Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

XIX

THE RELATIVITY OF GENIUS1

Those who have read history with discrimination know the fallacy of those panegyrics and invectives which represent individuals as effecting great moral and intellectual revolutions, subverting established systems, and imprinting a new character on their age. The difference between one man and another is by no means so great as the superstitious crowd supposes. But the same feelings which in ancient Rome produced the apotheosis of a popular emperor, and in modern Rome the canonization of a devout prelate, lead men to cherish an illusion which furnishes them with something to adore. By a law of association, from the operation of which even minds the most strictly regulated by reason are not wholly exempt, misery disposes us to hatred, and happiness to love, although there may be no person to whom our misery or our happiness can be ascribed. The peevishness of an invalid vents itself even on those who alleviate his pain. The good humor of a man elated by success often displays itself towards enemies. In the same manner the feelings of pleasure and admiration, to which the contemplation of great events gives birth, make an object where they do not find it. Thus nations descend to the absurdities of Egyptian idolatry, and worship stocks and reptiles - Sacheverells and Wilkeses. They even fall prostrate before a deity to which they have themselves given the form which commands their veneration, and which, unless fashioned by them, would have remained a shapeless block. They persuade themselves that they are the creatures of what they have themselves created. For, in fact, it is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age. Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they

1 From the Essay on Dryden, by Thomas Babington Macaulay.

are, but they only pay with interest what they have received. We extol Bacon, and sneer at Aquinas. But if their situations had been changed, Bacon might have been the Angelical Doctor, the most subtle Aristotelian of the schools; the Dominican might have led forth the sciences from their house of bondage. If Luther had been born in the tenth century, he would have effected no reformation. If he had never been born at all, it is evident that the sixteenth century could not have elapsed without a great schism in the church. Voltaire, in the days of Louis XIV, would probably have been, like most of the literary men of that time, a zealous Jansenist, eminent among the defenders of efficacious grace, a bitter assailant of the lax morality of the Jesuits and the unreasonable decisions of the Sorbonne. If Pascal had entered on his literary career when intelligence was more general, and abuses at the same time more flagrant, when the church was polluted by the Iscariot Dubois, the court disgraced by the orgies of Canilac, and the nation sacrificed to the juggles of Law; if he had lived to see a dynasty of harlots, an empty treasury and a crowded harem, an army formidable only to those whom it should have protected, a priesthood just religious enough to be intolerant,—he might possibly, like every man of genius in France, have imbibed extravagant prejudices against monarchy and Christianity. The wit which blasted the sophisms of Escobar, the impassioned eloquence which defended the sisters of Port Royal, the intellectual hardihood which was not beaten down even by papal authority, might have raised him to the Patriarchate of the Philosophical Church. It was long disputed whether the honor of inventing the method of fluxions belonged to Newton or to Leibnitz. It is now generally allowed that these great men made the same discovery at the same time. Mathematical science, indeed, had then reached such a point that if neither of them had ever existed, the principle must inevitably have occurred to some person within a few years. So in our own time, the doctrine of rent now universally received by political economists was propounded almost at the same moment by two writers unconnected with each other. Preceding speculators had long been blundering round about it; and it could not possibly

have been missed much longer by the most heedless inquirer. We are inclined to think that with respect to every great addition which has been made to the stock of human knowledge the case has been similar; that without Copernicus we should have been Copernicans, that without Columbus America would have been discovered, that without Locke we should have possessed a just theory of the origin of human ideas. Society indeed has its great men and its little men, as the earth has its mountains and its valleys. But the inequalities of intellect, like the inequalities of the surface of our globe, bear so small a proportion to the mass that in calculating its great revolutions they may safely be neglected. The sun illuminates the hills while it is still below the horizon; and truth is discovered by the highest minds a little before it becomes manifest to the multitude. This is the extent of their superiority. They are the first to catch and reflect a light, which, without their assistance, must, in a short time, be visible to those who lie far beneath them.

XX

THE VIRTUES OF STUPIDITY1

I fear you will laugh when I tell you what I conceive to be about the most essential mental quality for a free people whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent, and on a large scale: it is much stupidity. Not to begin by wounding any present susceptibilities, let me take the Roman character; for with one great exception, I need not say to whom I allude, they are the great political people of history. Now is not a certain dullness their most visible characteristic? What is the history of their speculative mind? A blank. What their literature? A copy. They have left not a single discovery in any abstract science, not a single perfect or well-formed work of high imagination. The Greeks, the perfection of human and accomplished genius, bequeathed to mankind the ideal forms of self-idolizing art, the Romans imitated and admired; the Greeks explained the laws of nature, the Romans wondered and despised; the Greeks invented a system of numerals second only to that now in use, the Romans counted to the end of their days with the clumsy apparatus which we still call by their name; the Greeks made a capital and scientific calendar, the Romans began their month when the Pontifex Maximus happened to spy out the new moon. Throughout Latin literature this is the perpetual puzzle: Why are we free and they slaves, we pretors and they barbers? Why do the stupid people always win and the clever people always lose? I need not say that in real sound stupidity the English are unrivaled; you'll hear more wit and better wit in an Irish street row than would keep Westminster Hall in humor for five weeks.

1 From Letters on the French Coup d'Etat, by Walter Bagehot.

In fact, what we opprobriously call "stupidity," though not an enlivening quality in common society, is nature's favorite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion; it enforces concentration: people who learn slowly learn only what they must. The best security for people doing their duty is, that they should not know anything else to do; the best security for fixedness of opinion is, that people should be incapable of comprehending what is to be said on the other side. These valuable truths are no discoveries of mine; they are familiar enough to people whose business it is to know them. Hear what a douce and aged attorney says of your peculiarly promising barrister : "Sharp? Oh, yes! he 's too sharp by half. He is not safe, not a minute, is n't that young man." I extend this, and advisedly maintain that nations, just as individuals, may be too clever to be practical and not dull enough to be free. .

And what I call a proper stupidity keeps a man from all the defects of his character; it chains the gifted possessor mainly to his old ideas, it takes him seven weeks to comprehend an atom of a new one; it keeps him from being led away by new theories, for there is nothing which bores him so much; it restrains him within his old pursuit, his well-known habits, his tried expedients, his verified conclusions, his traditional beliefs. He is not tempted to levity or impatience, for he does not see the joke and is thick-skinned to present evils. Inconsistency puts him out: "What I says is this here, as I was a-saying yesterday," is his notion of historical eloquence and habitual discretion. He is very slow indeed to be excited, his passions, his feelings, and his affections are dull and tardy strong things, falling in a certain known direction, fixed on certain known objects, and for the most part acting in a moderate degree and at a sluggish pace. You always know where to find his mind. Now this is exactly what (in politics at least) you do not know about a Frenchman.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »