" DE IIINIMIS."
IT is good for every man's character that there should be some spiritual region in which he can do as he likes, some land of little things where he may be delivered altogether from the tyranny of the long arm. Most Englishmen feel this instinctively, and there is certainly no country in which de minimis non curat lex can be said with so much truth. Hitherto our countrymen have preserved and have diligently enlarged the liberties of what we might call the Kingdom of " Minima." Manners are freer than they were. Fashions, especially what we may call class fashions, tend to be less tyrannous. In Thackeray's day the whole middle class lived more or less alike. Now the poor live as they can and the educated as they please. If Thackeray could come back, how Bohemian he would think us all ! True, there are social shibboleths still ; but the world to which they apply becomes smaller and more exclusively feminine. Occasionally one hears some one say: "There are no eccentrics now." The truth is, there are so many that they pass unnoticed.
We do not greatly regard ridiculously small offences any longer, nor trouble over small losses ; neither are we shocked at small extravagances. We seldom apply our laws, or even our principles, where trifles are concerned. We make no idols of our conventions. Rather we love them—the older the better—as children love dolls ; but, like children, we do not hesitate to knock them about ; indeed, few of them can be said to be intact. We all believe that this country is free in a sense in which no other country ever was or will be, and there is a sense of freedom here which even foreigners give us credit for. Sometimes one wonders whether the atmosphere of liberty has not more to do with temperament than with institu- tions. Just now the nation is angry—does well, no doubt, to be angry. But a righteously angry man is apt to lose some of his natural graces of temperament, and so to " even himself " to the persons with whom be is at variance. In the domestic life of a city or an individual the rigour of the game should never be applied if domestic life is to be happy and to give room for development, and if the good name of law and order is to be preserved. Just now we have noticed—in very little things--a perverse tendency to hold up the mirror to Prussia. It must, one hopes, be the merest passing phase ; but the tendency is so dangerous and little liberties are so valuable that it is surely every one's duty to hold fast by our ancient custom in regard to the smallest things. We must always be in danger of crises like the present, in which our greater liberties must of necessity be curtailed ; but the spirit of freedom cannot be quenched while it can find a refuge in the world of things that do not matter.
A scene which took place in the presence of the writer in a London omnibus will illustrate our fears. " You would not take my badge number just for that ? " said a very young omnibus conductress, in a timid voice, to a hard-eyed passenger before whom Aathe,diapute, or rather the arraignment, continued
newcomers learnt that the girl had allowed a lady with.a very small dog tucked under her cloak to remain for about a minute inside the 'bus. The circumstances, it appeared, were speciaL The day was rainy, the dog infinitesimal, the time of his shelter under the ambulant roof almost to be counted in seconds. " He was a very small dog," she pleaded with the unwisdom of youth ; " he sat on her knee the whole time—indeed, he was under her cloak." The self-constituted judge continued the persecution. " I take no interest in those details," said he. " I don't care if the dog was small or big, or how long he was in the 'bus, or whether he sat on the owner or the owner sat on him. What I want to find out is— and mind, I will sift this matter to the bottom—had you or had you not discretion to let him get in at all ?" The girl looked distressed. She murmured that she had not been long at the work, and that she hadn't thought that such a moment's departure from regulations would matter. " Can't you understand the meaning of the word `principle' 1" continued the upholder of the law. The girl made no answer, and went on with her work. After a short visit to the top of the vehicle she returned distinctly cheered. Her face was composed, and she no longer looked in danger of crying. Her calmer expression did not escape her accuser. " I am going to sift the matter," he said, as she passed Lim ; and seeing her face fall once more, he appeared satisfied, and got out of the 'bus, unfortunately before the present writer—a person, alas ! of infirm purpose—had plucked up courage to call him a German. As for the little conductress, whether he managed to get her reprimanded or not, the very word " principle " probably stank in her nostrils for some time to come, and seemed in her mind synonymous with nothing but harshness.
It is a strange fact, but nothing seems to cause so much respect for law and order as a sort of righteous inexactitude in its imposition. Without doubt the Magistrates of England have made the law very widely respected by a judicious non-enforcement of it. Very few men and women grow up with a real distaste for religion unless it has been made applicable in their youth to indifferent trifles. They must not do this, that, and the other entirely indifferent action because, forsooth, it would be displeasing to God Almighty. The back of conscience may easily be broken, and healthy young people instinctively shake off a too heavy burden. A region ought to be left which the outward laws even of religion do not touch. Other- wise we may approach the lamentable and contemptible state of mind of certain renowned religious persons of the past, who tormented their consciences about morsels of meat unwittingly swallowed on a Friday. It is noticeable with what warmth freedom in the matter of trifles is upheld in the Scripture. Our Lord may, without irreverence, be said to have ridiculed the people who made principle apply to trifles. It did not matter, He said, about such things, and when He wanted an ear of corn. He plucked it whoever the owner and whatever the day of the week. He seemed to take it for granted that a man's soul cannot endure a system of complete regulation.
The extreme preoccupation with pence which is so noticeable just now among educated women cannot but have a narrowing and enervating effect upon their minds. After all, mental energy cannot be weighed in the balance. against coppers. Of course, the principle of economy ought to be enforced, but it should not be carried into that lawless region which is every man's recreation- ground, every man's escape from the strenuousness of life. In war time life is ten times more strenuous than usual. It seems certain that some amount of holiday is essential to maintain full energy in men—some " leave " must be granted. Inward " leave " is needed too. We must get away sometimes from the stern world of duty and take holiday among little things.
It is said that there is a madman in all of us. Without doubt there is a rebel, and the sensible Englishman always gives him a little rope. We talk more sheer nonsense on purpose than any nation under the sun, and the more highly educated the circle we enter the more nonsense do we hear. The Land of Nonsense is a part of the Kingdom of " Minima," and the slightest attempt to reduce this territory has always proved disastrous. Neither men nor children will submit to speak the truth always. Their mental and spiritual health demands a licensed escape from responsibility, logic, and accuracy. The uneducated classes do not live among such a network of by-laws, conventional and other, as those in a class above them. From the moment that an educated man, performs his toilet in the morning to the moment that he goes to bed at night he is constantly submitting to some sort of regulation. A few such men—not the best—break free and go and live in the wild. For simple people the yoke is less uneasy. Just lately they also have been brought by circumstances under a fax stricter discipline than they were accustomed to, and what is the result ? A whole lot, one had almost said a whole literature, of nonsense springs up in
their talk. The civilian world is laughing over the good-humoured nonsense talked by " Tommy "—when it is not crying over his death or his sufferings.
Certain people have no sympathy whatever with those who expend time, trouble, and affection upon pets. We have heard quite amiable persons lately expressing a wish that all pet animals should be taxed out of existence. But pets are the fauna of the free land of little things—the little inferior children towards whom we have no responsibility but to make them happy, and whom we may with clear conscience send out of existence when it is no longer in bur power to do so. To make laws inimical to their existence is tyranny. Are we to do nothing, have nothing, and say nothing that is not useful ? Of course there is always a certain danger lest we enlarge too far the border of the lawless land. It is difficult to draw the line between big and little. But too much freedom seems to have a better effect upon character than too little. Extremes meet. Without moderation we might slip backward into savagery. On the other hand, we do not want to be dragged forward into Prussianiam.
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