MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IT HAVE always regarded man as among the noblest of animals. I have convinced myself that our gift of memory enables us to profit, as no animal can profit, from the wisdom and experience of the past ; I have tried to believe that our gift of imagination permits us to confront the unpredictable with a certain degree of prescience. We have at least some sense of probability and our apprehensions, although numerous, are not quite as causeless as those which affect the lesser beasts. It may be true that animals, in that they have no apparent gift of imagination, are spared the certainty of future suffer- ing which at times afflicts human beings with sad foreboding But it is also true that we are not exposed to that recurrent uncertainty which renders the life of animals a long process of causeless worry. As I watch the chaffinches pecking the crumbs which I spread for their January breakfasts I reflect how privileged I am to possess a sense of probability and to be able to consume my own breakfast without glancing behind me at every mouthful and without feeling obliged every two minutes to rush away from the dining-room and to observe from a safer distance whether any enemy be near. A dog, moreover, when he sees his master's suit-case being brought down from the attic will slouch around with drooping tail and ears, unable to determine whether he is to be abandoned for one night only, or whether his master is in fact off to the Zambesi for an absence of three long years. Being by nature optimistic, I am of the opinion that it is preferable to be able to forecast the nature of future suffering than to be constantly exposed to the recurrence of needless and irrational apprehension. I agree with Tennyson that it is unnecessary "to envy the beast that takes his licence in the field of time "; and these reflections induce in me a sense of superiority and an ardent pride in man's unconquerable mind.
From time to time, however, circumstances occur to remind us that we arc not in fact captains of our soul, but little more than creatures of habit. Some interruption will be caused to our well- ordered lives, which will serve to convince us that the triumph of mind over matter, or even the distinctions between animate and inanimate objects, are little more than deliberate forms of belief. At such moments we see ourselves, not as navigators plotting a desired course, not as pilots even standing with square-jawed competence upon the bridge, but as helpless castaways bobbing in rudderless boats upon the sea of circumstance. In vain at such dreadful moments do we repeat to ourselves the Comforting doctrines of Pascal or Descartes ; the place of Paris is taken by Johns Hopkins University and we begin to feel that the theories of Professor John B. Watson and the Behaviourists are not so fantastic after all. In place of man's unconquerable mind we find ourselves thinking of the hyposecretions of the posterior lobe of the pituitary gland. The interruption of the ordinary rhythm of our lives, which we had assumed to be no more than an undertone to the daily assertion of our individuality, is so disconcerting that we come to feel that these rhythms, these " unverbalised habits," were in fact the fly-wheel of our existence, were in fad ourselves. The Behaviourists contend that personality is little more than the history of our habits. In normal times,—in times, that is, when the habitual machinery of our lives throbs as distantly for us as the engines which supply our gas and electricity—we regard such theories as little more than useful criticisms of the dichotomy between mind and matter. But when the machinery is really dislocated, when the gas pressure falls below normal, we become aware that these habits have become the very rhythm of our life, and that when the rhythm is interrupted the tune is nothing like the same. This is a humiliating realisation.
These reflections have been induced by the fact that during the last week I have been undergoing the ordeal which is known as "changing houses." For the last fifteen years I have lived in chambers in the Temple, but owing to the damage done to that lovely sanctuary by the Luftwaffe the Benchers have decided that all casual residents must hand over their premises to practising barristers. I can have no grievance against them for this decision, which is reasonable and just ; I am in fact grateful to them for ,having allowed me for so many years to share their sanctuary. I regret only that the moment of my aching departure should have coincided with a decision on their part to cut down the plane trees which gave such colour and dignity to King's Bench Walk. It is said that the pollen and the leaves of these fine trees obstructed the gutters and caused extra work. That may be true. But when one watched those giant trunks crashing down upon the courts of the Temple, one could not resist the impression that what the Goths had spared the Benchers were destroying. It was thus to the sound of the woodman's axe that I left the rooms in which I had worked and lived during the tre- mendous years and broke the chain of habit which, to my surprise, had riveted me so securely. How strange it was to notice that as the pictures were handed down from off the walls, as the furniture was bundled out and the curtains and carpets stripped, the naked rooms seemed suddenly to have become much larger! All intimacy was banished in the space of one small hour ; it was to a stranger that I said farewell. And there upon the cobbles outside, among the twigs and branches of the fallen plane trees, stood my chairs and tables, exposed to public view, facing each other with startled ungainliness, almost human in their perplexity and disarray. As I gazed upon the jumbled disorder of my once orderly life I realised that the rupture of this chain of habit had been wholly disconcerting. I had ceased to be myself ; I had become a Displaced Person. * *
This D.P. feeling has shrouded my consciousness during the whole of the past week. I am dimly aware that the United Nations have (or, as I am told one should say, "has ") embarked in the interval upon what I trust will be a long, but fear may prove an untruthful, career. I am aware that at Nuremberg many startling facts have been elicited and many important principles of jurisprudence been devised. But these events, which in normal times would have roused me to passionate interest, appear but incidents ; the centre of my conscious life has been occupied by trying to recreate the chain of habit which has so suddenly been snapped. This would not, I suppose, have proved a protracted or even difficult task had I been able to transfer myself and my belongings corporately from one dwelling to the other. But owing to peace conditions one is obliged to obtain licences from authorities ; these authorities are burdened with overwork and vicious circles are thereby established. As a result the furniture has been what is technically known as " stacked " and it is this stacking process which shows one how small, and yet how disconcerting, are the elements of habituation. I had assumed that, unless one were an inveterate hedonist, the needs of life did not exceed the ordinary requirements of light and heat and water. But it is not so. I do not mind overmuch having to keep my typewriter on the bed or to stick a candle in the soap dish. But it is distressing to find the waste-paper basket filled with plates as it is to not to find the telephone directory, or one's engagement book, or the little rotary machine which sharpens pencils. The rhythm of one's life, in fact, is not composed only of the orderly recurrence of the necessary ; it is constituted by the many little tricks of habit, the small gadgets of convenience, with which, without knowing it, one has gradually surrounded daily life.
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All this, I feel quite sure, is wholly salutary. It persuades one to take a very modest view of one's own personality. It induces one to adopt towards Professor Watson and the Behaviourists an attitude of enhanced respect. It suggests to one that inanimate objects are not composed of insentient matter but acquire faint stirrings of affection or malice. It forces one to realise, with shocked surprise, the importance which personal possessions and habits have been allowed to assume. It obliges one to face the unpleasant fact that the liberated mind is not quite so free as had been fondly imagined, but is tied to earth by little useful things. And it provides a scale of comparison by which one's sympathy for other Displaced Persons, in contrast to momentary inconvenience, is rendered more ardent even than it was before.
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