" SERIOUSNESS."
Is there such a thing as frivolousness, a habit of mind, that is, which, while in itself innocent, or, at all events, not criminal, is, nevertheless, unworthy of beings with serious interests and heavy responsibilities, so unworthy as to raise a doubt where it exists whether they can feel those interest, or be capable of those responsibilities? Mr. Alfred Williams, Vicar of Kingston-uponThames, believes there is, and has borne testimony to his faith in a very objectionable way ; but though it is easy to smile at him, or even to condemn him seriously, that does not satisfactorily settle one of the most difficult of all semi-religious questions. lie, it appears, refused to grant certificates for confirmation to two young ladies of his congregation unless they gave him a written promise never to dance any more. This they refused to do, and on appeal to the Bishop then acting for the Diocesan, their refusal was upheld, and they were included among the postulants of a neighbouring church, and were " confirmed." Clearly, whatever Mr. Williams' theory of Christian duty may be, High Church, Low Church, or Broad Church, he was grievously in the wrong, so much in the wrong that any priest of any creed whatsoever which is not, like Ilindooism, purely a cult, would have condemned him. Ile tried to gain by pure oppression something which when gained must, on his own theory of life, be absolutely worthless, namely, an unwilling adherence to the right path. It was quite within his right, as we conceive his duty, if ho held dancing to be wrong, to endeavour to produce in his catechumens a state of mind which would render dancing impossible, but it was not within his right or his duty to extort a pledge which could in no way affect the mental attitude. If dancing is a sin, to be willing to dance unless restrained by external force is a sin too, and the pledge demanded of the poor girls as the price of admittance to a "sacrament " was as purely an exertion of external force as imprisonment would have been, and the consequent abstinence could have been of no moral benefit whatever. Mr. Williams, on his own showing, only sought an outward conformity which, if unwillingly rendered, would have added to the sin of dancing the sin of religious hypocrisy, which, if he is a sincere man—we know nothing about him—he would probably be the very first to condemn.
But it seems to us the moral wrong which Mr. Williams committed is somewhat mistaken by the public opinion which so loudly condemns him. He practically employed force, and so far his conduct was inexcusable, and was most properly condemned by his Bishop ; but suppose he had employed only moral suasion, had really convinced these girls by fair argument and gentle remonstrance that it was becoming in them to give up dancing, either as in itself wrong, or as proof that they were devoted to higher occupations, would that have been an undue exercise of the teacher's function? Of course, so far as we can perceive, it would have been an unwise one. Dancing, so far from being in any way a blameable exercise, seems to us, who have rather passed the dancing period, and therefore judge it under no temptation, an exceptionally advisable one. It is one of the few exercises which bring the sexes together, always a good end, and in Western Europe, where all society is based on a theory, —more or less sincere,—of the advisability of free choice in marriage, an end frequently most unwisely neglected. Either our whole system of society is a big lie, or there ought to be opportunities of flirting,—call it what you will, flirting is as near the truth as any other word,—and there is in our badly organized society no opportunity like a dance. It may be abused, of course, like every other practice or institution; but that is not, or ought not to be, a serious .argument against it. But then the unwisdom of Mr. Williams as to this particular matter is hardly the point at issue. He only shares an idea of the early Christians, derived from their experience of Pagan dancing ; of the old Puritans, based on their recollections of a bad Court ; of almost all modern Dissenters, who inherit the ideas of the old Puritans ; and we believe of all the Evangelical American Churches, which disallow d timing among communicants, though they make noprotest against it in generalsociety ; and though the particular idea may prove Ilia ignorance of the world he lives in, it does not affect the main issue, which is the truth or falsehood of the old theorem, that " frivolity " is unworthy of a being with an immortal soul, the theorem upon which almost all the amusements are forbidden. Sensible Nonconformists, for instance, do not prohibit the theatre or cards or novel-reading to their children, because they are in themselves wicked ; they will admit that there may exist conditions under which they are not wicked at all ; but they are all frivolities, and therefore, as they phrase it, inconsistent with the Christian character.
To many of us, and among them some who have a very high ideal of life, that proposition seems very foolish or " narrow," but an answer to it is not so easily found as some persons imagine. It is, to begin with, quite certain that if Christianity is in any way true, or rather if any high ideal of life and its duties is in any way true, life should be "serious," should be regulated by objects other than those of amusement, by wishes other than that of passing through it pleasantly and with as few hours as possible of ennui. If we realized only the suffering around us, to say nothing whatever of the sin, frivolity in its true sense would be impossible, and the nearer we approach to that realization the better for our minds. Few men who really understand life doubt,—though we admit this is partly matter of temperament,—that a certain degree of melancholy is the accompaniment of genuine earnestness, that the best minds, those proved to be best by the lives they have guided, have in them some latent antipathy to trifling, however harmless or however innocent. We do not mean that they dislike relaxation, or humour, or even amusement, but that they do dislike, or rather slightly despise, whatever strikes them as a purely frivolous waste of time, the thing which strikes them depending, of course, on individual character, and varying from the morose dislike to children's prattle, to the half-intellectual, half-instinctive scorn of those who can be taken out of themselves by burlesques. If they are right, and in the main they must be right,—the "serious" view of life being demonstrably the accurate one,—why are those wrong who seek to apply the theory, and who, with more or less of consistency, of course,—fur after all the serious are not much more inconsistent than everybody else,— seek to give to their view a practical application? We all know that they are wrong, that the result of their system of training is bad, that in the majority of cases they only demoralize the conscience by accustoming it to regard indifferent acts as crimes, just as the Burmese are of all races the most murderous, because they hold the life of a mosquito sacred ; but why are they wrong? We have granted their postulate, why not also grant their deduction ?
We suspect that the true answer is to admit that they are right, absolutely right, as far as their theory is concerned, and only wrong as to its practical application. Frivolity is wrong, they are right about that ; but, then, what is frivolity? Just that which the performer, judging himself coolly from the outside, with
such help to introspection as external teaching can give him, feels to make him frivolous, a question which every human being must decide absolutely for himself, and upon which no rule of any sort can be laid down. The nearest approach to a rule, perhaps, would condemn a pursuit which, oddly enough, is the one " worldly practice which modern Evangelical teaching does not condemn, namely, the pursuit of money-making not as an incident of life or test of successful exertion, but as an end ; but even this rule admits of large exceptions, and with most others the exceptions include the majority. There are people, we dare say, though we have not met them, to whom dancing is a true frivolity, a pure waste of time, ending in a diminution of capacity for real work ; but that is not only not true of the majority, but is the direct contrary of the truth. There are people with whom cards play the same part, or chess, or any sedentary game ; but that is not the case with an immense proportion of those who use those means of recreation, and they are their own sole judges. There are those, as we all know, to whom novel-reading is 'a pursuit exactly described by the word "frivolity," an occupation which is a slightly injurious waste of time, but their case is exceptional ; to the majority, novel-reading is a substitute, and an invaluable substitute, for experience of life. A. good novel is but a parable expanded. Among thousands of women and clergymen the commonest form of frivolity is gossip, brainless chat about persons instead of things, tending to nothing except, perhaps, a superficial censoriousness ; but among thousands more, including, we imagine, all Southern Europeans, gossip is a real mental relaxation, productive only of an increased spirit of toleration and good-humour. It is not the theorem which is wrong, but the effort to deduce from it a concrete rule or set of rules for the conduct of life, to be enforced if not from within, then from without. The rebellious girls of Kingston will make none the worse matrons or Christians because they persist in dancing, but Mr. Williams' idea was not so evil as most of his critics suppose. He was not maliciously bad, only oppressive and unwise.
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