CANT.
MR. WALLACE, M.P., was certainly quite right on Monday in deriving the word "cant" from a corrupted form of "chant." It is rather a curious truth that John- son's advice to Boswell, "Sir, clear your mind of cant," should have really meant at bottom, "Clear your mind of chant,"—that is, of the sort of conventional speech which comes not directly from one's own mind, but is borrowed both in thought and tone from the habitual sayings of others,—" a whining pretension to goodness in fervent and affected tones," which imitates the lingo of the pious or the pauper without truth or sincerity. That is a remarkable testimony to the tendency of the human mind to borrow a sort of degraded music and falsetto speech for that which is not really sincere. It seems to be natural to clothe a false profession in a false manner that represents the speech (say) of an order of miserable mendicants or an order of religious professors, and serves as a class garb rather than as an individual expression. The beggar or the Pharisee or the person who affects to be what he is not, naturally takes to an artificial sing-song as the easiest mode of pouring forth his false professions. It is much easier to copy the speech of those who meant what they said than to say for yourself what you do not mean, but only wish to have it believed that you do mean. But in copying such speech, of course, you really degrade it and turn it into an affectation by the drawl which denotes that it is not your own thought, but an attempt to put on the thought of another. Mr. Wallace was hard on Tartuffe and Pecksniff when he said that, compared to Burns's "Holy Willie," "Pecksniff and Tartuffe were nebulous and ineffective apparitions." Pecksniff and Tartuffe were conceptions of a totally different order from "Holy Willie." The object of "Holy Willie" was to make hypocrisy detest- able ; the object of Pecksniff and Tartuffe was to make it ridiculous, and most ridiculous they did make it, but by so colouring and slightly caricaturing the speech of the hypocrite that no real hypocrite would ever have put his speech exactly in that form. What real hypocrite would ever have said, as Mr. Pecksniff said, "What are those creatures, pagan, I regret to say, which sit in the water and sing ? " or, "Charity, my dear, when you give me my bed candlestick to- night remind me to pray for Mr. Antony Chuzzlewit, who has done me an injury ; " or would have begun to walk on tiptoe while still a mile from his home that he might surprise his "dear girls "? All these things are delightful distortions of the true hypocrite, intended to make the hypocrisy exquisitely absurd, as, in fact, they do make it. And it is just the same with Moliere's Tartuffe. The object of those great humourists was to alter slightly the mode in which the hypocrisy was expressed, so as to make the hypocrite a subject for laughter, not for detestation, while the object of Burns was totally different, and the two do not really bear comparison. The great comedians do not attempt to give the sort of sing-song into which ordinary cant naturally falls. They create a full-grown hypocrite, not a canting preacher or a canting mendicant, and a full-grown hypocrite is big enough to lay aside the lingo which has given ruse to the term "cant," and to impersonate falsehood in every act
of his life. The humourist's object is so skilfully to caricature that falsehood as to make it even more ridiculous than hate- ful. But cant proper is something short of the humourist's caricature. It has the artificial air, the borrowed chant or whine of professional mannerism. When Johnson told Boswell to clear his mind of cant, he really exhorted him to lay aside altogether the conventional speech and conventional intona- tion which springs from borrowing the thought and manner of other people instead of using that which comes from your own character,—an almost impossible effort, 'mice so much of our life, and often the best part of it, is really the product of the influence of others over our thought and feelings. Nor is such influence, even though it imposes on us some convictions and some mannerisms not entirely our own, in any sense cant, if it has really been taken to our hearts with genuine and eager belief as something better than anything in ourselves. It is cant only when it is half- believed and half-distrusted, and of course still worse cant when it is wholly disbelieved and adopted only for purposes of self-interest. We may all of us find ourselves speaking in language that is not quite genuine at times, and when we do we are very apt to assume an air that is not quite genuine, and a tone that is not quite our own, as well as a type of thought and feeling that is not quite our own. Even "Holy Willie" probably began in this way, though instead of disliking it and finding the false note jarring to himself, he rather en- joyed it, and felt keenly the advantages of being able to cloak himself in the forms and phrases of others. Almost all true cant betrays itself by the assumed air, and by its con- trast to the expression and gestures which belong to the real man or (as Mr. Wallace says) the real woman. When talk is spiteful, the cant appears in the profession of deep sorrow that a friend who is being shown up with ill-con- cealed exultation, should have allowed himself to commit so serious a folly or sin. And whenever such professions are made, you may detect in the voice with which they are made that conventional and falsetto note, which is the equivalent of the mendicant's whine or the pietist's spurious humility.
We do not think that Mr. Wallace is right in apparently regarding all professional mannerisms as a kind of cant. He appears to think that the lawyer's manner of thought and speech, no less than the clergyman's or the beggar's manner of thought and speech, is probably cant if it does not express exactly what the men or women would feel and say who do not belong to that profession. But that implies that what people gain by their professional experience, or the preparation they have gone through for their professional experience, is all in the nature of a perversion of their minds instead of a cultivation of their minds. Even the beggar's experience of mankind is worth something. He learns to distinguish the kind - hearted from the hard-hearted,—very much, no doubt, to the disad- vantage of the community at large,—because he turns it to the profit of his own laziness ; but still he learns some- thing that is valuable in itself, though in his hands it may be turned to a very bad account. And as for the clergy- man and the lawyer, what really is " professional " in their minds is perhaps oftener true than false, and when it is true, far from being cant, may be of the greatest value to mankind. Mr. Wallace states that there is such a thing as forensic cant,"—of coarse there is,—but illustrates it by the remark that, "with a thousand guineas on his brief, the great advocate finds no difficulty in regarding a great Stock Ex- change operator as a slandered saint. And Themis is too apt to turn up the whites of her eyes when looking straight would be better." It is very possible that a barrister with a thousand guineas on his brief might use language of the stockbroker which would be neither true in itself, nor even wise, for the purpose of carrying the jury with him. Still, all stockbrokers are not swindlers, and the positive duty of the barrister, according to our system of justice, is to give the best aspects of his client's case, and to leave the barrister on the other side to state the case against him. And is there not a certain cant on Mr. Wallace's part in speaking of Themis turning "up the whites of her eyes when looking straight would be better " ? Does it not mean that Judges have no business to comment strongly on the moral aspects of a disgraceful case, and that they should be satisfied with summing-up fairly and then passing sentence without any sort of moral judgment? To our mind, that would be a great dereliction of duty. A Judge of high character who has had a very disgraceful case before him, probably does at least as much good by using his large ex- perience and strong sense of justice, to characterise it fitly to the public, as he does by holding the scales impartially and passing sentence justly. We should remember that special aptitudes spring out of special knowledge and special ex- perience, and that what one man looking at another man's habits of thought will regard as professional cant, may really be comments of the greatest value, though the critic was deficient in all the knowledge and all the superinduced mental and moral feelings which would enable him to appreciate them fairly. Cant is a man's attempt, as Mr. Wallace says, to appear what he is not, and in order to distinguish cant from honest and genuine dealing, you must be to some extent master of the field in relation to which you pass your criticism. We will venture to say that a very great deal both of legal and clerical language is set down as professional cant which is really founded on sound knowledge and sincere con- victions that happen to be beyond the intellectual and moral range of the person who so describes it. There is nothing commoner than the habit of despising as empty and insincere because more or less technical, expressions which you have not the requisite knowledge and experience to estimate at their true value.
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