses, such as they are. It makes a man's self a better thing, to sonic extent (not necessarily to the extent which we expect), but , it also makes it a more domineering thing. A man of great literary powers, for instance, is not tempted to take too much wine for mere want of something to do. But if he happens to feel the want of it, the tempta- tion is much stronger with him than with most people. However, it is a still more important reflection that this un- due praise of an individual moans injustice to a larger number of mankind than even the whole enclosure of fame. We can- not give praise, without suggesting excuse,—it is, in fact, ex- cuse, and not blame, which is the alternative of praise. The opposite of w'hat we light up with admiration must be little, if at all, below the standard of average humanity. If you praise a soldier for keeping a resolute hold on his colours, for instance, you incapacitate yourself for blaming him whenever, in the same circumstances, he lets them fall into the enemy's hands. It is impossible to condemn that con- duct of which we have singled out the opposite for honour-
- able mention. Wherever, therefore, we speak of any con- duct as "noble," we imply that it is above the high-water mark of general conduct ; in other words, we describe general conduct as below that level. Surely that reflection should chock ex- cessive praise. 'Wherever we call ordinary conduct heroic, we are unjust to the ordinary standard.. We assume that most mon are base, if we claim admiration of any one on the ground spiring in his teaching remains for all time, and what was evil that he was not base ; wad: thus to make one hero, we make has long since perished,—indeed, it seems to us that it had many knaves. It is not only the obvious distortion of moral remarkably little influence always. But then do not fix our judgment which is evil. This is a grave evil. The careers of attention on it by insisting that it did. not exist. Do not force those who have passed away are meant, surely, to be a school of us to remember the tares that have been gathered in bundles moral feeling to those who come alter. But great men may for the burning, by insisting that the soil brought forth only teach us not only by their achievements, but by their failures. wheat.
Of course, small men may do the like, but the scale of their Are we mistaken in thinking that this exaggerated praise of teaching must be small. In great and lofty characters we see the dead. has become an increased tendency of the writers of " writ large " the laws of the spiritual world. They exhibit, on the last quarter of a century P It is difficult to judge, because a scale for posterity to discern them, the mysterious eorrela- the kind of notice we are remarking on forms no part of litera- tious of spiritual force. Shall we welcome all indications of tare, but we can see some reasons why it should be so. Through thislaw in the world of things as one of the most im- out the whole world of thought and feeling we are now watch- portant of our intellectual possessions, and at the same time ing a gradual modification of the general standard, under the do all in our power to confuse and obscure its traces in combiued influence of a strengthened principle of democracy the higher world of thought ? Surely to act thus is to and, a weakened faith. Both, we think, have some ten- make the use of the most valuable of our memories which dency to produce an exaggerated admiration for individual they to whom we owe them would be the first to protest character. No doubt, at first sight, the first of these influences
against. seems to tell in another direction. The desire for equality would
It is in no spirit of irreverence towards a great man lately in itself lead rather to the depreciation than to the worship of taken from us that we would apply these remarks to him. In great men. But the desire for equality is not a feeling that can intellectual rank, we doubt if Carlyle has any superior among ever take possession of the whole of man's nature ; and in propos- his contemporaries ; and his fine, dignified character, impressive tion as it is banished from one part, it takes refuge in another, in its ruggedness, took a high place in the respect of many, and The tendency to exaggerate distinctions of character is a natural the warm love of a few. But he has been spoken of (solely on consequence of the spirit which protests against all inequality the ground that he never flattered the powerful, apparently), but that of character. But it is the second of these changes in terms which leave nothing fresh to be said, when we come which is most obviously associated with that which we have to describe a life distinguished. by heroism ! Surely, to deal thus regarded as the effect, in part, of both. It is natural that with the characters of great men is to debase the moral cur- men should worship. the dead, when they cease to worship God. reucy. If ever there was a man in describing whom a strict Carlyle himself seems to us a lively illustration of this change. regard to truth and to proportion, which is truth, should have He believed in worship, whether or not he believed in God, and been observed, it was Thomas Carlyle. The main virtue it is somewhat pathetic to remember on what strange idols this which he preached was truth—or, at all events (and it is worshipping instinct found its exercise. And then, the loss of not quite the same thing) the main vice which he denounced the belief in immortality tends obviously towards increasing was falsehood. Why should we blur such a man's epitaph with this worship of the dead. If they are to have no immortality flattery? Why mar the recollections of an impressive character iu Heaveu, then, it is felt, let us do our best to give them an im- with exaggerations which bring out all its defects P If every mortality on earth. Those who think of their well-loved dead as character be noble which leaves on others an impression of removed to a clearer light, a more strenuous work, and a deeper moral weight and stability, his character was noble ; but if we love, do not need to exaggerate the aspect they bore in this infini- mean no more than this by the word, we leave ourselves without tesimal fraction of an endless career. Au infinite future expands resource in describing the few who have joined lowliness to to contain all that they would associate of pure and noble with greatness, who have loved their fellows with a pure, compas- the faulty being whose very faults have become dear to them. siouate, equable devotion, who have lived always in the best of When this future disappears, the vista must be found elsewhere, their nature. What is meant by saying that his character Hence sober colouring and accurate proportion are lost sight of was noble is, no doubt, that his ideal was noble. In truth, and if a man has one excellence, he must have all.
to demand that the admiration shall be pure. How would
Carlyle's reputation stand this test ? Surely no writer who THE FUTURE OF RAILWAY SHARES. largely swayed public feeling has over presented to it so mixed
a group of models. We find in his lararium images of the say not any, have risen in value of late years noblest, and almost the ignoblest, of mankind. If we are to
genius so vivifies and expands an ideal, endows it with such Let us not thus pervert two of the most elevating impulses pregnant force, such quickening impulse, that the ideal of a by which we shall ever be visited,—our reverence for greatness, man of genius is as much more important than his character, as and our memory of the past. They will not be weakened by an most men's character is than their ideal. There has always alliance with sober truthfulness ; they will be immeasurably seemed to us an apology for the aberrations of genius in those strengthened thereby. There is a deep meaning in the quaint words of Christ, "If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye saying of Plato, that the art of measurement is that which do them." We have sometimes wondered that that sentence has would save the soul. Under the mystic Pythagoreauism there not been felt more perplexing. It would almost seem to mean suggested, lies a deep sense of the healing power of proportion. that it is easier for those to do these things who do not know We cannot measure great men in . one sense ; nay, in that sense them. That text should be the key-note of every judgment on we cannot measure poor ordinary beings like ourselves ; our a great man. He knew these things, he made us know them ; "art of measurement " fails, when we would apply it absolutely if Ise failed to do them, he was not so much guilty as uu- to any other human soul whatever. But, relatively, it is our happy. But then keep to the careful temperance of those words. bounden duty so to apply it. To mistake the spiritual Do not go on to say he did the right, because he knew it. rank of our fellows is to mistake the authorised guides of Urge as much as you will that he had a right to be tried by man's spirit in his long and difficult pilgrimage. Do not let the ideal which he has created,—still, do not forget that ideal is us so misuse the name of a great man,—above all, not of one not character, though it may be more important than character, who never ceased to proclaim himself the inveterate opponent of We may say of Carlyle, as Michael Angelo of Dante, "Egli all untruth. His fame does not need it. When the oscillations dice cose, e noi parole." But still it is untrue to speak as if of contemporary criticism shall have subsided, his will remain words could take the place of deeds, when we come to estimate a striking figure for all time ; while he cannot fail to be, to a few
the man, of all generations, something of what he was to so many of one,—
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