"AS OTHERS SEE VS."
DO any of us desire "to see oursels as others see us" ? Should we like to know what is said of us behind our backs even by our friends ? Should we like even our friends to bear what we say of them? Most men and women would instinctively answer " No " to all these questions, and there are some who are so shocked by the discrepancy between what we say to each other's faces and what we say behind each other's backs that they lay it down as a rule that we should speak of no friend in his absence as we would not speak in his presence, and thus practically prohibit personal conversation altogether.
In "The Comments of Bag,shot," an able and charming book already reviewed in these pages, the author takes the contrary part, and maintains that it is natural and unobjectionable that we should talk over our friends behind their backs, and should expect them to do the same by us. "Let us cheerfully yield ourselves," he says, "as a topic of conversation to our friends, if they are kind enough to think us interesting"; but he solemnly warns us that tve should be ruthless towards those "mischief-makers who turn the innocent into the malicious by the act of repeating it." His chief point we yield to him without argument. Freedom of speech is as necessary to our society as the freedom of the Press to our civilisation. There are certain risks which a people no longer in tutelage to a superior race or a superior class must take. In the same way, an adult society cannot be governed by rules which make for peace and security in the schoolroom. We cannot taboo the subject of human 'nature, or even refuse to discuss it in the concrete. Interest in the subject is universal. We must discuss one Another freely, and there is no possibility of free discus- sion in presence of the person discussed. The wording of Mr. Spender's conclusion, however, suggests several side-issues. Has the mischief-maker really so much power ? Do we, perhaps, all of us live over a volcano which any unprin- cipled person may any day explode, blasting friendships and 'acquaintanceships, and blackening our whole outlook upon life ? Moralists have sometimes expressed a wish to see themselves as others see them. Was this a mere verbal flower of didactic temerity, or did they truly expect to gain some- thing worth having by means of a bitter experience ? Is it we or is it others who know the truth about ourselves ? If it is they who know it, ought we to be so very angry if they tell it to us P To answer the first question is very difficult. At times, as we reflect upon the terrible consequences which might accrue from mischievous repetition, it is impossible to avoid an uneasy sensation of danger. Of course a great many mischief-makers repeat falsely what they have heard. They are, as a rule, cruel persons. A cruel man has seldom a nice sense of morality even outside of his own vice, and a cruel woman has never any at all ; but the most truthful repetition of a single sentence may cause untold pain and do infinite mischief. A harsh criticism from a man we do not like may turn a half-conscious aversion into a conscious enmity, and the retailed severity of a friend give a wound which his presence will for ever set aching. Certainly the malicious repeater is a traitor to the society in which he moves, and it is one of the most healthy signs of the day that in all societies such treachery is rare. The man or woman who has seen or suffered the results of such social criminality is rendered for ever nervous. On the other hand, it is not too much to say that many persons, perhaps the majority, go through life unaffected by any such tragedy. We do not live over a volcano because railway accidents do happen, theatres burn down, and murders are duly reported in the daily papers. When such treachery occurs it does pure harm. Faith is shaken and hate con- firmed, and no light thrown upon anything except the character of the traitor. The medicine of truth is poisoned when it passes through such a channel.
But putting the busybody out of the question, it is perhaps not too much to say that he would be a daring man who, if given the opportunity, would elect to know for certain all that any individual really thought of him—all, we mean, that that individual instinctively refrains from telling him—or who, if he could have such an experience as entirely to read his neighbour's, or even his dearest friend's, heart, would come out of the experience without humiliation. It would not be condemnation that we should in many cases fear. Affection casts that out. In some it would be com- mendation, in most it would be excuse. Those who really love us continually mistake our motives by taking them for better than they are; or perhaps it would be more true to say they see only one motive, when there were many, and some, to say the least, were less good. If we knew all, we should shudder lest a clearer sight should come to them, and we should lose what we value so much the more that we do not deserve it. Still more poignant, perhaps, would be the pain of knowing they forgave what we hoped that they had ignored. We have not deceived them, but they have excused us. We thought they loved us because they did
not know. We still keep their regard, but we wince to think on what terms we have it. All this knowledge would do us no good and would sap our courage for life. The invisible wall which still divides those who are closest to each other is for our soul's health.
On the other hand, we do believe that, apart from indi- viduals at all, it is good for most of us, and a thing to be desired if we would be wise, that we should have some power of seeing ourselves as others see us,—of gauging the con- sensus of opinion of our friends, an opinion often altogether true, and perhaps never altogether false. The man who is absolutely careless about this consensus of opinion, or absolutely incapable of deducing it, is badly fitted for life. In saying this we think we are defending no form of morbid sensitiveness, and no weak love of popular approval. The whole of English upper-class education is based upon the doctrine that it is good for a man from his youth to learn to live among his fellows, and follow "the good common rule" of his contemporaries ; and this means not only to know them, but to be aware what they on the whole think of him, and to modify his own verdict by theirs. Boys find their own level when they go to school, we say, and we mean that they learn by rubbing shoulders with the many to give weight to the judgment of the many upon themselves. "I am showing how independent I am," thinks the little boy. "Yon are showing how disagreeable you can be," decides his little world, said their decision is not without its just effect upon his mental estimate of his own character. "I am an exceptionally amusing person," he says to himself. "You are a little bore that likes to play the fool," comment the majority, and if he is a wise child he will not altogether refuse to see himself as they see him.
Of course there is a sense in which we all know ourselves better than any one can know us. We have a more intimate acquaintance than any one else with both sides of our dual nature. We know the man we wish and the man we dread to be, and we know that.both are our true selves. The man that for all practical purposes we are—when our will has welded our two natures for action—our friends can enlighten us about, and unless we purposely deceive them, they are likely to give us some useful information. Either conceit or self- distrust is almost sure to hamper the man who has no means of knowing the opinion of his world in regard to him. Goodness will not keep him from either of these evils. He will learn to believe too implicitly in the side of himself he rightly prefers, or he will learn to be too self-conscious about his inferior self.
While there is more good than evil in the world, more truth than falsehood, more able men than fools, more just persons than unjust, public opinion—if it be but that small public in the centre of which we each imagine ourselves to be living— will be worth taking into consideration even upon subjects in which we rightly think we are authorities,—even upon the one subject on which we all know that we are authorities, the subject of ourselves.
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