ATTACKS OF STUPIDITY.
ALL those persons with whom stupidity is not chronic are subject to seizures of stupidity. The symptoms of the complaint differ slightly between individual and individual, but not more than do the symptoms of a cold in the head. One man's cold may begin in the throat and another's in the nose. One attack of stupidity may begin in the memory and another in the " uptake." But when we compare our symptoms we all find our sufferings are very much alike, and are accompanied by a difficulty in applying ourselves to work, just as colds are accompanied by lethargy. The attack, as a rule, passes off quickly. A meal, a change in the weather, a change of company, a piece of news, any pleasant occurrence, or at most a night's rest, will take it off ; but we are lucky if we have not made fools of ourselves while it is on. Who does not remember the silly things be has said during an attack of stupidity ? He thinks with a shudder of the obtuse literalism with which he received a sally of wit, or the apparent density which caused him not to recognize an unexpected face, word, or allusion, and to stare in blank or apolo- getic astonishment while his smiling audience gathered materials for a story against him. "Would you believe it, he didn't know So-and- so, though he speaks of him as a friend ? " they will say ; or " Isn't it incredible that such a man should have read 410 little ? I know he heard me ; why, he repeated my words." There is a story of a scientific Professor who said to an eminent man of letters, who told him he was about to lecture on Keats : " What are Keats I " How does one contract this unfortunate mental indisposition ? Once more, as with a cold, it Is only sometimes possible to say. The state of the atmosphere has something to do with it. Attacks of stupidity are, we think, commonest in thundery weather. The dear atmosphere after a storm leaves us all with quickened percep- tions. What the drug advertisements describe as " errors of diet " may be sometimes responsible, and all forms of preoccupation account, no doubt, for attacks of dulness. But as a rule the indis- position we are studying seems to be contagious. Men who have ft on them are liable to give it, and certain persons, themselves apparently free, must be regarded as " carriers." Again, the seizures are connected with local conditions, and may be observed not infrequently to " run through a house." There are times when all the members of a family seem to be at their dullest. Like every other indisposition, nervousness has something to do with the ravages of acute stupidity, and an original shyness, however com- pletely recovered from, causes a predisposition. It is not the bore alone who renders his interlocutor stupid. He, of course, may and often does do so ; but he does not notice that he has done it, and he never puts his victim to shame. The listener may, however, walk away with the attack upon him, and so be a conscious nuisance to others. Take, for instance, the moralizing bore. Lots of men who are not bores themselves can listen without disgust to any amount of moralization. This is especially true of the half-educated. The very highly cultivated cannot away with didacticism. But this state of mind is not quite natural. Moralization is the Intel- lectual entertainment of the simple man. " As a shell, man is murmurous with morality," said some one. Indeed, we may say that the distaste for moralizing is an acquired distaste, and that more men than would ever admit it have acquired it How to suppress the tendency to platitudinous moralization is, of course, half the art of good breeding ; but vulgar communications corrupt good manners, and in company with a moral bore many men and more women lose their self-control and utter the copy-book sentiments which appeal to the natural man. We see this especially among philanthropists and all who spend much time in a stratum of society where people are free to speak their minds and not make their conduct serve as a perpetual check upon their aspirations. It is very disagreeable to recollect how upon some occasion or other, having caught what we may call a feverish chill of stupidity, we went about for an hour or so giving it to our friends. " Never, never again," we say to ourselves, " will we be betrayed into such verbose banality," and for a time the bitterness and cynicism of our remarks betray our repentance. But all is in vain. We shall do it again the very next time we are exposed to infection.
On the other hand, very many clever people have the effect of lowering the conscious mental power of those they aro with. How they do it, it is almost impossible to say. There is very often something contemptuous in the natural pose of their minds. They expect that what is said to them will be in some sense contemptible, and by the power of suggestion they belittle men in their own eyes and lower them in their own esteem. The effect they produce is subconscious. There is no appearance of humility. On the con- trary, men boast and strut before them, and curse their own folly when they are gone. Up to a point they generally succeed in life. They go as far as a man can go without friends. So far as their work is concerned they do well ; but men say of them that they have no power of devolution, nor have they. But they are not respon- sible for this great defect. They sap the powers of the people upon whom they should depend. The stupidity germ is ever in their throats, though they themselves are immune from stupidity. _ They create a kind of fear. Perhaps down in men's subconscious minds they know the " carrier " and are ill at ease with him. They flee from the wizard who will turn men into fools. There is no doubt that some such fact as this has created the great dislike of so many people for clever women. A woman's first soeial duty is to show other people at their best. Only a clever woman can do it, but many clever women take an impish pleasure in uncovering folly. Some women stifle their own wit lest they should be suspected of being clever stupidity-carriers. Chagrin, of course, follows pretty certainly, if not inevitably, upon a bad attack of stupidity ; that is, if the victim has not been able to hide it from the world. If that chagrin has been acute and memorable, it maybe revived by associa- tion. The person who brought it upon us may bring it upon us again. Occasionally we may even dread to meet persons in whose presence our stupidity has caused us to wound our own self-love. We come almost to hate these innocent creatures, who, very naturally believing us to be little short of idiotic, kindly explain to us the obvious, and suit their conversation to our supposed capacities. Certain houses, again, seem to be full of the germs of stupidity. Haw much is due to spiritual aura, and haw much to drains and shut windows, it is difficult to say. We think the evidence goes to prove the influence of the former, for a great many stuffy little houses in the past positively reeked of wit and gaiety, and a great many lofty, draughty abodes of modern sanitary theory are hotbeds of dulness. Certain books, again, seem to have the power of creating temporary stupidity in the reader ; not stupid books either, for we are under no necessity to listen to a dull author for longer than we like, unless perhaps on a railway journey. A brilliant book which a man cannot quite follow is very likely to make him stupid. It throws him into momentary despair about his own mental powers, and faith is very necessary to maintain these at their best. He sees the book is brilliant—but whatever does it mean ? The fault must be his own. The truth is, he is stupid—and with this sad conclusion the seizure is upon him, just as, when we give up the attempt to think we are really fairly warm, though we are wet and the railway train is cold, hope leaves us and we catch a chill. With sinking spirits he still goes on reading the dazzling sentences which darken counsel. At last he makes up his mind to consort no more with his book-superiors lest he lose his wits altogether.
Is there any consolation to be got out of these fits of stupidity ? Not even the most moralizing of bores could, we think, find one. Are they followed by any brilliant reaction ? There lies the only hope. We know of a Frenchwoman very subject to colds, a teacher whose brains are her bread. " I shall be better after this," she says cheerfully between the sneezes; "eels nettoye le cerveau." Is this true of attacks of stupidity ? Perhaps.
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