Part 14 (1/2)

For to-day have the petty people become master; they all preach submission, and humility, and policy, and diligence, and consideration, and the long _et cetera_ of petty virtues.

These masters of to-day--surpa.s.s them, O my brethren--these petty people: they are the Superman's greatest danger![2]

[Footnote 2: _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ (Macmillan edition), pp. 351-52.]

It need scarcely be noted that even if the genius or Superman were justified, as this philosophy insists, on ruthlessly a.s.serting his priority, it is a dangerous procedure to identify one's ambitions with one's desserts. As already noted, a flamboyant a.s.surance of one's own importance is sometimes a ludicrous symptom of the reverse.

The more legitimate manifestation of strong individualism in action or opinion is in the case of deeply conscientious natures, who will not compromise by a hair's breadth from what they conceive to be the right. The fanatic is seldom an appealing character, but he is a type that enforces admiration.

Of such unflinching insistence are martyrs and great leaders made. There are in every community men who will regard it as treachery to their highest ideals to compromise at all from the inviolable principles to which they feel themselves committed.

Such men are difficult to deal with in human situations involving cooperation and compromise, and they exhibit frequently a rigid austerity, bitterness, and hate that do not readily win sympathy. But it is to such men as these that many religious and social reforms owe their initiation. Bertrand Russell, who, whether one agrees with him or not, exhibits a puritanical devotion to his social beliefs, has finely described the type:

The impatient idealist--and without some impatience a man will hardly prove effective--is almost sure to be led into hatred by the oppositions and disappointments which he encounters in his endeavors to bring happiness to the world. The more certain he is of the purity of his motives and the truth of his gospel, the more indignant will he become when his teaching is rejected.... The intense faith which enables him to withstand persecution for the sake of his beliefs makes him consider these beliefs so luminously obvious that any thinking man who rejects them must be dishonest and must be actuated by some sinister motive of treachery to the cause.[1]

[Footnote 1: Russell: _Proposed Roads to Freedom_, pp. xiii-xiv.]

ENTHUSIASM. The enthusiast is another type of self that plays an important part in social life and makes not the least attractive of its figures. The exuberant exponent of ideas, causes, persons, or inst.i.tutions is an effective preacher, teacher, or leader of men, and may be, apart from his utility, intrinsically of the utmost charm. Emotions vividly displayed are, as already pointed out in connection with sympathy, readily duplicated in others, and the ardors of the enthusiast are, when they have the earmarks of sincerity, contagious. A genuinely enthusiastic personality kindles his own fire in the hearts of others, and makes them appreciate as no mere formal a.n.a.lysis could, the vital and moving aspects of things. Good teaching has been defined as communication by contagion, and the teachers whom students usually testify to have influenced them most are not those who doled out flat prescribed wisdom, but those whose own informed ardor for their subject-matter communicated to the student a warm sense of its significance. Leaders of great movements who have been successful in controlling the energies and loyalties of millions of men have been frequently men of this high and contagious voltage. It certainly const.i.tuted part of Theodore Roosevelt's political strength, and, in more or less genuine form, is the a.s.set of every successful political speaker and leader.

Both for the one controlled by enthusiasm and for the others to whom it spreads, experience becomes richer in significance. Poets and the poetically-minded have to a singular degree the power of clothing with imaginative enthusiasm all the items of their experience.

Enthusiasm does not necessarily connote hysteria or sentimentalism.

The unstable enthusiast is a familiar type, the man who has another object of eagerness and loyalty each week. Mark Twain describes the type in the person of his brother, who had a dozen different ambitions a year. But enthusiasm may be a long-sustained devotion to a single ideal.

A curious instance of it was seen in the case of an Armenian scholar who, so it is reported to the writer by a student of Armenian culture, spent forty years in mastering cuneiform script in order to prove that the Phrygians were descended from the Armenians, and not _vice versa_.

Sh.e.l.ley could kindle the spirit of revolution in thousands who would have been bored to death with the same fiery doctrines in the abstract and cold pages of G.o.dwin, from whom Sh.e.l.ley derived his ideas of ”political justice.” The enthusiast, since he instinctively likes to share his emotions, not infrequently displays an intense desire for leaders.h.i.+p, not so much that he may be a leader as that he may win converts to his own cause or creed. Such a personality finds its satisfaction in some form of proselyting zeal, be it for a religion, for a favorite charity, for good books, poetry, or social justice.

A well-known literary scholar who died recently was thus described by one of his former students:

Dr. Gummere was not a teacher; he was a vital atmosphere and his lectures, as one considered them from an intellectual or emotional angle, were revelations or adventures. There never were such cla.s.ses as his, we believed. Who could equal him in readiness of wit? Where was there such a raconteur? Who else could put the feel of a poem into one's heart? ... His voice was very deep, and exceedingly free and flexible. It always seemed to brim up as from a spirit overflowing. Everything about him was individual and spontaneous. He was perhaps most like a powerful river that braced one's energies, and carried one along without the slightest desire to resist.[1]

[Footnote 1: Charles Wharton Stork: ”A Great Teacher,” _The Nation_, July 26, 1919.]

THE NEGATIVE SELF. All the types of personality or self that have thus far been discussed are in some way positive or a.s.sertive. But the self may be exhibited negatively, in a shrinking, not only from observation, but from any positive or p.r.o.nounced action. This has already been noted in connection with submissiveness. Most people in the presence of their intellectual and social or even their physical superior, experience a sense of, to use McDougall's term, ”negative self-feeling.” In some people this negation or effacement of the self is a predominant characteristic.

It may be mere social timidity, which, in the case of those continually placed in servile positions, as in the case of the proverbial ”poor relation,” may become chronic. In its most disagreeable form it is exhibited as an obsequious flattering and a pretentious humility. Of this the cla.s.sic instance is Uriah Heep in _David Copperfield_:

”I suppose you are quite a great lawyer,” I [David Copperfield]

said, after looking at him for some time.

”Me, Master Copperfield?” said Uriah. ”Oh, no! I'm a very umble person.”

It was no fancy of mine about his hands, I observed; for he frequently ground the palms against each other, as if to squeeze them dry and warm, besides often wiping them, in a stealthy way, on his pocket-handkerchief.

”I am well aware that I am the umblest person going,” said Uriah Heep modestly, ”let the other be where he may. My mother is likewise a very umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Copperfield, but have much to be thankful for. My father's former calling was umble. He was a s.e.xton.”

”What is he now?” I asked.

”He is a partaker of glory, at present, Master Copperfield, but we have much to be thankful for. How much have I to be thankful for, in living with Mr. Wickfield.”

Negative self-feeling may be provoked by a genuine sense of unworthiness or modesty, and when this takes place among religious people, it may become a complete and rapturous submissiveness to G.o.d. The records of many mediaeval and of some modern mystics emphasize this complete yielding to the will of G.o.d, and in His will finding peace. James quotes in this connection Pascal's _Priere pour bien user les maladies_:

I ask you, neither for health nor for sickness, for life nor for death; but that you may dispose of my health and my sickness, my life and my death, for your glory.... You alone know what is expedient for me; you are the sovereign master; do with me according to your will. Give to me, or take away from me, only conform my will to yours. I know but one thing, Lord, that it is good to follow you, and bad to offend you. Apart from that, I know not what is good or bad in anything. I know not which is most profitable to me, health or sickness, wealth or poverty, nor anything else in the world. That discernment is beyond the power of men or angels, and is hidden among the secrets of your Providence, which I adore, but do not seek to fathom.[1]

[Footnote 1: Quoted in James: _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 286.]