THE CONSOLATIONS OF COMPARISON.
WE are always being told that the muse of contrast is a source of discontent. We compare our lot with that of our more fortunate neighbour, and are thereby made unhappy. This is a widely received dogma, but we doubt whether there is much truth in it, in this country at any rate. There is certainly an opposite and much more important truth which is forced upon our notice at every turn. It is not only discontent which is bred by comparison. The consolations of comparison are endless. Self-congratulation is a far more widespread feeling than envy, and it is particularly potent among the poor. It is a fact that the vast majority of people find a momentary relief from trouble in hearing of someone else who is worse elf. All primitive natures feel this sudden involuntary sense of consolation—in fact, we believe that almost everyone feels it, though certain very superior people may declare that they do not. How often does one hear a poor woman in trouble actually blame herself for not feeling thankful when she hears of another person in worse plight. From a cold in the head to a cruel bereavement, this theory holds good. "My colds do not serve me half so bad as So-and-so's do her," is a thought with which the working woman suffering from catarrh frequently and successfully doses herself all through the winter. "I have a long way to walk to my work, but not so far as So-and-so, and he is an older man than me," is a reflection which shortens a weary distance, and, indeed, there is no trouble so great that the thought of greater does not seem to palliate it, no pain so sharp that some allusion is not made to something less easy to endure suffered by a neighbour or a relation or someone whom somebody knows.
The difference between the educated and uneducated in this matter of consolation is not so great as it appears outwardly. We are a little ashamed of our instinctive feeling, and hide it and argue with it, and perhaps people in whom every irritation or trouble engenders a sense of revolt do not feel it. They are determined to add every pain they feel or hear of to the account they are casting up against Providence. Little distinction exists for them between their own suffering and the suffering of the world. Both alike swell the sum of their resentment. They feel something akin to pleasure as the indictment becomes more and more awful. But that sense of revolt is confined almost entirely to the sophisticated. Few people would deny that, if they lost, say, a tenth of their fortune in a bank failure, they would feel less self-pity if they knew that they were among the least, not among the greateet, sufferers, and this though the fact made no difference to the sum which they must henceforth do without, or to their capacity to do without it. The Jonesea lose a thousand pounds with less distress because the Smiths have lost two thousand. The lesser loser may be truly sorry for the greater loser, and yet feel this strange sense of relief. The same thing holds good when we regret folly instead of misfortune. For instance, shyness is a very common and painful complaint. It very often leads a man or a woman to say or do some very awkward or unwittingly impolite or ridiculous thing. Unfortunately shyness is as a rule accompanied by a sufficient sensitiveness to make its victim suffer exaggerated vexation. Is it not a certain relief to hear of some other shy person who has done and said some- thing much worse ? Does it not often take the poignancy out of the disagreeable recollection of the last social blunder we realized ourselves to have committed? In this case the feeling is not perhaps a good one—but it is not altogether bad. We do not for one second blame or condemn the victim of his own awkwardness. We do not set his words or his actions for one moment to his discredit. All the same, we are glad that he did worse than we. Something of the same kind is tree in the moral as well as in the social domain. The consolations of comparison affect the conscience very powerfully_ The fires of great remorse are not quenched by them, but pricks which are sufficient to make the average man very uncomfortable are allayed, and even stopped altogether, by the observa- tion of worse deeds. That is one reason why it is so dangerous for the young to keep bad company. Again, we cannot forget that the sense of mere physical enjoy- ment is occasionally heightened by the thought that it is not shared by all. We do not want our luxuries to become too common. No sooner are they regarded as necessaries than we seek others. As we sit by a good fire in a bad storm and think of those whose work is taking them into the open or on to tile sea it is not wholly compassion which we feel as we think of them. There is a tinge of some- thing which we are a little ashamed of in our feeling, and we are apt to turn away from our own self-condemnation to think pleasantly of worse people who have far more ill-natured feelings of the same kind—for instance, of the wonderful old man in Mr. Benensan's book about East Anglian labourers (A Countryside Chronicle), who used to reflect that few men of his standing had so warm a fire to sit by as he, and would even gloat over the fact that some had none at all, adding, with the irrelevance of ill-natured senility, "unless its 'ell fire —and well, they deserves it." That is a more ill-natured thought than most of us have ever harboured. We feel we could forgive ourselves our most unamiable instinct in the face of that story.
But, cynicism apart, is there not a very good side to the queer instinct we have been discussing? We must confess at once that it is not wholly good. It is related—not closely, but it is related—to that hateful and uncontrollable sense of pleasure which exciting and startling news, even when it ie bad, gives to most of us, so long as it does not concern our- selves or those we love best. It is a feeling for which every decent man hates himself the second after he has experienced it. We cannot trace it to our animal ancestry, or father it on to our savage forebears, or get rid of it anyhow. We cannot help it; the only thing is to forget it. But setting aside this strange diabolical taint, the desire to find consolation in comparison is human and good. The effort to be thankful belongs to the natural conscience. It is difficult to argue that thankfulness is a duty. It is presumptuous to urge it upon those who suffer. But the best natures feel it to be a duty, and they will take means, however illogical, to arouse the feeling in themselves. Then-there is a side of sympathy which the literal meaning of the word does not express. There is a pleasure in offering compassion, and it is a fine instinct which makes a man forget himself in thinking of someone else. An effort after distrac- tion is a natural and healthy instinct in the sick, who know that it is best for them to turn their minds from themselves, and who try to fix their minds on others, even though it be for their own relief. It is often impossible without comparison to arrive at a true sense of proportion, a fact which is at the root of the shy man's pleasure in another man's social blunder, and even goes far to account for the refusal of conscience to maintain a positive attitude in face of consoling comparisons.
But we are sure some readers will deny that the instinct we have been discussing is anything like universal. Civilization, they will say, is fast stamping it out. It remains enshrined in certain phrases and habits of speech, but has now little reality. But could the best and most sympathetic and civilized among us endure to live in a world in which we were the worst off, in which everyone was happier than we were, in which we alone were subject to what is at present the average lot? There must be somewhere some man more unhappy than anyone else, but mercifully he does not know it. Who could bear to know it and lire? Surely such a position bereft of all the consolations of comparison would be unendurable.
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