GRATITUDE.
WE have before this remarked on the tendency in the English language, and to some extent in all language, to stamp moral epithets with too distinct an implication of praise or blame, or perhaps we should say rather of blame alone, for the impulse that approves is a much fainter one, and gives its verdict with less emphasis. We want the power of dis- interested moral description. We have not a dialect in which to state moral characteristics as facts, without implying a judgment upon them ; and it seems impossible to point out many types of character which in their concrete manifestation xouse no particularly strong feeling of revulsion or displeasure, without exaggerating all their evil. How black a shadow, for instance, is cast by our words, when we speak of any one as un- ,grateful ! Hardly any other accusation would be so impossible to soften with explanatory circumstance ; it implies the oppo- site, not the deficiency of good ; not human frailty, but diabolic wickedness. Yet, the truth is that, though what we mean by "ingratitude is rare—for it implies much more than the absence of gratitude—yet gratitude is so little common, that we hardly
look upon its absence, except when it is lighted up by strong personal feeling, as involving any serious moral offence what - ever.
An ungrateful person, as we ordinarily understand the words, is one who is conscious of important obligation, and chooses to disregard it. Such a character, for the experience of most of us, does not exist. We cannot look at the world as it is, and deny that there is such a thing as good consciously received, and requited with evil ; but for the world of average humanity, this kind of ingratitude is as though it were not. The ordinary human being remembers benefits, not so definitely as injuries, certainly, but he does remember them, and when occasion offers, if it involves no very great self-sacrifice, he acts upon them. Most of us, probably, would have to ransack our memories, and peer into many a shadowy corner of the past, before we could recall any one of whom we could honestly say that, taking the word in its ordinary acceptation, he had treated us with ingrati- tude. And the misfortune of the ordinary acceptation of the word lies here,—that seeing ingratitude is not a danger of average human beings in this sense, we are inclined to think it is not a danger in any sense. We relegate gratitude to the world of exceptional achievement and heroic self-sacrifice, so that in the unheroic world where most of us live and die it does not appear, because it is never summoned. But let no one think it is not missed. Because we do not aim at it, we are by no means incapacitated for regretting its absence, though we often mistake the thing we miss, and sometimes exaggerate it. And it would be the double gain from a truer view of this virtue that we should both expect it less and show it more.
We should expect it less, because we should see that it has as its foes not only all the vices, but also some of the virtues. Indolence is the foe to every form of goodness, and, there- fore, to this among the rest. Gratefulness — so let us designate the quality we would describe, to distinguish it from that heroic development which has usurped the place of the homelier type—gratefulness implies a good deal• more mental exertion than is obvious at first sight, as any one will allow who compares the occasions on which the feeling has been expressed by him with those in which it has failed to find any expression of word or deed. Pride, too, is its enemy,—at least, what we generally mean by the word is so ; ideal Pride, being fastidious in accepting obligations, and scrupulous in acknowledging them, would rather appear as its ally ; but the cheap substitute we put up with in every-day life somehow keeps only the first of these characteristics, and not always even that. And some of the qualities we most admire, we must confess, appear on the same side. It cannot be denied that this must be said of generosity, in a general way ; although the fact is one we are slow to admit, mainly because we mistake the impressiveness of exceptions for their frequency. Probably most of us have known more than one person who was both generous and grateful, and the link forged by such a memory seems a thing no experience of its uniqueness can break. There are a few persons who shine both as a giver and receiver, but we shall be more just to ordi- nary humanity, if we remembered that it is not a small thing to exhibit one-half of what makes up the ideal of human nobility, and that we must never look for more.
After allowing that more than one of the virtues are apt to ally themselves with ingratitude, we must make the same con- cession for genius, for moral attractiveness, and for enthusiasm. The man of genius is as ungrateful as the child. In the child's case, we are all so prepared for the absence of gratitude, that the word strikes us as altogether inapplicable. Children cannot be grateful, and cannot therefore be ungrateful. Something not altogether unlike this is true of the man of genius,—indeed, it is true of a very much larger class than one we could designate by anything that the world recognises as genius. The wealthy, richly-endowed nature keeps habitually the standard of gratitude that we all held when we were four years old ; love bestowed is as natural, service is as much a matter of course, merely to draw near one's benefactor is, in the one case as in the other, an ample requital of all service. We cannot say that the external effect is the same; it must always be with a certain shock that we dis- cover that any mature human being keeps the child's recklessness of obligation, whatever reason may urge in defence. But reason has much to urge in this case. "It goes against me to see 'X' take his obligations to you so easily," says some wife, fully con- scious of all she could have done for her children with the han-
dreds that have gone to make life easier for her husband's gifted friend. "You make too much of a little money," says he, but an uneasy feeling is revived by her words, and perhaps does not again slumber. Yet, after all, on which side lies the true obli- gation P It may be a matter quite indifferent to him that his name will be known to the generations that come after as the 'friend of" X ;" he is not solicitous, perhaps, to be remembered .otherwise than in the loving memory of a few survivors, but has not he received more from the poet or the teacher than he has given him P Is not his life more improved by the friendship than that which it has sheltered from penury ? This is the question which, whenever he asks himself, he answers with an -emphatic affirmative ; but it is one of those truths of human relation which seem to depend for their truth on the lips that utter them, and it is always a shock to find that the man of genies himself takes this view of the relation. But indeed, though we speak of genius, we would point .oat the temptation of a much larger class. Genius is but the summit of that mental elevation of which the lower heights, though unrecognisable from afar, have to those who tread them mot a few of the characteristics of genius, and many a name asso- .ciated with no world-wide resonance rouses memories that could not be surpassed in vividness and significance by any that are en- shrined in classic biography and revived by stately monument. Wherever there is this mental wealth, we shall be apt to find a -certain poverty in the power of feeling gratitude. The man who is always welcome, who feels his presence a boon, who cannot but be aware that he leaves all society the chillier for his absence, does not associate any services rendered him with self-denial. Was -it you who introduced him to this delightful home ? He can hardly remember the fact, so many there are who seek his society. Did your painstaking service render possible this brilliant achievement? He feels you fortunate in having had a hand in anything that has seemed to him worth doing. Indeed, there is a great deal of careful, disinterested service, which the person 'for whose sake it is done would scornfully repudiate, if he sup- posed that any gratitude was due from him to the worker. 'Gratitude ! Were you working at a noble cause, then, with merely personal objects ? An enthusiast is indignant at the possibility of loyalty to himself coming in to eclipse the claim of devotion to his work. He cannot remember how mixed are the springs of most human action, how small a class of motives -we can divide into good and bad, how unwise it is to discourage the personal influences that dilute a pure love of a principle or a cause. There is something noble in his ingratitude ; but it is not politic, nor rooted in any real depth of moral wisdom.
On the one hand, then, the richly endowed are rarely grateful. On the other hand, we must say the same of -the needy, when their whole experience is of need. This is one of the innumerable cases where extremes meet. 'The recollection is one we need most with regard to out- ward poverty, and the first warning we should give to a person -who was trying to serve the poor would be not only that he must avoid looking for gratitude—that is true of all service, and -hardly needs saying, though it needs remembering—but that be must be prepared for ingratitude. Many a noble life would be spared a bitter pang by the knowledge that the worst misfortune
• ef need is its tendency to exclude the power of gratitude for its .own mitigation. The discovery cannot be made without a shock. It is not that a man who has given time, and money, and anxious thought to the welfare of his workmen, and finds that at the first stress of difficulty they treat him merely as .one belonging to a hostile class, was looking for gratitude ! that is never the motive of one who really works for others, but the discovery of ingratitude rouses a question of the whole value of his service,—to what effect has he worked, if his desire to aid be not even believed in ? The doubt is not ignoble, though it is mistaken. He is working to create the possibility of that grateful feeling which is a better thing than the outward advantages by which it is gradually developed. And the truth he needs to remember, though it is with regard to outward poverty we have most cause to remember it, is not confined to outward poverty. It is true of all need. The un- happy are ungrateful. Gratitude belongs to the temperate zone of the spirit. It withers alike in the tropic glow of unbroken prosperity and under the icy blast of arctic despair, it can live only where breezes alternate with sunshine, and the heart knows the meaning of a wish fulfilled, as well as of a wish disappointed. It is true that this is, we trust, the condition of the majority of the human race. Still, the minority is important enough to be constantly borne in mind when we think of gratitude. It is well to remember that the feeling is impossible to a large pro- portion of those we are tempted to envy, and a still larger pro- portion of those for whom we feel compassion. The happy and the unhappy, beyond a certain point, must be ungrateful.
We have pointed out the alliance of ingratitude with virtue, genius, and the extremes of good and evil fortune, not as an apology for it, but as an attempt to show that it is something against which any of us may be on our guard. Ungrateful, in the sense of seeing a benefit and not requiting it when we have an opportunity of doing so, most of us know that we are not, and we fail, therefore, to be alive to the many small claims for gratefulness that lie half hidden in the intercourse of every day. Human effort is so blind and so feeble, that much energy is given out in efforts at help that have had almost as little result as if they had aimed at filling a neighbour's cup in the dark ; his thirst is unsatisfied, but the bottle is empty. It is a part of the general dislocation of aim and attainment that makes up so much human history in this world. The thing to which grati- tude is due is aim, and not attainment. The young fail most towards the old,—innocently at first, as we have admitted, but not so innocently, on the whole, that an accurate memory of youth affords a painless review to any one. And then, again, if life continues, the old are apt, to fail towards the young, though the ingratitude of age is a much smaller thing than the ingratitude of youth. But it is a more injurious thing. The young need encouragement, and never more than when they try to serve their elders, and it is surprising at such times how little gratitude is supplied by a great deal of love. A child's efforts to serve are often ineffectual and tire- some, but the most precious thing in the world has its roots injured when they are discouraged. And if gratitude seem too large and weighty a word for the father's smile and the mother's kiss when the book is found or the footstool put straight, that is exactly the thing we are complaining of. There is a thing that we want every day, that would more than anything else supply sweetness to average life, and we surround it with associations that make us feel it inaccessible, except at some crisis that comes, perhaps, once in a dozen lives. It is as if we treated sugar as our most precious possession, and had to take
every meal that was not a feast without it, because to unlock the casket in which we had enclosed it were an effort too great to make more than once or twice in a year. And it should be a strong influence in driving us to make some effort to express thankful feelings in the trifles of every-day life, that the unthank-
ful ones are sure to be expressed. Dissatisfaction, we may say, expresses itself. The natural impulse of human beings is to be silent about what goes right, and put every cause of displeasure into words. As long as servants do their duty carefully and completely, they hear nothing about it, but one detail wrong is a grievance. They should, perhaps,, be distinctly told of a failure oftener than they are ; but that should not be the only thing they are made aware of, and more often than not it is so. The habit of making a claim on others for sympathy in all our dissatisfaction has not always even the excuse that we are prepared to teach them to set the matter right. How common it is to hear the person for whose pleasure an expedition has been planned point out all the ugly features in the view, not the least in a spirit of ill.. humour, but as an exhibition of his critical powers, while he leaves its beauties to be taken for granted ! It is curious that it should be so much easier to say "I think that ugly," than "I think that beautiful," bat there is no question that it is so. We all feel it cleverer, it is hard to say why, to discover flaws than merits, and with no tendency towards grumbling or com- plaint, the most natural form of remark will generally be found to be depreciatory. Perhaps that does not express the speaker's whole feeling, but it is the part of it that is easiest to put into words.
There is one reason why gratefulness should be made a. conscious effort which may strike some persons as far-fetched, but seems to us a very real one. It is that Gratitude is the only virtue to which law gives no encouragement whatever. In a general way, we may say that disapproval, beyond a certain point, caste some shadow on the criminal code. When unkind- ness has gone far enough in the direction of cruelty, or un- truthfulness of dishonesty, the legislator takes cognisance of these things ; but a moral failing, which rouses more indigna- tion than either, lies, even in its most heartless and revolting forms, utterly beyond his province. Ingratitude affords, indeed. the most telling illustration of the truth that the sphere of morals and politics are not conterminous, nor even concentric. Perhaps we might even say, with very little violence to the natural meaning of words, that so far as the law takes cognis- ance of gratitude at all, its attitude is a disapproving one. All grateful feeling, in the sphere of law or politics, becomes treachery to the State, and while the law interposes to prevent this sense of personal gratification being a basis of the rela- tion between a constituency and its representative, it does not interpose to punish the offence against grateful feeling which the social code most disapproves. And if the law cannot urge us towards gratitude, neither can the person to whom gratitude is due. All high motives preclude such a claim, and a good many that are not particularly high. Pride comes in to aid humility here, as so often elsewhere; and good taste and a sense of the absurd are more effective, it is to be feared, than a true magnanimity. A quality that is so large an ingredient in the pleasantness of life, and is at so many disadvantages, should be cultivated by all the aid that can be given by education. And there is hardly any other in the cultivation of which parents might feel that they did so much for the happiness of their children. An average life to a thankful disposition becomes a happy life, for gratitude is one of the most delightful emotions the heart can entertain, and there is no life in which there is not some cause for it. And there are not many emotions more painful than the recollection of ingratitude, as most persons will acknowledge who have a clear recollection of their own youth. Perhaps we are not always just to ourselves, as we look back. It may be that if we could call back the teacher or parent from his far-off home, we should find that the acknowledgment, so faint and inadequate in our memory, had left on his an impression even of humorous exaggeration. But not even that c,ontradic- lion, if it were possible, would assuage the pain of some memories of the patient kindness and wisdom poured lavishly on our youth, and recognised only in our age. Let us endeavour BO to train our children that the pain shall come to them more lightly; in some degree and some form, we cannot save them from it, for it is the heritage of humanity.
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