THE MIRROR MIND. T YPES of mind, like types of face,
become popular for a time, and again sink out of notice. Men admire women and women admire men of a certain type of counten- ance for, perhaps, a whole generation. Portrait-painters paint them and novelists describe them, and all those who see in themselves some approach to the fashionable type accentuate it by every means in their power. The eye gets used to peculiar forms of beauty, and for that matter of ugliness, and even demands them. We see this every year where clothes are concerned. Almost every marked mode strikes us as rather ugly when first we notice it. Then we get accustomed to it and everything which contradicts it dissatisfies M. Just now, what we may call the mirror mind is the fashion. Sympathy counts higher than ever it counted before among the popular virtues, and real sympathy is easily confused with mere reflection. We have come through a period of years in which we were all in agreement. In spite of our present-day fashions, there is a sense in which we have learned to thinly alike. Ideas run like wildfire. Ability to enter into other men's moods is regarded as in itself a high form of talent. The sympathetic attitude is so much the fashion that we unconsciously attitudinize as sympathetic. That is what is commonly meant by the expression " wide-minded."
From a social point of view, using the word " social " in its narrower sense, the fashion is a very pretty one. The gracious listener has come into his own. Debate and cavilling are out of date. The man of adjustable moods is the popular man. We regard him as interesting even if we should find it hard to say what he really thinks on any subject. Fashions affect women more than men, and most women judge of a friend's mind to-day almost entirely by its " openness," and that means by its power to reflect emotion. The result is a certain loss of individuality : of something that used to be called " character " ; but perhaps that is not such a, bad thing. When we come across women with very strong " views ' and " their own way " of looking at everything in life even if they have wit and if the hard, definite outline of their personality gives us pleasure, we feel as we feel when we see them in wilfully old-fashioned clothes. There is a certain vanity about a deliberate refusal to do as others do. They challenge criticism, and it is usually severe. It is not the fashion to be oneself. Perhaps in a sense it is a step in the right direction. The modern fashion, however, gives a certain impressionist view to the crowd of one's acquaintance which a little impairs the interest of life. Take the question of modern biography. We have broken with the convention which insisted that the minor biographies at least should be of the nature of prolonged epitaphs. The luminous paint of eulogy is a pigment of the past. But characterization is no more definite for that. Letters are, of necessity, the chief material out of which to recompose a life ; and, somehow, modern letters seem to be all of the nature of replies. We mean they are written with the mind of the recipient always in view. Accordingly, twenty letters reproduced in a life might very often be the work of twenty different hands. The good letter-writer calls up the image of his friend, and to a great extent reflects him just as the good conversationalist does.
This new fashion of sympathy has very much altered the nature of what used to be called philanthropy. Those who desire to " do good " deliberately reflect the mood of those they would do good to. They share their indigna- tions, their very excusable injustices ; they deliberately take a side and regard those who do not do so as aloof and cold. They do not wish to " see from the outside." The old do their very best to reflect the moods of the young. The effort has brought the generations together, but some- thing is lost—of variety, of corporate " character," and of dramatic interest. Again, something is lost in the breaking down of all class barriers and the hiding of class distinctions, all of which is, we suppose, to a great extent, the result of the new sympathy and the new determination to show it.
But to return to private life. Of course, no fashion really alters character, though qualities can be cultivated to a certain extent. We doubt if the present fashion for sym- pathy has increased kindness so much as might have been expected. A good many people know and fear their own power to enter into other people's feelings. They are proud of it, in a sense, but they avoid its disagreeable consequences. For instance, they keep away from their friends in trouble lest they themselves should be too much troubled. They do not want to have a sort of sympathetic attack of their neighbour's complaint. They know themselves liable to such infection, and they are careful. Again, a good many people deliberately live among those who agree with them and avoid others. They know the mirror-like make of their own mind and will not risk the constant change of picture.
Egotism and eccentricity are wonderfully disagreeable peculiarities, but one is sometimes tempted to think that they are most noticeable in periods which produce the most great men. Probably we shall see before long a great deal more of them than we do at present. With them will probably return marked class characteristics, even, it is thinkable, distinctive dress. The present wave of feeling has, to a great extent, destroyed the habit of looking down. If any body of people look down from a social height upon any other body, they dare not say so. The brainworker does not think—or, anyhow, he is not such a fool as to say he thinks—that the artisan is in any sense his inferior, and certainly the idle have long ceased to feel any pride in their leisure even when they cling to it from inherited predilection. The very old-fashioned vice of pride, which alone made the natural social demarcations intolerable, is dying out—at least, it is languishing, like drink and gluttony. If that were really gone, every working group of the community might once more quite safely please itself instead of imitating its next neighbour, and, again, without bitter feeling, keep to itself. Tyranny is dead where the old and young are concerned, and it is quite possible that the old may once more feel that they can be more use to the young by playing their own parts than by imitating them in theirs. Cocksureness, again, has received a wound. No one is now quite certain that everyone else is wrong—a fact which may well take the acerbity out of difference of view. Once get rid of this bitterness and we might all once more assert our right to be opinionated. We cannot help thinking that, under present circumstances, a change of fashion would be healthy—might tend to foster originality and even produce great men. Anyhow, it would make the scene of life better worth looking at ; and anything which makes the great recreation of looking at life—the only one within everyone's reach—more vivid, more pleasant, more varied and more edifying, is a change for the better.
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