| | | | | THE subject of folly is a wide one. Mr Buckle's sixteen | volumes would hardly exhaust its various manifestations; | what, then, can be expected in a single page? But it is also | attractive. Nobody is disinclined to have his belief in the | universality of folly confirmed by a new instance, | everyone is ready to speculate on the motive or want of | motive of ridiculous human action. But the foolish things | we have here set ourselves to speak of are not attractive. | They furnish food for anything rather than amused | supercilious analysis. Are there any of our readers who | never in their own persons say or do foolish things ~~ who | are never conscious of having been deserted by their good | genius? If there are, we do not write for them. It is one's | own foolish things which at present engage our attention, | for which we assume the sympathy of fellow-feeling, and | reckon on touching an answering chord in other breasts | not a few. We are not speaking now of grave errors and | mistakes, but of the inadvertencies, | | weaknesses, and follies which haunt our subordinate, | social, man-fearing conscience; which we may not know | to have been perceived by any but ourselves, but which | nevertheless affect us, not because they are wrong, but | silly, and because they may be thought more silly by | others even than by ourselves, which leave a sense of | self-betrayal, making us ask in bitterness ~~ | | | They are the things which allow us to go to sleep at night | with an undisturbed conscience, but wake us with a start | hours before the dawn, and set us wondering ~~ How | could I make such a fool of myself? Where was the | impulse to that vain show-off? What could have induced | me to talk of such a one ~~ to confide my private concerns | to So-and-so? For it may be noted that sins of omission | play but a small part in this periodical tragedy. It is not | lost opportunities, but heedless ill-considered speech and | action, that fret us at unseasonable hours ~~ some | thoughtless licence of the tongue, perhaps, or some | passing vanity leading to misplaced confidence and weak | reliance on sympathy. In the young, the fear of | presumption is a fruitful yet innocent source of these | stings of memory. Young people are sometimes made | uneasy for days from the notion of having committed | some unwarrantable familiarity, which under excitement | seemed, and very likely was, perfectly natural. | | We are advised to sleep upon certain designs, but it | | means really to wake upon them. Nothing is more curious | than the revulsion a short interval makes in our whole | view of things ~~ no magic more bewildering than the | transmutations which a few hours of insensibility produce | ~~ a few hours of being thrown absolutely upon ourselves. | What an idea it gives us of the effect of association, of the | action of man upon man! Nobody can allow himself to be | real and natural in his intercourse with others, and at the | same time act as he laid himself out beforehand to act, or | as he wishes (we may too often say), on looking back, that | he had acted. If this is true in the solemn and weighty | affairs of life, it must of necessity be true in the light or | less responsible contact of society, where the little turns | and accidents of the hour are constantly throwing us off | our rules, and tempting us to ventures and experiments. | All wit, all repartee, all spontaneous effervescence of | thought and fancy, are of the nature of experiment. All | new unplanned revelations of self ~~ all the impulses, in | fact, which come of collision with other minds in moments | of social excitement, whether pleasurable or irritating ~~ | are apt to leave qualms and misgivings on the sensitive | and reflective temperament. Thus, especially, sins against | taste fret us in the heavy yet busy excitable hour which we | have fixed on for the levee of these spectres, when our | thoughts, like hounds, scent out disagreeable things with a | miraculous instinct, drag them to light, fly from subject to | subject, however remote and disconnected, and hem us | round with our own peccadilloes. Society in the cold dawn | looks on | | us as a hard taskmaster, exacting, unrelenting, seeing | everything, taking account of everything, forgetting | nothing, judging by externals, and holding its judgments | irreversible. For, after all, it is a cowardly time. We are not | concerning ourselves now with bona | fide penitence, but only with its shadow and | imitation ~~ a fear of what people will think, a dread of | having committed ourselves, whose best alleviation lies in | empty resolutions of dedicating the coming day to it | general reversal or reparation of yesterday, to a laborious | mending and patching, which is to leave us sadder and | wiser men; along with a certain self-confidence (also the | offspring of the hour) that if we can only set the past to | rights, rectify, explain, recant effectually, our present | experience will preserve us from all future recurrence of | even the tendency and temptation to do foolish things. We | own this to be cowardly. It is fortunate that we cannot | mould ourselves on the model of these morbid regrets; for | the influences which make us seem to ourselves so | different in the rubs of domestic and social life from our | solitary selves ~~ so that we are constantly taking | ourselves by surprise ~~ are not all bad ones. They may be | more unselfish than those which impel to remorse, and | make us feel so sore against ourselves. There is a certain | generous throwing of one's self into the breach in some | crisis, whether grave or gay, which often brings us to | grief. There is a certain determined devotion to the matter | in hand ~~ a resolution, come what may, to carry a thing | through ~~ which is better than caution, though by no | means | | a subject for self-congratulation at five o'clock in the | morning; or, indeed, so long as it lives in the memory at | all. On the whole, it is better as it is. We are gainers in | freedom by living in a world where it is possible to | commit ourself ~~ to go beyond intentions ~~ to be | impulsive, incautious. If everybody were as self-possessed, | as much on his guard as we wish we had been | in these periods of harassed meditation, society would not | be a very refreshing or invigorating sphere. | | This is a surer source of consolation, as far as our | observation goes, than any argument from analogy that | our fears delude us. If we look round on those of our | friends whose prudence we can scarcely hope to equal, far | less to surpass ~~ whom we trust for manner, discretion, | and judgment ~~ there is scarcely one who does not now | and then disappoint or surprise us by some departure from | his usual right way of thinking and acting, by committing | some moral or social solecism, just one of the things to | haunt the first waking hour. We are not meaning merely | clever people, for cleverness has | a prescriptive right to do foolish things, but wise and | sensible people who have a rule of action, and habitually | go by it ~~ habitually, but not always; ~~ and a foolish | thing done or said by a wise man certainly stands out with | a startling prominence and distinctness, pointing out the | weak place there is in the best of us. When our wise | friend, under some malignant influence, says or does | something exceptionally silly, the thing assumes a sort of | life from contrast. It is quoted against him, and perhaps in | some quarters a permanently lower estimate | | of mind and character is the consequence. Do the same | things that in this case strike us strike the perpetrator? Can | a wise man say a foolish thing and remain for ever | unconscious of it? One thing we must believe ~~ it cannot | be only a latent self-conceit in the midst of our | humiliations and self-reproaches that leads us to assume | them not universal. There are people so uniformly foolish, | so constantly impertinent, rash, talkative, unsecret, or | blundering, that, if revisited by their errors, solitude would | be one long penance which could not fail to tell upon their | outer aspect. The fool par excellence | is not, we gladly believe, haunted by his folly. It is | when we have departed from our real character, when our | instincts have failed us, when we have gone against | ourselves, that we writhe under these tormenting | memories. | | The subject is worth dwelling upon for one reason. If, with | the exception of conspicuous fools, we could realise that | this class of regrets are not due to our particular | idiosyncrasy, but are a common scourge of weak, vain, | irritable, boasting humanity, it ought to conduce to charity | in our judgments. If we could believe that the people we | dislike suffer these penances, and could give them credit | for waking with a twinge an hour earlier than usual, under | the remembrance of impertinence, vanity, unkindness, | persuaded that certain definite offences against our taste | and feeling would haunt their solitary walk and make the | trial of their day, we could not but learn patience and | toleration. But we are apt to regard our annoyance as the | penalty of an exceptionally | | sensitive social conscience. We and the people we care for | cannot do foolishly without feeling sorry for it ~~ without | going through the expiation of a pang; but the people we | dislike are insensible, coarse, obtuse, dull, and brutish. | Theirs has not been a mistake, which implies a departure | from their nature, but an acting up to it and according to it. | They are therefore showing themselves as they are when | they show themselves most unpleasant and repulsive. | | Another mode of reconciling ourselves to this prompt | Nemesis of minor follies is that it may possibly preserve | us from greater ones. It may both imply caution, and keep | our caution in practice and repair. We have already made | an exception in favour of fools; but are people subject to | rash impulses ~~ impulses swaying their whole destiny | and the fate of others ~~ who find a pleasure in staking the | future on some unconsidered chance, ever visited by | regrets for having merely exposed themselves in no more | weighty matter than some foolish breach of confidence or | lapse of propriety? Are people habitually unguarded ever | visited by lesser remorse? Is not this rather a conflict | where habitual caution is every now and then betrayed by | counter influences? Does a man who is always boasting | ever remember any particular boast with a pang? Does one | who is always betraying secrets, and revealing his own | and other people's privacy ~~ always talking of himself, | always maudlin, always ill-natured or sarcastic ~~ ever | writhe under the recollection of his follies? It is hard to be | lenient towards some people, however much it is our duty | to think the best. | | | But whatever tenderness may be shown towards foolish | things, acted or spoken, whatever beneficent purpose may | be assigned to them in the social economy, our leniency | ends here. Little can be said ethically, and nothing | prudentially, for foolish things written ~~ for outbreaks of | our follies and tempers on paper; and yet what a fruitful | source of these regrets has the pen been with some of us! | And never has the sting been sharper than when we realise | that our imprudence is in black and white, beyond our | reach, irrevocable. The pen gives us a power of having our | say out which speech seldom does. We are free from the | unaccountable, almost solemn, control that man in bodily | presence has over man. Fresh from some injury, we have | the plea, the retort, the reproof, the flippancy, the good | things in our hands without danger of interruption. We | will write it while the subject is fresh and vivid, and the | arguments so clear that our correspondent cannot fail of | being struck, persuaded, crushed by them. In the heat of | composition we foresee those cooler, cautious hours in the | distance, and defy them. We have a dim notion that we are | doing a foolish thing, but we will act while conviction is | supreme, and we send off our letter ~~ to repent | sometimes how bitterly! | | It has been cleverly said that the whole folly of this | proceeding lies not in the writing, which is an excellent | valve to the feelings, but in the sending; and certainly | very few letters, written under immediate provocation, | would be sent if the writers slept a night upon them. But | the pen can do foolish things ~~ things below the writer's | standard of speech and action ~~ without provocation | | There are many people whose intellect and judgment | would stand much higher in the world's estimation if they | had never been taught to write. Men write letters and | women write notes in total neglect of the rules which | guide their conversation, and which win them sometimes | an extraordinary reputation for good sense. A whole | swarm of absurd impulses cluster round the pen, which | leave them alone at other times. A propensity for | interference and giving advice is one of these, a passion | for explanations, a memory for old grievances, and a faith | in the efficacy of formal, prolix, minute statements of | wrong, along with querulous hints, unpalatable | suggestions, and insinuations generally; all of which are | foolish, because they cannot, in the nature of things, have | a good issue, and flow from the ready pen in oblivion of | obvious consequences, which elsewhere hold the writer in | salutary check Indeed, the pen often wakes a set of | feelings which are not known to exist without it. If we | must be foolish sometimes, let us then give our folly as | short a term as possible. If it must leave traces behind, our | memory is a better and safer archive than our enemy's or | even our friend's writing-table. Therefore, if any warning | of the fit is granted, if a man have any reason for | misgivings, let him, before all things, beware of pen and ink. | Things are seldom quite hopeless till they are committed | to paper ~~ a scrape is never at its worst till it has given | birth to a correspondence.