THE SOCIAL LIFE.
THE opinion that the former days were better than these,' has, probably, never lacked numerous adherents. It is the natural prejudice of the old, it is the natural imagination of the young. The critical spirit, which, more than anything else, we should declare the characteristic of youth, finds endless die- satisfaction in all the environments of to-day, and the mere effect of contrast throws some warmth of colouring into any
imagination of yesterday. The like result in old age needs no explanation. Perhaps the clays to which th:e old look hack were ,not their best days—age is often better than youth—but they were days of hope, days shared by beloved ones whose names already are half effaced from the tombstones, days of a possible 'future, and a harmless past. And hence the regrets of age have an element of illusion, no less than the desires of youth ; and even where they coincide, the goal they point out may be unreal.
We make this concession to the various devices of Memory and Fancy for painting the years that are gone in rich and delicate colouring, in order that we may b,e free to point out one particular in which we should ascribe those fairer hues to the pencil of a sober judgment. We think the social life of the past was better than our own. The comparison between that glimpse at the best society of the past afforded by letters and memoirs, and any average experience of society in our own day, is necessarily a very imperfect one ; and it is still further com- plicated by the deductions needful even when we have allowed for this inequality in our specimens, for every record filters away some tedium. The long pause before dinner, when the only syllables Dr. Johnson is heard to utter are "Pretty baby!" to one of the child.- ren, would have been as tedious as any similar hour fresh in the memory; but the sentence which records it entertains us. Still, we think enough evidence remains, after every reasonable deduction on this score, to show that social life was more interesting than it is now-a-days, and the loss, if it be real, is a great one Among the advantages that are inseparable from cultivation and leisure, there is not one that seems to us more important than the power of a ready exchange of ideas, apart from all special bonds of preference or intimacy. No alteration, -seemingly so slight, would bring so much added interest into life. How much dullness belongs to the mere incapacity for expression ! It happens wonderfully seldom that any one says what he means, even when he is speaking on common-place matters which he understands very well. He thinks his neighbour wanting in discrimination of character, and says he is a fool. Or he sees that two persons have a difficulty in mutual understanding, and says they hate each other. Most of us know how to allow for the jerky vehemence of dialectic clumsiness, and it has not much influence, in general, on our Actions, but it makes life more tiresome than it need be. And when we come to more complex matters, the result is an actual want of understanding of much that often it imports us to know. Let the reader recall any conversation sufficiently important to have been considered by him beforehand, and ask himself how far he has said what he intended to say. It is -surprising how seldom the answer will be satisfactory. Some- times he will find that he has given an enormously exaggerated expression of his meaning; at others, he has been so much on his guard against this danger, that his hearer remembers nothing but his concessions, and retains au impression the exact opposite of that which he aimed at producing. And though it may be objected that these misunderstandings are due rather to the laziness of listeners than to the clumsiness of speakers, yet as the art of conversation is the art of giving proportion and emphasis to thought, the two things are hardly separate. The power' of expression is the power of addressing every one in his own language. We have all known what it is, in speaking of any subject not already :manipulated by frequent reference, to feel just as we do in a con- versation in French or German ; our utterances are prescribed, not by our thoughts, but by our acquaintance with the dictionary. We say what we can, and sometimes what we do not mean. We remember a young German saying that after supper, a ball had gone on "with much more animosity." The inaccuracy could hardly be more trifling, and had classical justification, yet one can conceive a case in which it might have had serious results. Most often, however, our imperfect command of language tells as a sense of incapacity, rather than as a delusive fluency lead- ing to misconception, and we are apt to mistake the sensation of difficulty for the effect of wisdom. And so our real wisdom is hidden. Every one sees what, if he could accurately express, he would add something to his neighbour's knowledge of man- kind. If only the interpretative power kept pace with love, for instance, how much could common-place men and women tell IA of others to our eyes equally common-place! . How like the gleam of creative power is the transient efficiency of this glow of the heart, how near the great creations of genius, now and then, is the revelation of a love intensified and made distinct by sorrow
Of course, our meaning is not enriched by being definitely ex- pressed. But the power of expression is to the thoughts and beliefs which already exist, as the •morning or evening sun to the landscape. When we see some familiar scene for the first time under the slanting lights of sunrise, we are ready to believe ourselves entering on new ground. These quaint gables, these peaked dormer-windows, this poetic elaboration of light and shade, are they really no more than the lit of street we have passed so often P We fancy ourselves on foreign soil, yet in truth nothing is new but the emphasizing lights and shadows, which bring out forms that the undiscriminating noon has again and again presented to us in vague suggestion. All distinctness has, to some extent, the effect of novelty.
Avowing that our definition of good conversation would exclude intimate intercourse, we may appear to reduce its advantages to an insignificant residuum. But those who think intimate intercourse to be the only valuable inter- course, know little of life. It is a serious disability when man and woman know their fellows only in the wholly external relations of business, or else in the close contact of heart to heart. He who is ignorant of the intermediate zone knows human nature as we should know the world of nature not human, if we had never gazed on a picture. The world of sky, and earth, and sea would still be open to us ; our spirits would be cold or deaf, if we caught nothing of their varied meaning ; yet how different were the world of Nature, without the world of Art ! How mttch we could. never see in the sky, if it had not been first shown us by Turner. How much we can never see, while we know another character only in relation to ourselves ! We may occasionally observe the deficiency on a colossal scale, when it is the result of a with- drawal on the part of a man of genius from ordinary intercourse, that he may devote himself to his own peculiar domain. The withdrawal may be made with an adequate object ; we say nothing against the possibility that it should be desirable, on the whole. But in itself, it is a great evil. Some of its influence, we think, may be traced in the character and the philosophy of John Stuart Mill. We never read many pages of his writings without feeling that, with all his wide and well-grounded know- ledge, there was much in ordinary men and women of which he was ignorant ; and what is more important, that he was ignorant of his ignorance. He lacked some of the most important ele- ments for the problems that he undertook to solve. The lack is, of coin-se, more disastrous in those whom no such lofty choice, but some necessity of fortune, has cut off from the possibility of this free social intercourse. A mellow- ing influence has been wanting in their views of life. Man- kind is too much divided into friends and foes. For the sheath which a social view of life supplies to all strong personal feeling, is an emancipation such as can hardly be imagined by those who have either never experienced it, or never lacked. it We have all our antipathies ; we are all aware of unreasonably morbid influences from particular people ; "our genius fears their genius ;" in their presence we are cramped and dumb, or else excited to some form of activity that we cannot recognise as in any true sense our own. Next to some opportunity of mutual help or sympathy, nothing affords so much help against this strange spiritual paralysis as the influence of good conversation. It delivers us from the shackles of an imperfect understanding, and sets us, each to each, in a new point of view. It floats us into a world just near enough to all strong personal feelings to retain their interest, and fir enough from it to escape their poignancy. We remember hearing it said of a person in whom many of his generation—and some of the most distinguished—recognised this influence, that he was a "uni- versal solvent." People might combine in his presence who could combine nowhere else. He made an atmosphere that told on all. When such men depart, we lose not only them, but their revelations of other natures. They may not be better than other men,—their kind of influence is not one that could, in the nature of things, be often combined with any very strong moral icliosyncracies ; but they supply their kind. with something, perhaps, as necessary, in its way, as schools and hospitals, charity organisation, or open spaces for the poor.
They provide many a needy spirit with a temporary refuge from gnawing cares and bitter regrets, they spread. the banquet for many an impoverished non-contributor ; and when they are gone, we remember not only what they were, but what they brought out in others, as we remember the sunny days of young activity, when mere existence seemed pleasant.
An essay on the social life mainly occupied with arguing that good conversation is desirable, may be thought somewhat to resemble, but without a similar excuse, those treatises on crimes by Jeremy Bentham in which he establishes, through serious argument, the theses that murder, robbery, and outrage are iu- cidents hurtful to the commonwealth. "Show us how we are to get what we all want," it may be said, "and do not waste your time in proving to us that we want it." But we cannot allow that people want anything for which they are unwilling to pay a fair price. Like every other valuable art, good con- versation gives trouble. Our generation accepts it as an axiom that everybody must be at liberty, at all times, to carry out the impulse of the moment, supposing this impulse be not to any- thing wrong. This ideal seems to us hostile to many good things ; to good conversation, it is certainly fatal. The inter- ruption produced by the presence of an audience each of which moves and speaks exactly as he is inclined to do—never seeing a seat he prefers to his own without taking it, or finding any frivolous remark at the tip of his tongue without making it—renders it as impossible to carry on conversation as it would be to carry on etching in a jolting car. Who has not felt the paralysing influence of some little inter- ruption in the midst of an interesting conversation? There is a little pause,—the speaker is making some recollection definite, or seeking the appropriate words for some subtle distinction, or considering some objection or argument to which be is framing a reply. Then some irrelevant remark or fidgetty movement interrupts the conversation, and all attempts to return to what had been so interesting prove vain. The power of that tiresome, restless being who must choose that moment to change his seat, or take up a newspaper, or ask when the post went out, is certainly per- plexing. Suppose he was bored—and such an interruption always suggests boredom—why should not we, who were all in- terested, continue our conversation ? It is vain to ask the question. Two disputants engaged in some fierce argument on politics or theology may ignore signs of weariness or impatience, but it will be found almost invariably that that kind of discus- sion which is par excellence Conversation, collapses with the slightest prick from an impatient listener, or from anything that has such an aspect, often a very fillacions one.
Perhaps it will seem that there is a good deal to be said on the other side of the question. While none would question that self-re- Ambit, on the whole, has relaxed in our time, it must be conceded that there are ways in which we are more self-controlled than our fathers wore. The classical record of eighteenth-century con- versation narrates more outbursts than we could probably collect from any amount of the social reminiscences of our own day, some of them very gross ones. Dr. Johnson, indeed, is the only person, so far as we know, who ever provided a common and irritating disclaimer with any justification. He avowed that on tone occasion he had meant to be uncivil, and he certainly expressed his meaning quite distinctly. And then, too, is not constraint as fatal to agreeable conversation as con- trol is necessary to it, or perhaps more so 1) A reader past middle age (if we are fortunate enough to possess such a one) may summon from the memories of his youth some recollection of a festive gathering that numbered .among its participants no small proportion of the witty and the wise of their generation, yet where conversation could not be called agreeable, because the host kept an anxious watch on the conventional fences of suitable discussion, and hastily inter- Ironed, at every attempt even to approach them, with some such safe suggestion as "Mr. Smith, a glass of wine P" Is not liberty, on the whole, the best atmosphere Tor social intercourse, even if some price has to be paid for it ?
While we should allow that our milder manners were an unmixed improvement on the licence of our fathers, and that ur greater freedom was a gain on the whole, we question whether either of these things has had any tendency to improve conversation. It is not outbursts of temper which spoil pleasant society. A. person who means to be uncivil, though he will intention make himself odiously disagree- able while that lasts, will not necessarily be less agreeable when it has ceased to exist. The statement may not be a very moral one, but it is unintentional rudeness that spoils agreeable society. We would compound, for all Dr. Johnson's outbursts, as far as the atmosphere of good-breeding goes, to get rid of the influence of some easy-going guest, who accosts .an acquaintance when he or she is talking to another person, or allows his eyes to wander all over the room in search of some more interesting object than the person who is speaking to him. And if Dr. Johnson could have brought disinterested support to his own assertion, in his comical testimonial to himself as a well- bred man, that he never interrupted any one, and was always careful to preserve the appearance of attention to the person. who was speaking, we should be forced to allow that he might indulge in a good deal of petulance, and yet do far less to im- pair the pleasantness of conversation than most of our contem- poraries do. Nor do we consider that, on the whole, conversation is more free from shackles than it was.
When you have got rid of all the shackles of con- ventional ideas of decorum, you will generally find that you have only substituted for them other shackles, and probably more oppressive ones. In proportion as we dis- card general views of life, we bring individual idiosyn- cracies into predominance,—we undo, in fact, the very bene- fit that it has been our object to trace to the influence of good society. We withdraw the sheath it sots on keen personal feeling. We will illustrate our meaning by a trifling recollec- tion, which applies this ideal of an individual choice to a social arrangement in which the conventional rules of pre- cedence often hamper what would appear the most suitable combinations for good conversation. "I will not let you take down an old woman to dinner, Lord —," said one of the kindest of hostesses, at a dinner-party of which we know of only a single survivor. "You shall take Miss —," naming the most attractive of her guests. Now, probably this person had a more agreeable dinner, than if his companion had been allotted in proportion to his rank ; but the scale of precedence which would sweep so bare all personal characteristics, is obviously fatal to generally agreeable social intercourse. It would just invert what we have instanced as the helpfulness of good conversation,—it would stamp every defect with glaring emphasis, and mingle a very disagreeable kind of perplexity with all the minor arrangements now dependent on a mere knowledge of trivial facts. It is not in this direction that the exchange will be made. Our good-natured friend and her guests have quitted the world of dinner-parties many a long year, and we have not heard of any one following her example ; but the little incident illustrates the strong personal tendency of any change by which conventional deference is dis- carded. In proportion as we discard the traditional formulas of social intercourse, we put a heavy strain on the faculties by which every one judges of character, and open the door to endless embarrassment and indecision. And where embarrass- ment and indecision enter, social enjoyment takes flight.
There are some things better than social enjoyment, no doubt. Whether these may not have gained what it has lost, we do not attempt to decide. We are not inquiring whether, on the whole, human life may not be a better thing for the removal of these restrictions. We are speaking of the intercourse of cultivated people, meeting in society and interchanging their opinions and ideas in the hearing of others, and this kind of in- tercourse, we are certain, is not improved by the change. We need some restrictions, in order to give the very sense of free- dom. When everybody may say anything, conversation is as much hampered as it is under any but the narrowest tradi- tional code. Even setting aside the class of anxieties which most naturally suggest themselves, and supposing a certain amount of good taste the invariable equipment of every lively and cultivated mind (which it is not), there would still be again. in sonic amount of limit to the field of discussion. It is far easier to fill a tea-cup from a brook, than at the seashore. We meet for a short time, much of that short time is spoilt by in- terruptions; if society is to be any real meeting-point of mind to mind, there must be common ground, to begin with. We have not time to reconsider everything, supposing that time is the only thing necessary for such a process. The old ideas about life supplied a sort of framework, within which conversa- tion fitted itself ; the new ones spread out the old domain of heaven and earth before us in unlimited invitation, and the choiee of what is to be our subject-matter is almost wholly a matter of individual taste. And the mere addition of individual divergence diminishes the chance of any interesting or valuable interchange of thought, for people are not more separate in their opinions and beliefs than they are in the wish to discuss them. Whether the removal of these restrictions may ulti- mately lead to deeper views of truth, is a question on which we do not enter. We are here merely considers ing its effect on the intercourse of society. But we can- not admit that the intercourse of society is an unim- portant element in general welfare, even if it be sacrificed in interests that, on the whole, are worth the sacrifice. In one sense, no doubt, it may be called unimportant. Social life, in its special sense, means the life of the rich and the cultivated; it has nothing to do with those whose welfare should be the principal aim in all effort at the changes which, by another use of the epithet; we term "social reforms." The enjoyment of the few is a trifle, when compared with the suffering of the many. But, apart from such comparison, the genial influence of a rich and lively social intercourse makes up a large part of the happi- ness of those who share it; and though the sacrifice may be made for an adequate cause, yet the generation which has lost this intellectual luxury is, so far, distinctly the poorer,
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