The Gentle Reader Part 9

Nor would I defend what Milton calls "the barbarous ignorance of the schools." This scholastic variety consists of the scientific definition and cla.s.sification of "things that aren't so." It has no value except as a sort of gelatine culture for the propagation of verbal bacteria.

But the affectations of the pedants or the sciolists should not be allowed to cast discredit on the fair name of Ignorance. It is only natural Ignorance which I praise; not that which is acquired. It was a saying of Landor that if a man had a large mind he could afford to let the greater part of it lie fallow. Of course we small proprietors cannot do things on such a generous scale; but it seems to me that if one has only a little mind it is a mistake to keep it all under cultivation.

I hope that this praise of Ignorance may not give offense to any intelligent reader who may feel that he is placed by reason of his acquirements beyond the pale of our sympathies. He need fear no such exclusion. My Lady Ignorance is gracious and often bestows her choicest gifts on those who scorn her. The most erudite person is intelligent only in spots. Browning's Bishop Blougram questioned whether he should be called a skeptic or believer, seeing that he could only exchange

"a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt: We called the chess-board white,--we call it black."

Whether a person thinks of his own intellectual state as one of knowledge diversified by ignorance or one of ignorance diversified by knowledge is a matter of temperament. We like him better when he frankly calls his intellectual chess-board black. That, at any rate, was the original color, the white is an afterthought.

Let me, then, without suspicion of treasonable intent, be allowed to point out what we may call in Shakespearean phrase "the honorable points of ignorance."

The social law against "talking shop" is an indication of the very widespread opinion that the exhibition of unmitigated knowledge is unseemly, outside of business hours. When we meet for pleasure we prefer that it should be on the humanizing ground of not knowing. Nothing is so fatal to conversation as an authoritative utterance. When a man who is capable of giving it enters,

"All talk dies, as in a grove all song Beneath the shadow of a bird of prey."

Conversation about the weather would lose all its easy charm in the presence of the Chief of the Weather Bureau.

It is possible that the fear of exhibiting unusual information in a mixed company may be a survival of primitive conditions. Just as the domesticated dog will turn around on the rug before lying down, for hereditary reasons which I do not remember, so it is with civilized man.

Once ignorance was universal and enforced by penalties. In the progress of the race the environment has been modified, but so strong is the influence of heredity that The Man Who Knows no sooner enters the drawing-room than he is seized by guilty fears. His ancestors for having exhibited a moiety of his intelligence were executed as wizards. But perhaps the ordinary working of natural selection may account for the facts. The law of the survival of the fittest admits of no exceptions, and the fittest to give us pleasure in conversation is the sympathetic person who appears to know very little more than we do.

In the commerce of ideas there must be reciprocity. We will not deal with one who insists that the balance of trade shall always be in his favor. Moreover there must be a spice of incert.i.tude about the transaction. The real joy of the intellectual traffic comes when we sail away like the old merchant adventurers in search of a market. There must be no prosaic bills of exchange: it must be primitive barter. We have a choice cargo of beads which we are willing to exchange for frankincense and ivory. If on some strange coast we should meet simple-minded people who have only wampum, perhaps even then we might make a trade.

Have you never when engaged in such commerce felt something of the spirit of the grave Tyrian trader who had sailed away from the frequented marts, and held on

"O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale, Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily, To where the Atlantic raves Outside the western straits, and unbent sails There where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam, Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come; And on the beach undid his corded bales."

It is not every day that one meets with such shy traffickers, for the world is becoming very sophisticated. One does not ask that those with whom we converse should be ignorant of everything; it is enough that they should not know what is in our bales before we undo them.

One very serious drawback to our pleasure in conversation with a too well-informed person is the nervous strain that is involved. We are always wondering what will happen when he comes to the end of his resources. After listening to one who discourses with surprising accuracy upon any particular topic, we feel a delicacy in changing the subject. It seems a mean trick, like suddenly removing the chair on which a guest is about to sit down for the evening. With one who is interested in a great many things he knows little about there is no such difficulty. If he has pa.s.sed the first flush of youth, it no longer embarra.s.ses him to be caught now and then in a mistake; indeed your correction is welcomed as an agreeable interruption, and serves as a starting point for a new series of observations.

The pleasure of conversation is enhanced if one feels a.s.sured not only of wide margins of ignorance, but also of the absence of uncanny quickness of mind.

I should not like to be neighbor to a wit. It would be like being in proximity to a live wire. A certain insulating film of kindly stupidity is needed to give a margin of safety to human intercourse. There are certain minds whose processes convey the impression of alternating currents of high voltage on a wire that is not quite large enough for them. From such I would withdraw myself.

One is freed from all such apprehensions in the companionship of people who make no pretensions to any kind of cleverness. "The laughter of fools is like the crackling of thorns under a pot." What cheerful sounds! The crackling of the dry thorns! and the merry bubbling of the pot!

There is an important part played by what I may call defensive Ignorance. It was said of Robert Elsmere that he had a mind that was defenseless against the truth. It is a fine thing to be thus open to conviction, but the mental hospitality of one who is without prejudices is likely to be abused. All sorts of notions importunately demand attention, and he who thinks to examine all their credentials will find no time left for his own proper affairs.

For myself, I like to have a general reception-room in my mind for all sorts of notions with which I desire to keep up only a calling acquaintance. Here let them all be welcomed, good, bad, and indifferent, in the s.p.a.cious antechamber of my Ignorance. But I am not able to invite them into my private apartments, for I am living in a small way in cramped quarters, where there is only room for my own convictions. There are many things that are interesting to hear about which I do not care to investigate. If one is willing to give me the result of his speculations on various esoteric doctrines I am ready to receive them in the spirit in which they are offered, but I should not think of examining them closely; it would be too much like looking a gift horse in the mouth.

I should like to talk with a Mahatma about the const.i.tution of the astral body. I do not know enough about the subject to contradict his a.s.sertions, and therefore he would have it all his own way. But were he to become insistent and ask me to look into the matter for myself, I should beg to be excused. I would not take a single step alone. In such a case I agree with Sir Thomas Browne that "it is better to sit down in modest ignorance and rest contented with the natural blessings of our own reasons."

There are zealous persons of a proselyting turn of mind who insist upon our accepting their ideas or giving reasons for our rejection of them.

When we see the flames of controversy sweeping upon us, the only safety lies in setting a back fire which shall clear the ground of any fuel for argument. If we can only surround ourselves with a bare s.p.a.ce of nescience we may rest in peace. I have seen a simple Chinese laundry-man, by adopting this plan, resist a storm of argument and invective without losing his temper or yielding his point. Serene, imperturbable, inscrutable, he stood undisturbed by the strife of tongues. He had one supreme advantage,--he did not know the language.

It was thus in the sixteenth century, when religious strife waxed mad around him, that Montaigne preserved a little spot of tolerant thought.

"O what a soft, easy, and wholesome pillow is ignorance and incuriosity whereon to compose a well-contrived head!"

This sounds like mere Epicureanism, but Montaigne had much to say for himself: "Great abuse in the world is begot, or, to speak more boldly, all the abuses of the world are begot by our being taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things we are not able to refute.... They make me hate things that are likely when they impose upon me for infallible. I love those words which mollify and moderate the temerity of our propositions, 'Peradventure, in some sort, 'tis said, I think,' and the like.... There is a sort of ignorance, strong and generous, that yields nothing in honor and courage to knowledge; an ignorance which to conceive requires no less knowledge than knowledge itself."

Not only is protection needed from the dogmatic a.s.saults of our neighbors, but also from our own premature ideas. There are opinions which we are willing to receive on probation, but these probationers must be taught by judicious snubbing to know their place. The plausibilities and probabilities that are pleasantly received must not airily a.s.sume the place of certainties. Because you say to a stranger, "I'm glad to see you," it is not certain that you are ready to sign his note at the bank.

When one happens to harbor any ideas of a radical character, he is fortunate if he is so const.i.tuted that it is not necessary for his self-respect that he should be c.o.c.k-sure. The consciousness of the imperfection of his knowledge serves as a buffer when the train of progress starts with a jerk.

Sir Thomas More was, it is evident, favorably impressed with many of the sentiments of the gentleman from Utopia, but it was a great relief to him to be able to give them currency without committing himself to them.

He makes no dogmatic a.s.sertion that the const.i.tution of Utopia was better than that of the England of Henry VIII. In fact, he professes to know nothing about Utopia except from mere hearsay. He gracefully dismisses the subject, allowing the seeds of revolutionary ideas to float away on the thistle-down of polite Ignorance.

"When Raphael had made an end of speaking, though many things occurred to me both concerning the manners and laws of that country that seemed very absurd ... yet since I perceived that Raphael was weary and I was not sure whether he could bear contradiction ... I only commended their const.i.tution and the account he had given of it in general; and so, taking him by the hand, carried him to supper, and told him I would find some other time for examining this subject more particularly and discoursing more copiously upon it."

One whose quiet tastes lead him away from the main traveled roads into the byways of Ignorance is likely to retain a feeling in regard to books which belongs to an earlier stage of culture. Time was when a book was a symbol of intellectual mysteries rather than a tool to be used. When Omar Khayyam sang of the delights of a jug of wine and a book, I do not think he was intemperate in the use of either. The same book and the same jug of wine would last him a long time. The chief thing was that it gave him a comfortable feeling to have them within reach.

The primitive feeling in regard to a book as a kind of talisman survives chiefly among bibliophiles, but with them it is overlaid by matters of taste which are quite beyond the comprehension of ordinary people. As for myself, I know nothing of such niceties.

I know nothing of rare bindings or fine editions. My heart is never disturbed by coveting the contents of my neighbor's bookshelves.

Indeed, I have always listened to the tenth commandment with a tranquil heart since I learned, in the Shorter Catechism, that "the tenth commandment forbiddeth all discontentment with our own estate, envying or grieving at the good of our neighbor and all inordinate motions and affections to anything that is his." If that be all, it is not aimed at me, particularly in this matter of books.

I feel no discontentment at the disorderly array of bound volumes that I possess. I know that they are no credit either to my taste or to my scholarship, but if that offends my neighbor, the misery is his, not mine. If he should bring a railing accusation against me, let him remember that there is a ninth commandment which "forbiddeth anything that is injurious to our own or our neighbor's good name." As for any inordinate motions or affections toward his literary treasures, I have no more than toward his choice collection of stamps.

Yet I have one weakness in common with the bibliophile; I have a liking for certain books which I have neither time nor inclination to read.

Just as according to the mediaeval theory there was a sanct.i.ty about a duly ordained clergyman altogether apart from his personal character, so there is to my mind an impressiveness about some volumes which has little to do with their contents, or at least with my knowledge of them.

Why should we be too curious in regard to such matters? There are books which I love to see on the shelf. I feel that virtue goes out of them, but I should think it undue familiarity to read them.

The persons who have written on "Books that have helped me" have usually confined their list to books which they have actually read. One book has clarified their thoughts, another has stimulated their wills, another has given them useful knowledge. But are there no Christian virtues to be cultivated? What about humility, that pearl of great price?

To be constantly reminded that you have not read Kant's "Critique of the Pure Reason," and that therefore you have no right to express a final opinion on philosophy, does not that save you from no end of unnecessary dogmatism? The silent monitor with its accusing, uncut pages is a blessed help to the meekness of wisdom. A book that has helped me is "The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars of England," by Edward, Earl of Clarendon. I am by nature and education a Cromwellian, of a rather narrow type. I am more likely than not to think of Charles I. as a man of sin. When, therefore, I brought home Clarendon's History I felt a glow of conscious virtue; the volume was an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace,--the grace of tolerance; and so it has ever been to me.

Years have pa.s.sed, and the days of leisure have not yet come when I could devote myself to the reading of it. Perhaps the fact that I discovered that the n.o.ble earl's second sentence contains almost three hundred words may have had a discouraging influence,--but we will let that pa.s.s. Because I have not crossed the Rubicon of the second chapter, will you say that the book has not influenced me? "When in my sessions of sweet, silent thought," with the Earl of Clarendon, "I summon up remembrance of time past," is it necessary that I should laboriously turn the pages? It is enough that I feel my prejudices oozing away, and that I am convinced, when I look at the much prized volume, that there are two sides to this matter of the English Commonwealth. Could the most laborious reading do more for me?

Indeed, it is dangerous, sometimes, not to let well-enough alone.

Wordsworth's fickle Muse gave him several pretty fancies about the unseen banks of Yarrow. "Yarrow Unvisited" was so delightful that he was almost tempted to be content with absent treatment.

"We will not see them, will not go To-day nor yet to-morrow, Enough if in our hearts we know There's such a place as Yarrow.

Be Yarrow's stream unseen, unknown, It must, or we shall rue it, We have a vision of our own, Ah, why should we undo it?"

Ah, why, indeed? the reader asks, after reading Yarrow Visited and Yarrow Re-visited. The visits were a mistake.

Perhaps Clarendon Unread is as good for my soul as Clarendon Read or Clarendon Re-read. Who can tell?

There is another sphere in which the honorable points of ignorance are not always sufficiently appreciated, that of Travel. The pleasure of staying at home consists in being surrounded by things which are familiar and which we know all about. The primary pleasure of going abroad consists in the encounter with the unfamiliar and the unknown.

That was the impulse which stirred old Ulysses to set forth once more upon his travels.

"For my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down, It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew."