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ONE-SIDEDNESS

 
Plantagenet. The truth appears so naked on my side,
That any purblind eye may find it out.
 
 
Somerset. And on my side it is so well apparelled,
So clear, so shining, and so evident,
That it will glimmer through a blind man's eye.
 

First Part of Henry VI.

Having made up our mind upon a question, probably by a delightfully curt process, how pleasant and natural it is to laugh sublimely at all dissentients! Poor creatures, those nonconformists are almost to be pardoned, so much does their impenetrable dulness amuse us! How they can have scrambled to a conclusion opposite to ours, is a problem so absurd that it tickles us amazingly.

Yet the formation of opinions is vastly dependent upon circumstances. Whang-shing is born in the Celestial Empire; and the chances are that the fellow will go the length of pinning his faith to Confucius. Yonder squalid urchin, turning out of Saffron Hill or some other sweet-scented purlieus, has been cradled on the ragged lap of professional mendicancy; and there is a strong probability that he will come to a misunderstanding with the police one of these fine days. The mild-eyed priest who just passed you, was born and educated within the states of the church; and somehow or other he firmly believes in the Romanism you so hotly repudiate. The sallow-faced gentleman crossing the road, and exhibiting so wobegone an aspect, has always had a bad liver; and you will never persuade him to look on the bright side of life. While this bustling, vivacious personage, who approaches us with such a springy step, and rapid merry glance, has never known a day's illness—is indebted to hearsay for his belief in nerves—and is ready to challenge Europe to beat him at a hearty guffaw—he is perplexed by the shadow of a long face, marvels with all his might at a heavy eye, and cannot unriddle the philosophy of a bent brow. When shall we learn that the result of looking depends on the state of the eye—that the vision is modified by the position of the seer—that he who stands on one side, sees one side only? Says Wordsworth—

 
We safely may affirm that human life
Is either fair or tempting, a soft scene,
Grateful to sight, refreshing to the soul,
Or a forbidden tract of cheerless view,
Even as the same is looked at, or approached.
 

And the pastor of the Excursion, who is the spokesman, illustrates his doctrine by shewing that the church-yard among the mountains, in which he and his companions are standing, if approached from the sullen north, when 'in changeful April, fields are white with new-fallen snow,' and ere the sun has gained his noontide height, will appear an 'unillumined, blank, and dreary plain, with more than wintry cheerlessness and gloom saddening the heart;' whereas, if it be regarded from the quarter whence the lord of light dispenses his beams, 'then will a vernal prospect greet your eye'—

 
All fresh and beautiful, and green and bright,
Hopeful and cheerful—vanished is the pall
That overspread and chilled the sacred turf,
Vanished or hidden; and the whole domain,
To some, too lightly minded, might appear
A meadow carpet for the dancing hours.
 

The same principle of mental optics is of universal application. We cannot ignore it without fatal results when studying history, science, art, human nature, or any conceivable object of inquiry. Thus, in forming our opinion of the actions of others, there is no more mischievous absurdity, it has been remarked, than to judge them from the outside as they look to us, instead of from the inside as they look to the actors; nothing more irrational than to criticise deeds as though the doers of them had the same hopes, fears, desires, and restraints with ourselves. 'We cannot understand another's character except by abandoning our own identity, and realising to ourselves his frame of mind, his want of knowledge, his hardships, temptations, and discouragements.' If we turn to history, we are reminded of Thomas Moore's lines—

 
By Tory Hume's seductive page beguiled,
We fancy Charles was just, and Stratford mild;
And Fox himself, with party pencil draws
Monmouth a hero 'for the good old cause!'
Then, rights are wrongs, and victories are defeats,
As French or English pride the tale repeats.
 

Thus, too, Macaulay remarks, that for many years every Whig historian was anxious to prove that the old English government was all but republican—every Tory, to prove it all but despotic. 'With such feelings, both parties looked into the chronology of the middle ages. Both readily found what they sought, and obstinately refused to see anything but what they sought.' Accordingly, to see only one-half of the evidence, you would conclude that the Plantagenets were as absolute as the sultans of Turkey; to see only the other half, you would conclude that they had as little real power as the Doges of Venice: and both conclusions would be equally remote from the truth.

Carlyle justly affirms, that if that man is a benefactor to the world who causes two ears of corn to grow where only one grew before, much more is he a benefactor who causes two truths to grow up together in harmony and mutual confirmation, where before only one stood solitary, and, on that side at least, intolerant and hostile. Every genius rides a winged horse; but all are apt to ride too fast. Plotinus, says Emerson, 'believes only in philosophers; Fénélon, in saints; Pindar and Byron, in poets. Read the haughty language in which Plato and the Platonists speak of all men who are not devoted to their own shining abstractions.' If genius is liable to such one-sidedness, the greater the need of educational correctives to common-place minds. Hence the overpursuit of any one subject may be hurtful, unless duly balanced by countervailing forces. As the author of Friends in Council says, a human being, like a tree, if it is to attain to perfect symmetry, must have light and air given to it from all quarters. This may be done without making men superficial—without sanctioning the dissipation of mere desultory reading. One or two great branches of science may be systematically prosecuted, and others used in a more supplementary and illustrative form. 'A number of one-sided men,' observes the same writer, 'may make a great nation, though I much incline to doubt that; but such a nation will not contain a number of great men.' With the advance of intelligence, advances a catholicism of literature, of taste, of humanity at large. Uncultured intellect, 'cabined, cribbed, confined,' is ill at ease among the riches of variety in literary lore; it is satisfied with the little, because, as Menzel says, it knows not the great; it is content with one-sidedness, because it sees not the other sides. If critical esprit de corps has its advantages, it has its penalties also; potent within its self-imposed bounds, it is impotent outside of them. Longfellow reminds his brethren of the lyre, that whatever is best in the great poets of all countries, is not what is national in them, but what is universal: their roots are in their native soil, but their branches wave in the unpatriotic air, that speaks the same language to all men, and their leaves shine with the illimitable light that pervades all lands. 'Let us throw all the windows open; let us admit the light and air on all sides; that we may look towards the four corners of the heavens, and not always in the same direction.'

Monomania is sometimes simply the exaggerated regard to one side of many-sided truth. It is not absolute, but only relative delusion. It is in its degree true; but by affecting to be the whole truth, it becomes untrue. Philosophic reflection shews, that if a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth, and apply himself to that alone for a long time, 'the truth becomes distorted, and not itself, but falsehood;' and may be compared to the air, which is our natural element, and the breath of our nostrils; 'but if a stream of the same be directed on the body for a time, it causes cold, fever, and even death.' 'How wearisome,' exclaims Emerson, 'the grammarian, the phrenologist, the political or religious fanatic, or, indeed, any possessed mortal, whose balance is lost by the exaggeration of a single topic! It is incipient insanity.' The bore of society is constituted by his one-sidedness. His ear is deficient in the sense of harmony, and he deafens and disgusts you by harping on one string. The retired nabob holds you by the button, to hear his wearisome diatribes on Indian economics; the half-pay officer is too fluent on his worn-out recollections of the Peninsular War, and becomes savage if you broach a new theme, or move to adjourn the debate; the university pedant distracts you with his theories on philology and scansion—with his amended translation of a hexameter in Persius, and his new reading of a line in Theocritus; the bagman is all for 'the shop;' the policeman is redolent of the 'lock-up house 'and 'your wertchup;' the tailor is profoundly knowing on the 'sweating system; 'the son of Crispin vows and protests there's 'nothing like leather.' All these minus signs have a tendency to cancel each other: and thus the equation of life is worked out. Society has been said to have at all times the same want—namely, of one sane man, with adequate powers of expression to hold up each object of monomania in its right relations. 'The ambitious and mercenary bring their last new Mumbo-Jumbo—whether tariff, railway, mesmerism, or California—and by detaching the object from its relations, easily succeed in making it seen in a glare, and a multitude go mad about it; and they are not to be reproved or cured by the opposite multitude, who are kept from this particular insanity by an equal frenzy on another crotchet. But let one man have the comprehensive eye that can replace this isolated prodigy in its right neighbourhood and bearings, and the illusion vanishes—the returning reason of the community thanks the reason of the monitor.' There is perhaps nothing which more urgently calls for such a controlling and overseeing mind, to curb eccentric excesses, and to restore equilibrium of action, than philanthropy itself. In the enthusiasm of its impulses, it thinks it can afford to sneer at political economy, and that it is right to wander at its own sweet will, benevolently defying the remonstrances of all who have a method to propound, a science to explain, a system to uphold. Though the heart be large, yet the mind—as Nathaniel Hawthorne somewhere observes—is often of such moderate dimensions, as to be exclusively filled up with one idea; and thus, when a good man has long devoted himself to a particular kind of beneficence, to one species of reform, he is apt to become narrowed into the limits of the path wherein he treads, and to fancy that there is no other good to be done on earth but that selfsame good to which he has put his hand, and in the very mode that best suits his own conceptions. 'All else is worthless; his scheme must be wrought out by the united strength of the whole world's stock of love, or the world is no longer worthy of a position in the universe. Moreover, powerful truth, being the rich grape-juice expressed from the vineyard of the ages, has an intoxicating quality when imbibed by any but a powerful intellect, and often, as it were, impels the quaffer to quarrel in his cups.' Even a saint with one idea may be a plague to his neighbourhood; and, by being canonised, may retard, not further, the progress of his church.

Let us own, however, that one-idea'd people are often amusing as well as mischievous—or rather, when not mischievous. The rapt devotion they pay to their idola specûs oscillates between the sublime and the ridiculous. We have all seen such people, and alternately admired and laughed at them. We have all witnessed or read pleasant illustrations of their doings. With one such illustration we conclude this discursive fragment. It is related by the witty author of A Defence of Ignorance, who introduces it in the course of an imaginary dialogue on one-sided university training, in which one of the speakers (at dessert) says to his companion: 'If you reach after that pear, without considering what stands against your elbows, you may empty a decanter over me. He who desires thoroughly to know one subject, should be possessed of so much intellectual geography as will enable him to see its true position in the universe of thought.' The allusion to upsetting a decanter reminds the other interlocutor of a story, which he proceeds to tell. A gentleman who carved a goose was inexpert; and thinking only of the stubborn joints that would not be unhinged, he totally forgot the gravy. Presently, the goose slipped off the dish, and escaped into his neighbour's lap. Now, to have thrown a hot goose on a lady's lap would disconcert most people, but the gentleman in question was not disconcerted. Turning round, with a bland smile, he said: 'I'll trouble you for that goose.' Here we have a sublime example of a man with one idea. This gentleman's idea was the goose; and in the absorbing interest attached to his undertaking, that he was to carve the goose, not altogether knowing how, he had shut out extraneous objects. Suddenly the goose was gone, but his eye followed it, his mind was wrapt up in his struggle with it; what did he know of that lady? 'I'll trouble you for that goose,' expressed the perfect abstraction of a mind bent on developing its one idea.

MR KIRBY THE NATURALIST

The popular fame of Mr Kirby rests upon the Introduction to Entomology, a work (partly written by him) full of interesting facts respecting the economy of the insect world. Amongst the scientific, his reputation depends on a variety of elaborate papers which he wrote for learned societies on subjects connected with natural history. For sixty years previous to the conclusion of his long life in 1850, he had devoted the leisure of a parsonage to that delightful study, and being a diligent and accurate observer, and an elegant and entertaining writer, he had attained the highest rank amongst the British naturalists of his day. It appears, from a memoir just published,² that Mr Kirby was born in 1759, and settled in 1782 in the cure of Barham, near Ipswich, where he was ultimately rector, and which he only left for his last long-home sixty-eight years thereafter. In an age of sluggish theology, he was an earnest minister and zealous controversialist, all the time that he was cultivating a taste for natural objects. This is equally unexpected and creditable. And yet it does not appear that his personal conduct was characterised by anything like rigour, for, as an example, we find, from the journal of an entomological excursion in 1797, that it was commenced on a Sunday afternoon, and involved one other Sunday of constant travelling. A reference of the dates to an almanac enables us to establish this fact, so unlike the spirit of a zealous man in our times.

Of the sister sciences of nature, botany first attracted Mr Kirby's regards. 'This he pursued in no hasty or superficial manner, but with the greatest perseverance and research. It was not enough for him to know a plant by sight, and to ascertain its proper name, but he compared the minutest parts of inflorescence and fructification; he sought for the most trifling differences in those nearly allied, and studied with a keen but generous criticism the various theories of writers on the science, from the earliest age to the time of the immortal Linnè. Of every plant he met with, even to the daisy and primrose, the whole physiological structure was thoroughly investigated; he discovered, or rather observed, what it was which enabled some plants to endure great changes of temperature, while others perished—the formation which enabled some to live in water, while others flourished in the most dry and arid sands; he carefully marked the causes which combined to clothe even rocks with verdure, in consequence of the wonderful structure of the plants inhabiting them, enabling them to live as it were by the suction of their numerous mouths, rather than by nourishment transmitted by a root in contact with that which would refuse to yield the ordinary food of plants. And as he thus marked all these peculiar adaptations of plants to their respective situations, his mind was by a constant train of thought directed from the beauty and wondrous mechanism of the creature, to contemplate the supreme and ineffable glory of the Creator.'

With a mind so predisposed and so fitted for the study of entomology, a casual occurrence of a trivial nature was sufficient to awaken and give it direction. 'Observing accidentally, one morning, a very beautiful golden bug creeping on the sill of my window, I took it up to examine it, and finding that its wings were of a more yellow hue than was common to my observation of these insects before, I was anxious carefully to examine any other of its peculiarities; and finding that it had twenty-two beautiful clear black spots upon its back, my captured animal was imprisoned in a bottle of gin, for the purpose, as I supposed, of killing him. On the following morning, anxious to pursue my observation, I took it again from the gin, and laid it on the window-sill to dry, thinking it dead; but the warmth of the sun very soon revived it: and hence commenced my further pursuit of this branch of natural history.'

A Dr Gwyn of Ipswich was his preceptor in this study. 'Though now in his seventy-fifth year, so much was the good old doctor interested in the pursuit of his friend, that he would frequently walk over to Barham, a distance of five miles, to see what had been the success of recent perambulations. The parsonage-house was then approached by a narrow wicket, with posts higher than the gate, and often, while working in his garden, or sitting in his parlour, Mr Kirby would look up and see, to his great delight, the shovel hat of his facetious friend adorning one post, and the cumbrous wig and appertaining pig-tail ornamenting the other. And soon the kind old man would walk in with his bald head, as he used to say, cool and ready for the investigation. These visits were always hailed with pleasure, the delights of which were still fresh in the memory of Mr Kirby, and would call forth expressions of affectionate gratitude, even when nearly half a century had elapsed, after his friend and Mæcenas, as he loved to call him, had gone to his rest.'

There seems no room to doubt, that his studies tended not merely to the happiness of Mr Kirby's life, but to its duration. It is at the same time abundantly evident, that much hard work was undergone. He carried on a most laborious correspondence with other naturalists, often extending a letter to the dimensions of a pamphlet: this altogether over and above his practical researches and his published writings. He took good-humoured views of most things, and was not easily put out of temper. A slight dash of absence of mind increased that quaintness of character so often found in zealous students. On an entomological excursion with two friends, Mr Marsham and Mr Macleay, it happened on their arriving at an old-fashioned wayside inn, that 'there was only one large room for them, with three beds in it. The arrangement having been made for the night, according to the custom of the time, three nightcaps were laid upon the dressing-table. Mr Kirby retired before his companions, and was soon sound asleep. Perceiving no caps ready for them, his friends inquired for what they considered the due appurtenances of the pillow: they were assured by the hostess that three nightcaps were laid upon the table, but they stoutly averred they had not seen them; the landlady no less stoutly maintaining her side of the question. What actually passed in her own mind did not transpire, but she appealed to the first gentleman as being the only one who could throw light upon the subject; when, lo and behold! as soon as his head appeared, in answer to the hasty summons, the three nightcaps appeared at the same time upon it, one being dragged over the other, much to the amusement not only of those present, but also of those who long after heard the tale.'

Another example of the pleasantries that sometimes enliven the path of the naturalist. It is related by Mr Spence, and refers to the time when that gentleman was engaged with Mr Kirby in preparing the work which has for ever combined their names. 'Mr (now Sir William J.) Hooker was at that time staying at Barham, and being desirous to have pointed out to him, and to gather with his own hands, a rare species of Marchantia? from its habitat, first discovered by Mr Kirby, near Nayland, some miles distant, it was agreed we three should walk thither, entomologising by the way, and after dinner proceed to the hedge-bank where it grew. Entering the head inn-yard on foot, with dusty shoes, and without other baggage than our insect-nets in our hands, we met with but a cool reception, which, however, visibly warmed as soon as we had desired to be shewn into the best dining-room, and had ordered a good dinner and wine. We intended to walk back in the evening, but as the bank where the Marchantia? grew was a mile or two out of the direct road, and it came on rain, we ordered out a postchaise, merely saying we wanted to drive a short way on a road which Mr Kirby indicated to the postilion.

'When we arrived at the gate of the field where the bank was, the rain had become very heavy; so, calling to the postilion to stop and open the door, we scampered out of the chaise, all laughing, and hastily telling him to wait there, without other explanation we climbed over the gate, and not to be long in the rain, set off running as fast as we could along the field-side of the hedge, to the bank we were looking for. We saw amazement in the face of our postilion at what possible motive could have made three guests of his master clamber pell-mell over a gate into a field that led nowhere, in the midst of a heavy shower of rain, and then run away as if pursued; and it was the expression in his countenance which caused our mirth, which was increased to peals of merriment when we saw that, instead of waiting for us at the gate, as we had directed, he mounted his horses with all speed, and pushed on in a gallop along the road on the other side of the hedge, evidently to circumvent our nefarious plan (as he conceived) of bilking his master both of our dinners and the chaise-hire. When the cessation of our uncontrollable mirth had allowed us to gather specimens of our plant, perceiving through the hedge whereabouts we stopped, he also halted to watch our motions, and when he saw us run back, he obeyed our orders to return to the gate—where we got into the chaise, still in a roar of laughter at the whole affair, and at his awkward attempt to explain away his not having waited for us there, as we had directed, and evident high satisfaction at bringing back in triumph to our inn the three cheats whose intended plans he had so cleverly frustrated, as he no doubt told his master; to whom, being too much amused with the adventure, we did not make any explanation, but left it to form one of the traditions of the inn.'