SILENT OPINIONS.
SILENT opinions play a great part in the anatomy of character. If we want to know what a man is we must consider not so much what he says—however sincere he may be—as what be is inclined to think. These mental inclinations are born with a man, or, at least, are the outcome of very early environment. They point more surely than any other peculiarity to the rock whence he was hewn, and the experience of life has little effect upon them. A man taxed with his silent opinions is apt to disown them. A mental inclination turned into an axiom always looks like a silly generalisation. As a rule, however, it is not difficult to find out what they are, for it is upon their silent opinions that men act. They lie at the root of political and social differences, and continually determine conduct both in public and private life.
For instance, there is a silent opinion still held by a great many persons that only those born to a certain position in life ought ever to bear rule, and that all those so born have some sort of claim to authority. Those who inwardly incline.to the opinion would not for a moment deny that a given officer from the ranks, or a successful Civil official who began life at a Board-school, has a right to his post, or does not fill it well. Their tacit opinion does not destroy their power of weighing evidence, but it greatly influences their attitude towards their fellow-creatures and towards life. There are certain of the nobler qualities which they hardly expect in those below them, and the absence of which they immediately forgive. They ignore the common claim to condemnation, and accord to the majority only the miserable birthright of excuse. On the other hand, their mental inclination very often makes them peculiarly kind and con- siderate. If ruling comes in their way, they are diligent in the work, for which they believe that they have an inborn aptitude, and their cheerful confidence helps them to do it well. But even supposing that circumstances have set them over no one, their silent opinion makes them feel that they stand upon another than the common platform. The peculiar sense of duty which this feeling creates in good people pre- eludes in the highest class that complete indifference to one's neighbour which is the bane and boast of certain portions of -English society. Among women, at least, this silent opinion may be a source of good. They are at home among all those of inferior civilisation, as the mother of a family is - at home among all children. They are perfectly ready to reprove or console, and count it a privilege to offer sympathy and succour.
Again, there is an exactly opposite silent opinion held by many persons that all social distinctions are artificial,— imaginary demarcations, like the Equator and the lines of latitude and longitude, invented for convenience. They are inclined to think that all real differences are differences of character, and all other differences those of environment and circumstance. For the most part they neither refuse to accept nor to give the deference usually accorded to rank. They do not wish to be thought snobs, nor yet Socialists, and they have not the least desire to protest against the existing order of things. As a rule they do not feel towards the mass of men half so much affection as those who regard themselves as providentially set over them. We all like our children better than our brothers and sisters. Nevertheless, there is an intimacy and a form of sympathy untinged with pity or indulgence that are seldom possible except between contem- poraries. They know most about their fellow-creatures who inwardly feel themselves to be on the same level with them, and are not inclined to make a virtue of submission, nor a sin Of independence. Men are most often justly judged by their equals.
Perhaps the most silent of all silent opinions are those held by many persons about literature and the arts, which, while not confined to uninstructed persons, are the outcome of invincible ignorance. There are still men and women who in their heart of hearts regard literature as something invented to instruct boys, amuse men, and make a living for ill-mannered people with long hair. The odd thing about these ignorant persons is that they have very often learned a good deal. They have made answers on examination papers— and made them in good faith—which would appear to prove their knowledge of what literature has stood for in the forma- tion of national character and of universal history; but they still regard letters in the light of a lesson or a pastime, and no more. Of course, nothing would induce them to admit all this. It is not a thing that can be openly admitted nowadays. They pay their conventional verbal homage to the great names of the past, and make their social obeisance or act of con- descension to any one whose greatness they are credibly assured of in the present. They do not necessarily belong to any particular section of society. They may be soldiers or shopkeepers, Dukes or stockbrokers,—they all show the same bent of mind. A like silent opinion on the subject Of the arts is, oddly enough, to be found not only among educated but among ' intellectual people. There are numbers of intellectual men who take a deep delight in literature to whom pictures are of the nature of pretty furniture and music an agreeable noise. Not only are they silent about their views, they are very often deceitful about them—but real artiste find them 'out. They do not, of course, feel any reasoned conviction that their instinctive opinion is the right one. They are too well aware of what great men have said about the arts to believe in their hearts that they are insignificant. But for all that, their pleasure in looking at pictures is analogous to that which many women take in looking at shops, and their appreciation of music approaches no nearer to that of the humblest musician than a baby's delight in jingle approaches to the sense of enchantment created in the minds of mature men by a recognition of poetic inspiration.
Most men have some silent opinions about women, and most women about men. There are certain types of face, certain kinds of manner, certain methods of expression even, fOr which many men and women are utterly condemned in the minds of some of their brothers and sisters. A disposition to dislike certain types of face is at times so strong as to suggest a previous existenee. We do not openly say that all women with such-and-such eyebrows are hard-hearted, or that a' man must be a charlatan if the colour of his eyes and hair con- tradict one another; but we act continually upon notions hardly less unreasonable. Educated men with small vocabularies, for instance, are divided as a rule by clever women into fools by birth and self-made fools, according to whether their want of equipment be ascribed to nature or to affectation. To the first they are indifferent ; to the latter they have almost always a more or less active dislike. Such men are often able, a fact their own sex invariably recognise. The man whose words am few and ill-chosen may be a man of prompt and reasoned action, who, having been brought up among the silent wise or the garrulous silly, deprecates the waste of pains occasioned by the game of talk. All mental athletics bore him just as physical athletics bore others. In the same way, the fact that a man pretends to know no more words than a savage may be a ruatter of awkward though genuine humility—a fear of pre- tending to a culture he does not possess—or an act of super- ficial conformity to a passing fashion among a small set. It may have no more to do with his real mind than an ugly figure or an ill-cut coat. Circumstances will sometimes con- vince even a clever woman of these facts so far as a given man is concerned, but she will never alter her silent opinion as to the generality.
Clever women are very hard on the men they imagine to be fools. Able men, on the other hand, are not at. all hard on women they know to be stupid. Where youth and beauty are concerned the fact is easily understood ; but youth and beauty by no means explain the whole of this phenomenon. Many men are inclined to think that the kind of mental power in women which we colloquially call " brains" exists in inverse ratio to their common-sense, and serves only to carry them with fatiguing rapidity through verbal fallacies to a false conclusion.
Is it the duty of the rational man to bring all his silent opinions to the bar of reason, and endeavour to root them out if they cannot stand a strict examination ? We think not. It is only when silent opinions cease to be silent and partake of the nature of propaganda that they do harm. Tyrannies and revolutions, cruel prejudices and retrograde conclusions, may all owe their origin to unreasonable mental proclivities incontinently expressed; but the man who wrestles too hard to straighten his natural bent of mind is likely to destroy his efficiency, and the woman who is too anxious to avoid the guide of prejudice will almost certainly injure her faculty for intuition. To a great extent we must be content to take people as we find them—including ourselves.
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