DISLIKE.
CONSIDERING how large a part the impulses which divide human beings take in this imperfect world, it is somewhat surprising to reflect how small a space has been ac- corded to them, in those pages from which many persons derive their chief knowledge of character. Fiction, painting so largely the sympathies by which human beings are bound together, has taken but little account of those antipathies, equally real, which not only divide them, but also, it must be confessed, do to some extent tend by external pressure to unite more closely for a time those who are united already. However, we somewhat exaggerate the feeling we mean in calling it antipathy, and it is by no means easy to name it without exaggeration. Almost all synonyms for it are stamped with blame, so that it seems impossible to mention an incapacity for satisfactory inter- course with another person as a mere fact about one's rela- tion to him, and not as some contribution to an estimate of his own character. The word which has least of such a suggestion is "distaste," and it is a significant fact that the sense from which we borrow the expression is the most idiosyncratic of all means of communication with the outer world. Speaking broadly, we may say that a disagreeable sound or colour is disagreeable to every one, while we have to inquire after our neighbours' tastes, before we know what flavours they would consider agreeable or disagreeable ; every- body dislikes the screech of a slate-pencil, and nobody is sur- prised at another person's not sharing his own preference for
a particular flavour. The contrast between the peculiar separateness of taste, and the common element in the other senses, so that many may gaze at once on the same picture, and crowds may listen to the same low note, while no two persons can taste the same morsel, has thus become a symbol of that in- dividuality, that subjectivity in the region of personal feeling, which allows us to describe attraction or repulsion without implying judgment.
Miss Cobbe, in the useful expression introduced into one of her essays, " Heteropathy " — the opposite, that is, not the contrary, of sympathy—has bestowed on us the means of bringing forward and realising this moral neutrality of
distaste. We are not necessarily influenced against the person who is distasteful to us, we are conscious merely of a heterogeneity of affection, a different response to the same excitement, which] makes us mutually unintelligible. Where distaste becomes disapproval, indeed, it is a mixed feeling, and the only important instance which we can call to mind of an attempt to paint this " heteropathy," which in the world of experience is so common, Goethe's " Torquato Tasso," seems to us somewhat impaired by the amount of justification with which the impartial poet has provided the man of the world who finds himself out of sympathy with the man of genius. Tasso, we pre- sume, is meant to be an exhibition of the weakness of the poetic temperament abandoned to itself, and there is no character the unreasonableness of which more jars on the taste of a sensible man, practised in affairs, and ready to adapt himself to almost any other character. And there is no feeling more jarring to
an imaginative man, when he perceives it, than the toler- ance which Antonio expresses when he tries to be just. ' Yet often with respect he speaks of thee," says Leonora Sanvitale, when she is trying to soothe Tasso's irritation ; and most of us can sympathise with his answer,—
" 'Tis even that disturbs me, for his art Is so to measure out his careful words That seeming praise from him is actual blame."
The words convey an admirable suggestion of the withering effect of distaste drying up all that aims at being appre- ciative, and leaving nothing so distinct as the effort it costs the speaker to find any excellence in the object of his praise. The 'relation, perhaps, was the model of Miss Yonge, in her pretty creation, "The Heir of Redclyffe ;" but she seems to us to have inverted the mistake of Goethe (if we may be so profane as to find mistake in Goethe), and to have spoilt the situation by :painting the person who inspires dislike as too faultless. Dis- like, under such circumstances, becomes envy,—a feeling quite different from heteropathy. There is, in an unfinished 'romance by Hawthorne (not the one just published), a delicate little touch, exactly realising this feeling, in the description of the two persons intended in the first sketch .of the story for lovers, bringing out, with all the author's subtle power, that sense of sudden recoil which sometimes strangely interrupts even a mutual affection not founded on a true harmony of character, and which is felt most distinctly just after the moments of closest union, just as the most intolerable discord is nearest to unison. The relation was found un- manageable, and drops out of the story, much to the dis- appointment of at least one reader, to whom it appeared a pro- mise of a most characteristic display of Hawthorne's peculiar :genius. But it is almost unfair to bring the half-obliterated sketch for an unfinished romance into the same page with one of the best known works of Goethe, even under the exigencies of a search for specimens of the. rarest kind of dramatic delineation.
The relation which Hawthorne found too delicate to paint may well, indeed, have been avoided by the artist. Perhaps it is not one very well suited to dramatic elaboration,—at least, the feelings with which it is often associated are much more 'dramatic than itself, and tend to throw it into the shade. Envy, jealousy, and resentment are broad, simple emotions, easily described; distaste, no doubt, opens the way for them, but is perfectly distinct from them, and does not, in a liberal and -cultivated mind, imply even any sense of condemnation. " 'Tis, E am barbarous here, my tongue unknown," was the complaint of a polished Roman, made to realise the true meaning of the word "Barbarian ;" and perhaps Ovid may have learnt in his -.exile to appreciate the arrogant spirit with which the Roman applied it to all the world but his countrymen. Any one can feel, when be is himself the barbarian, that unintelligibility -supplies no material for judgment ; but it takes qualities of a high order to perceive this, when the case is reversed. Yet it is a familiar experience that distaste may appear unreasonable, -even to him who feels it. The very associations which cluster round the epithet "well-meaning," testify to the familarity of the struggle between distaste and an acknow- dedgment of qualities that should ensure respect ; and .probably many selfish and indolent persons arouse far less sense of heteropathy than a large proportion of the enthu- siastic and the benevolent. Most people have felt at some time or other what was expressed by the dying man who, 'when told that he was going where the wicked would cease from troubling, responded, earnestly, "And the good, too, I hope !" For our own part, we have sometimes thought that if the good would cease from troubling, we would g'adly take our chance of the wicked. Even the hero may inspire the feeling, as well as the saint. The faults of a large, impressive character are often peculiarly galling to those who stand very close to it ; and when the biographer has said all he has to say, we sometimes discover, if we learn more about his sub- ject, that the relation assumed as one of grateful subordination was, in reality, that of a continuous protest. We are very apt to be unjust to those who find a large character distasteful, in assuming their blindness to its nobility. If we suppose that distaste never enters a relation till love quits it, we shall fail to appreciate many of the most faithful and dutiful relations by which human beings are bound together. Distaste is no mere growth of the acquaintance world, where we have nothing to do but to yield to it ; it shows itself in many a faith- ful friendship, it springs up on the fertile soil of family affection, it is by no means a stranger even to the sacred enclosure of marriage. No other atmosphere, indeed, is so propitious to it as that cooling affection which often both joins and separates many a pair who never cease to lore each other. Gratitude for life-long services does not exclude it, nor do the services which have earned that gratitude ; it may mingle with self- sacrificing devotion, even with strong admiration. There is almost no feeling by which man is bound to man which it may not dilute; and he who should refuse to continue any friend- ship or affection which involved a struggle with it would find himself, at some time or other, almost alone.
No one will deny that the experience of feeling or inspiring distaste is common, but many will consider that we do not want it made more definite by description. To put it into words gives it a permanence which it might lack, if left in the vague region of feeling; and whoever gives as much expression to it as to the opposite feeling, not only exaggerates it in ap- pearance, but greatly increases it in fact. Moreover, the expression certainly tends, to some extent, to justify the feeling. The discovery that in proportion as any one gives utterance to those feelings and opinions which are most characteristic he hurts some sense of fitness in his com- pany, strangely bars the entrance on common ground, even. when this is close at hand. And then, too, dislike, with all that it implies, is not pathetic, or striking, or tragic, it is only disgreeable ; and why, it may be asked, should Art mirror the part of life that is only disagreeable ? We should misrepre- sent some of those we loved best, if we were to recall even with the most careful accuracy how little they loved each other, and a late famous example surely forms the strongest argument for the rule that no biographer should attempt to leave a record of the distastes of his hero. It is indeed impossible to give the feeling the same proportion in the record that it had in life. The gamut of expression has not that compass which such an utterance demands. The faintest and gentlest hint at any lack of sympathy has a force and distinctness that eulogium is wholly without. It always suggests a good deal behind.
We heartily agree to the rule that any record of actual life should give as small a place as possible to Distaste. But it is precisely the fact that biography cannot give distaste its due pro- portion, and should not therefore make any attempt atembodying it, while yet it is an important part of actual experience, which makes us desire to see it represented in the only kind of litera- ture where all that is meant can be expressed. A good picture of a difficult situation gathers up a large part of whatever advice might be given for dealing with it, and it is often the only form in which such advice is possible. It makes an era in the hidden autobiography which we peruse in silent hours, when some voice from a larger nature has recalled and re- touched—thereby wonderfully diminishing them—our own per- plexities; and a large part of the charm of fiction consists in the fact that this is often the only possible channel of such a confidence. The rare glimpses which we attain of the attitude of a large, richly-endowed nature, conscious of distaste returned where friendship was sought, is such a lesson of tolerance and magnanimity as no sermon could convey. Once or twice in a lifetime we may come upon a glimpse of such a state of mind, perhaps as we decipher the faded characters from a hand that has long been still, for oftenest all that makes the relation. intelligible is only visible afar off. Or a few words at some crisis of life and death, reveal that what looked like blindness to dislike was a self-suppressing oblivion of it. But for the most part, the more completely vanity or sensitiveness is con- quered in meeting such a feeling, the more the victory is hidden, and we rarely learn from any experience of actual life what would afford the greatest help in some of its difficulties,—how a noble mind meets distaste.
The best substitute for such aid, though it be a poor one, is to remind ourselves that the region of distaste is, after all, confined. to a narrow part of our whole being. The world of our animal nature is one of resemblance ; and so is that of our spiritual nature, if we can but reach it. We are similarly affected, on the whole, by all things outward. We all dread pain, Ininger, weariness, while food, rest, warmth, and the like, in different proportions, are desirable to all. And there is a region of the inward life which is as characteristic of humanity as is the outward life, though it is far less accessible, and much more liable to be confused with heterogeneous elements. But between the region of the physical life and that of the spiritual life lies that borderland of idiosyncracy—that which we specially mean. when we speak of a person's nature—which is the region of heteropathy. On this domain we are often as hopelessly at a loss for any practical expression of goodwill as we should be, if suddenly transported to a planet where fatigue was cured by active exercise, and hunger by fasting, so that to offer a tired person an easy-chair, or provide food for one who de- clared himself faint with hunger should be a malignant action. If a humorous view of the situation is to you a potent auxiliary in enduring its difficulties, while to me it adds insult to injury, your benevolent attempt to lighten some common vexation by putting it in a ludicrous point of view will only make me feel it more bitterly. If, in a common loss, you are striving to forget our friend, and I to remember him, the very fact that we both loved him will make us bad company to each other. How many such miscalculations we see, feel, or make, in our endeavours to console each other ! "Time softens every grief," we say, to one who feels it the supreme agony that the beloved image must fade. Or we try to soothe some proud heart, racked with the thought of compassion, by the assurance that others feel for its pangs ! Under such "heteropathy," all affection, all active good-will, becomes an engine of torment. The victim flies to indifference, as a welcome exchange for such benevolence, and feels the atmosphere of slight acquaintance a delightful variety, after that intimacy which has given his friend a right to inflict an amount of suffering that would have satisfied the heart of an enemy. The golden rule, in such circumstances, becomes useless. To do unto others as we would they should do unto us, is to sharpen their discomfort in our neighbourhood, unless, indeed, all we desire from them is their absence; and distaste, when it is sufficiently important to attract attention, is rarely capable of so simple a solution. For it is sometimes woven in with the web of life's duties, and even of its cherished possessions. Surely, in such cir- cumstances, it should be a great help towards justice, both to those we dislike, and towards those who dislike as, to realise that this kind of antagonism is confined to a certain limited portion of our being; and that if we could carry on our intercourse within either that simpler world of the senses where men want all the same thing, or that deeper world of moral conviction where they all reverence the same thing, we should find distaste suddenly vanish ; and though, practically, this is impossible, the fact that it is not inconceivable is by no means an unimportant one.
This sense of some possible fugitiveness or error in the feeling of Distaste should be materially reinforced by the discovery that it is by no means invariably mutual, and by what is another side of the same truth, that it sometimes lies very near to perfect sympathy. It may be excited by those who, just because they are unlike us, are best able to help us. Leonora says of Tasso and Antonio,—
" Two foes are there who should be closest friends, For nature formed in each but half a man, And in their union were the perfect whole."
And though in such cases the need be mutual, the perception of that need is often not so. We often understand the language that we cannot speak, and so mysterious is the chemistry of human relation, that the same difference which on one side tells as a repulsive strangeness, is on the other welcomed as a de- lightful variety. It is but the change of a couple of letters which converts the !Loafs to the hospes, and it is a change almost as trifling—a mere shifting of spiritual attitude—which shows us the spiritual foreigner as friend or foe. We sometimes see this change curiously brought out in the feelings of the same person towards different members of the same family. You meet the son of your old friend, you recognise in almoit every word some trace of the companion whose presence made life delightful to you. Perhaps in your sober judgment you would acknowledge that the son is, on the whole, worthy of his father. But you discover that some slight change of proportion, or some almost imperceptible introduction of a new element, is enough to destroy all spiritual affinity. There is nothing more disagreeable than to dislike one who reminds us of those we have loved ; but the experience is full of instruction. Or again, we may realise the marvellous effect of this change of proportion in the nearness of heteropathy itself to sympathy. The first experience of an entire mutual understanding is the best thing in life, and many a one has felt that it was also the first experience of self-knowledge. For we completely under- stand ourselves only when we find an interpreter in another soul; and there can be no revelation of the self, except by one who resembles the being he reveals. It is as true of the things of Earth as of Heaven, that we mustba like any one, if" we shall see him as he is." But how slight a change here brings us from the closest union to something that almost resembles, hatred ! The society of one who mirrored all the weaknesses. and difficulties of our own character, would be quite as intoler- able as the society of one who understood neither our weakness nor our strength. "There are but three fingers' space," says the Talmud, "between Heaven and Hell." It is a profound sentence, and its truth is nowhere more evident than in the varied and mysterious world of human relation.
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