Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 127.djvu/73

Rh modesty and good sense would prevent their giving an opinion on any point of scientific knowledge or æsthetic appreciation, who nevertheless feel no hesitation in passing judgment respecting matters of conduct of which their knowledge is infinitesimal. Numbers of people who do not in the least seem to be ashamed of ignorance respecting most matters of discussion, are quite sensitive as to their reputation for knowledge with respect to the intricacies of human character. When, for example, there is an addition to the society of a small town through the arrival of a new family, there is the greatest impatience to have a definite and fixed opinion respecting the idiosyncrasies of the new-comers. There will certainly be more than one knowing person whose supposed quickness of perception will at once enable them, satisfactorily to themselves, to define and characterize the man or woman about whom curiosity is naturally aroused. It is curious, too, to notice the readiness of others to accord to these persons the special faculty for intuition which they claim for themselves. It has often been remarked that the first condition of winning the confidence of others is to display a fair amount of self-confidence, and this truth is fully illustrated in the case of the people whom we are now considering. When a lady gives out among her acquaintance that she is an expert in matters of character and disposition, she speedily gains an enviable reputation for this kind of prescience. If there is any new character to be deciphered about which there hangs a certain mystery, she is the authority to whom all repair in order to acquire definite information. If a scandal is just germinating, and everybody is on tiptoe respecting its real nature and results, it is this connoisseur who is resorted to for a final solution of the problem. In this way people are sustained in the pleasing belief that they possess some easy avenue to the minds and hearts of their fellows, thanks to which they are enabled to dispense with the tardy methods of observation, comparison, and analysis, and to read a new character as confidently as an unfolded letter.

Yet it does not call for any remarkable powers of reflection to see that this intuitive kind of knowledge of others must be very delusive. For, first of all, human character is an exceedingly complex and variable thing, and cannot be known except after patient attention. The facile perusal of character of which we now speak always involves two inferences, either of which may be a mistaken one. In the first place, the self-styled observer argues that certain things which have held good of other people will hold good of the new character; and since it is exceedingly easy to mistake a quality of a certain order of minds for a universal attribute of mankind, there is always a chance of a wrong induction. In the next place, the observer is compelled to judge the whole of a character from a very few data; and here again there is ample room for error in reasoning that, because a person felt or acted so and so to-day, this must be his characteristic mode of feeling or acting. In other words, human nature is too variable, both as a whole, and within the limits of a single individual, to allow of the rapid kind of prevision of which we are speaking.

There is a second obstacle to this instantaneous reading of character which calls for special notice. Not only is character a phenomenon of great complexity, but it is also one in a high degree inaccessible. For, in the first place, all the thoughts and purposes of another have to be inferred from external signs; and this process, however carefully carried on, must always be liable to error. The real uniformities of connection between feeling and expression, for example, can only be known approximately after a wide and careful comparison of individual peculiarities. This reflection never occurs to the confident connoisseur of physiognomy, who fondly imagines that every moral peculiarity is distinctly indicated by some one form of facial structure or movement. In the second place, it should be remembered that all of us have a certain power of dissimulation, and most of us are accustomed to put some kind of watch on our words and actions. This is especially the case when we have to confront a new observer. We do not care, in most instances, to be conned too easily by our fellows. Nearly everybody is accustomed to some measure of reticence before strangers, while there are a few who, from a certain kind of pride and force of individuality, are wont even to mislead casual observers respecting their real aims and sentiments. Thus it happens that a person who is ready at a glance to classify any new variety of character runs the risk of accepting as an essential ingredient of the phenomenon something which is wholly adventitious. It may be said, of course, that the instances we have selected are exceptional ones, that the great majority of people are both too much alike and too transparent in their words and actions to occasion any serious difficulty to a skilful noter of men's natures and ways.