Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/698

662 however valuable it may be in law or politics. Yet our whole theory of life exalts the average, and reduces the special man to a subject state. We assume a general and comprehensive censorship; we speak in the name of public opinion, and pronounce against the personal. The only infallible, is the general mind; the only sensible, is the average man!

The only thing that really has weight and influence with us is the press—the organ of the common mind—which is the impersonal. If we can say the press says so and so, we respect it. The most powerful journals, like the "London Times" and "Saturday Review," in England, derive their influence from the fact that the public cannot attach their articles to particular writers. When we wish to belittle the "Tribune," we say "Horace Greeley's paper." When we wish to invoke it as an authority, we say "The Tribune." Our favorite papers are impersonal; and yet it is obvious that they are the utterance of individual minds. We say "The Post," when, to express its best character, we should say Bryant and Godwin; we say "The Tribune," when, to express its patriotic hope and vital and sincere benevolence, we should have said Horace Greeley; we say "The World," when, to express its brilliant play of expression and unscrupulous persifleur spirit, we should say W. H. Hurlbut.

If we listen at our clubs, if we read the newspapers, we soon learn that men are patronized or censured just in proportion to the degree of their publicity. The club talker, with his airs of a fine gentleman, and the newspaper critic, with his vast oblivion and sectarian knowledge, become the voice of the average sentiment, the utterance of public opinion, and the sayer of the general conviction. And how, on that great basis, they dispense alms to generals, poets, essayists, and painters! They patronize or censure all contemporary names as though they came from the thigh of Jupiter, were taught by the Muses, and carried Apollo's lyre! I said they censure or patronize all; but I must correct myself. The names of professors and pedants hold them in awe by the obvious forms of the mechanical mind—a familiarity with the customary evidences of knowledge is a salutary check to their garrulity; then they are content to listen and submit. No doubt Emerson was patronized and dreaded by the club men of Boston twenty years ago; no doubt Hawthorne's stories were thought to be "promising," and his "Scarlet Letter" "a great improvement;" no doubt Thoreau was a name ignored by the babblers of social anecdotes and parlor frivolities; for none of these men broke bread or drank wine in honor of our average god, in honor of our common worship, which is the general opinion. Average Thought and General Opinion are two overgrown and dull deities, who are dreadful, imposing, effective because they are often invoked but never seen; yet their shadow is over us; they are the final appeal of every one who wishes to protect himself from the precious or strong influence of an individual. But I cannot see what we have gained by substituting an invisible and fluctuating tyrant for a visible and personal one. Is Absolute Average better than Absolute Cæsar?

It seems to me that Absolute Average never gave us anything but war and subsistence. It seems to me that absolute man has given us everything. The poets and sages and painters and inventors have always been opposed to Absolute Average, have never assented to the general sentiment. Poetry, art, and science have been the gift of individuals.

Our faith in majorities belittles man, reduces him to a mere collective and industrial rôle, and makes us fatal to all specially organized and exceptionally