Once a Week (magazine)/Series 3/Volume 7/Ourselves

IT is extremely easy to get an introduction. There are still gentlemen and ladies who pursue the science—or shall we say the craft?—of mesmerism, though the subject has lost its popularity for the present; and a lock of your hair sent in a letter will suffice to put you en rapport with a Medium, who will become enabled to wander up and down the lodgings, more or less furnished, in which your soul resides, turning into all the nooks and crannies, and sending you, for a consideration, an exact inventory. Or you may have recourse to one of those experts who are able to read character in handwriting, and can detect idleness in your Es, love in your Is, curiosity in your Ys, anger in the way you cross your Ts. Or you may buy a plaster of Paris head, mapped over with vices and virtues, and compare the corresponding bumps on your skull; or procure a copy of Lavater, and a looking-glass.

But perhaps several instances of failure amongst your friends and acquaintances have prejudiced you against these and other similar contrivances for reading the human heart—and it must be confessed that the general rules which guide the professors of such arts do seem to be burdened with an exaggerated proportion of exceptions. Well, then, stand for something—for Parliament, for your ward, for the office of parish beadle, according to your social position; and if you do not find your countrymen sufficiently outspoken, your taste for candour must be morbid, and you must wait for full satisfaction until I have found a scientific man capable of giving practical effect to a little idea of mine. It is this: I cannot see why chemists should despair of discovering some method of rendering paper sensitive to spoken words. We have sheets that indicate the presence of ozone: why not of scandal? You apprehend my plan? On leaving a roomful of your best friends — after engrossing the conversation, or making use of some similar method of inducing them to bite —you dip a sheet of paper in the chemical solution, and place it in a safe spot.

Some time afterwards you return, and find the remarks which have been made upon you by those who have the best means of judging, duly recorded. I hope sincerely that they will afford you much pleasure.

And yet, now I come to think of it, you will not know yourself any better: to do that, you must take a wrinkle from the owl, the only bird which has the power of turning his eyes inwards, and probably adopted by Minerva on that account. “ Know thyself,” indeed! Just as if a man did not know himself a great deal better than he knows any other fellow, or than any other fellow knows him! Why, we can only form any judgment at all of the motives, passions, secret influences, of our fellow-creatures, by comparing them with ourselves. Some men are more “open,” as it is called, than others; but the frankest man or woman living is only semi-transparent, and even a mother cannot read all that is passing through the mind of her two-year-old. We all have doubles, or false selves, which we present to the world in the place of the real; which we contemplate with more or less satisfaction; which we trick out with all the graces can, and which we actually get to conj found sometimes with our real selves; so that we are often positively puzzled to tell whether we perform a good or brave action by natural impulse, or in order to trick out our fictitious double. As in the case pointed out by Pascal, where a man sacrifices his I life in defence of his honour. Here he seems to put less value on himself than on the phantom which he has presented to the world as being him, and which he has deceived even himself into thinking a real personage. The features of this mask may be, and generally are, more visible to the outer world than to himself; and therefore Burns cries— “ Oh, wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us— To see oursels as ithers see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, And foolish notion. What airs in dress and gait wad lea’e us, And e’en Devotion.” Then indeed we might, doubtless, fashion our outward appearance in a manner more likely to please the public; and though we might not correct our vices, we should learn to conceal them better. A good actor has been known, by earnest study, and constant repetition of his part, so to identify himself with it, as in a manner to look upon the character he represented as a real being. We are all of us, more or less, in that condition.

But as for the real man, if any power were to give others the gift of seeing him as he himself does, do you not think that he would probably hang himself? And yet, though everybody is conscious that the judgment of the world upon his own actions is shallow enough—that he gets too much praise for this, too much blame for that—we are always fancying that our insight into our neighbours' hearts is deeper than their own; and we say, with a pitying smile, “ How little we know ourselves!” meaning, how little Jones or Brown knows himself. And it is true enough, that people seem often to form an over-estimate of their own virtues and abilities. But this is from underrating those of others, either because they are stupid, and unable to appreciate them, or else because vanity and egotism blind their understandings. But they know their own positive demerits well enough; it is with regard to their relative value that they make mistakes. Thus, a man knows the hold some particular vice has upon him, far better than anybody can tell him; but he flatters himself that everybody else is slave to it also, perhaps in a greater degree, and raises himself in his own estimation by depressing others. Another clever little dodge we have is, to insist upon the enormity of the bad qualities which are conspicuous in our neighbours, when we ourselves happen to be pretty free from them; compounding— “For sins that we’re inclined to, By damning those we have no mind to.” Selfish extravagant people are never tired of declaiming against the meanness of par simony; and the miserly will bore you to death with sermons against extravagance. The great exception to this rule is in the case of the intemperate. It is a singular fact that a tippler is always asserting, with a sigh and a shake of the head, that other people “ drink.” I don’t know how it is, unless he hopes, by the assumption of a virtuous sorrow, to divert suspicion from himself.

To tell the truth, I have a firm conviction that real, bona fide self-conceit is a very much rarer quality than is generally supposed, and that thousands of people who are credited with a remarkably good opinion of themselves are poor humbugs, trying to impose upon their neighbours—endeavouring to pass themselves off as gold, but perfectly aware that they have not got the Hall-mark.

Know myself! My acquaintance with the person in question may not be perfect, long as it has existed; to his virtues I am probably “ very kind,” to his vices more than a “ little blind;” but I have a very tolerable notion of the little points which would admit of improvement, thank you. Know myself? If the world at large could read my heart one-half as well, I wonder how many of my present friends would meet me in the street without passing by on the other side.