On Nothing and Kindred Subjects (3 page)

Then also if you are in any doubt as to what they want of you, you
can always change the scene. Thus fishing is dangerous for even the
poor can fish, and the chances are you do not know the names of the
animals, and you may be putting salt-water fish into the stream of
Lambourne, or talking of salmon upon the Upper Thames. But what is
to prevent you putting on a look of distance and marvel, and
conjuring up the North Atlantic for them? Hold them with the cold
and the fog of the Newfoundland seas, and terrify their simple minds
with whales.

A second way to attain respect, if you are by nature a silent man,
and one which I think is always successful, is to write before you
go to bed and leave upon the table a great number of envelopes which
you should address to members of the Cabinet, and Jewish money-lenders,
dukes, and in general any of the great. It is but slight labour, and
for the contents you cannot do better than put into each envelope one
of those advertisements which you will find lying about. Then next
morning you should gather them up and ask where the post is: but you
need not post them, and you need not fear for your bill. Your bill
will stand much the same, and your reputation will swell like a sponge.

And a third way is to go to the telephone, since there are
telephones nowadays, and ring up whoever in the neighbourhood is of
the greatest importance. There is no law against it, and when you
have the number you have but to ask the servant at the other end
whether it is not somebody else's house. But in the meanwhile your
night in the place is secure.

And a fourth way is to tell them to call you extremely early, and
then to get up extremely late. Now why this should have the effect
it has I confess I cannot tell. I lay down the rule empirically and
from long observation, but I may suggest that perhaps it is the
combination of the energy you show in early rising, and of the
luxury you show in late rising: for energy and luxury are the two
qualities which menials most admire in that governing class to which
you flatter yourself you belong. Moreover the strength of will with
which you sweep aside their inconvenience, ordering one thing and
doing another, is not without its effect, and the stir you have
created is of use to you.

And the fifth way is to be Strong, to Dominate and to Lead. To be
one of the Makers of this world, one of the Builders. To have the
more Powerful Will. To arouse in all around you by mere Force of
Personality a feeling that they must Obey. But I do not know how
this is done.

There is not anything that can so suddenly flood the mind with shame
as the conviction of ignorance, yet we are all ignorant of nearly
everything there is to be known. Is it not wonderful, then, that we
should be so sensitive upon the discovery of a fault which must of
necessity be common to all, and that in its highest degree? The
conviction of ignorance would not shame us thus if it were not for
the public appreciation of our failure.

If a man proves us ignorant of German or the complicated order of
English titles, or the rules of Bridge, or any other matter, we do
not care for his proofs, so that we are alone with him: first
because we can easily deny them all, and continue to wallow in our
ignorance without fear, and secondly, because we can always counter
with something we know, and that he knows nothing of, such as the
Creed, or the history of Little Bukleton, or some favourite book.
Then, again, if one is alone with one's opponent, it is quite easy
to pretend that the subject on which one has shown ignorance is
unimportant, peculiar, pedantic, hole in the corner, and this can be
brazened out even about Greek or Latin. Or, again, one can turn the
laugh against him, saying that he has just been cramming up the
matter, and that he is airing his knowledge; or one can begin making
jokes about him till he grows angry, and so forth. There is no
necessity to be ashamed.

But if there be others present? Ah!
Hoc est aliud rem
, that
is another matter, for then the biting shame of ignorance suddenly
displayed conquers and bewilders us. We have no defence left. We are
at the mercy of the discoverer, we own and confess, and become
insignificant: we slink away.

Note that all this depends upon what the audience conceive ignorance
to be. It is very certain that if a man should betray in some cheap
club that he did not know how to ride a horse, he would be broken
down and lost, and similarly, if you are in a country house among
the rich you are shipwrecked unless you can show acquaintance with
the Press, and among the poor you must be very careful, not only to
wear good cloth and to talk gently as though you owned them, but
also to know all about the rich. Among very young men to seem
ignorant of vice is the ruin of you, and you had better not have
been born than appear doubtful of the effects of strong drink when
you are in the company of Patriots. There was a man who died of
shame this very year in a village of Savoy because he did not know
the name of the King reigning over France to-day, and it is a common
thing to see men utterly cast down in the bar-rooms off the Strand
because they cannot correctly recite the opening words of "Boys of
the Empire." There are schoolgirls who fall ill and pine away
because they are shown to have misplaced the name of Dagobert III in
the list of Merovingian Monarchs, and quite fearless men will blush
if they are found ignoring the family name of some peer. Indeed,
there is nothing so contemptible or insignificant but that in some
society or other it is required to be known, and that the ignorance
of it may not at any moment cover one with confusion. Nevertheless
we should not on that account attempt to learn everything there is
to know (for that is manifestly impossible), nor even to learn
everything that is known, for that would soon prove a tedious and
heart-breaking task; we should rather study the means to be employed
for warding off those sudden and public convictions of Ignorance
which are the ruin of so many.

These methods of defence are very numerous and are for the most part
easy of acquirement. The most powerful of them by far (but the most
dangerous) is to fly into a passion and marvel how anyone can be
such a fool as to pay attention to wretched trifles. "Powerful,"
because it appeals to that strongest of all passions in men by which
they are predisposed to cringe before what they think to be a
superior station in society. "Dangerous," because if it fail in its
objects this method does not save you from pain, and secures you in
addition a bad quarrel, and perhaps a heavy beating. Still it has
many votaries, and is more often carried off than any other. Thus,
if in Bedfordshire, someone catches you erring on a matter of crops,
you profess that in London such things are thought mere rubbish and
despised; or again, in the society of professors at the
Universities, an ignorance of letters can easily be turned by an
allusion to that vapid life of the rich, where letters grow
insignificant; so at sea, if you slip on common terms, speak a
little of your luxurious occupations on land and you will usually be
safe.

There are other and better defences. One of these is to turn the
attack by showing great knowledge on a cognate point, or by
remembering that the knowledge your opponent boasts has been
somewhere contradicted by an authority. Thus, if some day a friend
should say, as continually happens in a London club:

"Come, let us hear you decline [Greek: tetummenos on]," you can
answer carelessly:

"You know as well as I do that the form is purely Paradigmatic: it
is never found."

Or again, if you put the Wrekin by an error into Staffordshire, you
can say, "I was thinking of the Jurassic formation which is the
basis of the formation of——" etc. Or, "Well, Shrewsbury …
Staffordshire?… Oh! I had got my mind mixed up with the graves of
the Staffords." Very few people will dispute this, none will follow
it. There is indeed this difficulty attached to such a method, that
it needs the knowledge of a good many things, and a ready
imagination and a stiff face: but it is a good way.

Yet another way is to cover your retreat with buffoonery, pretending
to be ignorant of the most ordinary things, so as to seem to have
been playing the fool only when you made your first error. There is
a special form of this method which has always seemed to me the most
excellent by far of all known ways of escape. It is to show a steady
and crass ignorance of very nearly everything that can be mentioned,
and with all this to keep a steady mouth, a determined eye, and
(this is essential) to show by a hundred allusions that you have on
your own ground an excellent store of knowledge.

This is the true offensive-defensive in this kind of assault, and
therefore the perfection of tactics.

Thus if one should say:

"Well, it was the old story. [Greek: Anankae]."

It might happen to anyone to answer: "I never read the play."

This you will think perhaps an irremediable fall, but it is not, as
will appear from this dialogue, in which the method is developed:

SAPIENS. But, Good Heavens, it isn't a play!

IGNORAMUS. Of course not. I know that as well as you, but the
character of [Greek: Anankae] dominates the play. You won't deny
that?

SAPIENS. You don't seem to have much acquaintance with Liddell and
Scott.

IGNORAMUS. I didn't know there was anyone called Liddell in it, but
I knew Scott intimately, both before and after he succeeded to the
estate.

SAPIENS. But I mean the dictionary.

IGNORAMUS. I'm quite certain that his father wouldn't let him write
a dictionary. Why, the library at Bynton hasn't been opened for
years.

If, after five minutes of that, Ignoramus cannot get Sapiens
floundering about in a world he knows nothing of, it is his own
fault.

But if Sapiens is over-tenacious there is a final method which may
not be the most perfect, but which I have often tried myself, and
usually with very considerable success:

SAPIENS. Nonsense, man. The Dictionary. The
Greek
dictionary.

IGNORAMUS. What has
Ananti
to do with Greek?

SAPIENS. I said [Greek: Anankae].

IGNORAMUS. Oh! h——h! you said [Greek: anankae], did you? I thought
you said Ananti. Of course, Scott didn't call the play Ananti, but
Ananti was the principal character, and one always calls it that in
the family. It is very well written. If he hadn't that shyness about
publishing … and so forth.

Lastly, or rather Penultimately, there is the method of upsetting
the plates and dishes, breaking your chair, setting fire to the
house, shooting yourself, or otherwise swallowing all the memory of
your shame in a great catastrophe.

But that is a method for cowards; the brave man goes out into the
hall, comes back with a stick, and says firmly, "You have just
deliberately and cruelly exposed my ignorance before this company; I
shall, therefore, beat you soundly with this stick in the presence
of them all."

This you then do to him or he to you,
mutatis mutandis, ceteris
paribus
; and that is all I have to say on Ignorance.

Harmonides of Ephesus says in one of his treatises upon method (I
forget which, but I think the fifth) that a matter is very often
more clearly presented by way of example than in the form of a
direct statement and analysis. I have determined to follow the
advice of this great though pagan authority in what you will now
read or not read, according to your inclination.

As I was sitting one of these sunny mornings in my little Park,
reading an article upon vivisection in the
Tablet
newspaper,
a Domestic [Be seated, be seated, I pray you!] brought me a letter
upon a Silver Salver [Be covered!]

Which reminds me, why do people say that silver is the only perfect
spondee in the English language? Salver is a perfectly good spondee;
so is North-Cape; so is great-coat; so is High-Mass; so is
Wenchthorpe; so is forewarp, which is the rope you throw out from
the stem to the little man in the boat who comes to moor you along
the west gully in the Ramsgate Harbour; so is Longnose, the name of
a buoy, and of a reef of rocks just north of the North Foreland; so
are a great many other words. But I digress. I only put in these
words to show you in case you had any dissolving doubts remaining
upon the matter, that the kind of stuff you read is very often all
nonsense, and that you must not take things for granted merely
because they are printed. I have watched you doing it from time to
time, and have been torn between pity and anger. But all that is
neither here nor there. This habit of parenthesis is the ruin of
good prose. As I was saying, example clearly put down without
comment is very often more powerful than analysis for the purpose of
conviction.

The Domestic brought me a letter upon a Silver Salver. I took it and
carefully examined the outside.

They err who will maintain through thick and thin upon a mere theory
and without any true experience of the world, that it matters not
what the outside of a letter may be so long as the contents provoke
terror or amusement. The outside of a letter should appeal to one.
When one gets a letter with a halfpenny stamp and with the flap of
the letter stuck inside, and with the address on the outside
typewritten, one is very apt to throw it away. I believe that there
is no recorded case of such a letter containing a cheque, a summons,
or an invitation to eat good food, and as for demand notes, what are
they? Then again those long envelopes which come with the notice,
"Paid in bulk," outside instead of a stamp—no man can be moved by
them. They are very nearly always advertisements of cheap wine.

Do not misunderstand me: cheap wine is by no means to be despised.
There are some sorts of wine the less you pay for them the better
they are—within reason; and if a Gentleman has bought up a bankrupt
stock of wine from a fellow to whom he has been lending money, why
on earth should he not sell it again at a reasonable profit, yet
quite cheap? It seems to be pure benefit to the world. But I
perceive that all this is leading me from my subject.