"NARROW-WIDENESS."
MHERE are certain moral and mental defects of which few men ever genuinely accuse themselves. Many a man knows himself to be hot-tempered, and most men complain of a bad memory, but who ever in his most candid moments has suspected himself of being narrow-minded? Such a thing seems impossible. We are all by nature just as certain of the wideness of our minds as we are of the whiteness of our skins. We could as readily believe ourselves blacks as bigots. Yet a narrow mind, we know, is a common complaint among other people; and acknowledging that fact, a few gracious souls are sometimes constrained to admit that they also may suffer unconsciously from the same misfortune. Of course, we are none of us surprised that ignorant people and those we consider belotv us should be namow-minded. What makes us wonder at times is that those with all our advantages should show signs of so untoward a failing. People who pride themselves upon taking "broad views" are, strange to say, often very narrow-minded. It is a defect which by no means presupposes that uncompromising attitude towards life which may be the inheritance of the stupid or the stock-in-trade of the doctrinaire. Men and women may have narrow minds though they have never felt the slightest enthusiasm for any theory or the slightest faith in any scheme of salvation since they were born. There are many such among those who have come to the conclusion that all conclusions are obsolete. Ali dogmas, social, moral, and political, are, they say, matters of opinion, opinion is a product of reaction, and reaction is a matter of time. The practical effect of such a view of life is narrowing in the extreme. No sect in the world is so necessarily limited as this sect of critics. They are not as other men are. They see weak places in all the theories by which the majority of men live, and they see nothing else. They search for error as other men search for the truth. The pettiness of their work impairs their eye- sight, until finally they mistake contempt for catholicity. Perhaps the worst practical effect of their blindness is that they become unable any longer to discern character. Tho man who has sacrificed his success in life to some great conviction, and the man whose career is checked at every turn by some. obstinate prejudice, look alike to them because neither, in their eyes, is possessed of the one thing needful,—an uncertain mind. Of course, as we have already implied, to have no convictions does not necessarily make a man narrow. All we mean is that it will not nave him from narrowness. Again, it is not at all uncommon to find really wide-minded people with very little conviction on any subject. One sees it especially among intelligent women, whose chief interest is in character, and who realise their own lack of instruction. So many good and wirier people differ, they say to tbeinselves, and how can the average person decide? The " narrow-wideness" we have been describing is no doubt a purely mental form of the peculiarity. There is, however, a moral forte which is much more common in the present day and much more irritating, and that is the "narrow-wideness" of the superior person who never condemns. The cultivators of spurious sympathy and cheap charity have something to say in praise of everything and every one, especially if that praise involves the contradiction of the last speaker. Whether it is a book, a play, or a person which is under dis- cussion, they are always of the same mind. Is a book con- demned as immoral ?—they see some great and pure purpose underlying the polluting details, and they strive to give the common-sense critic a feeling that all the harm he saw he got out of his own heart. Is a play profane P--in that very outward profanity they discover traces of a secret piety. Is a man described as bad ?—they shake their heads over the crudity of judgment which can still set up a division between sheep and goats. Is he an oppressor P—they suggest that their own extraordinary farseeinguess has revealed to them the fact that he is iu reality actuated by pity. Is he only a bore P—they are sure that depends upon his company. The object of all moral thought is, in their minds, not righteous judgment, hut comprehensive excuse, not to distinguish black from white, but to descry the one in the other,—an effect which can only be produced by living in the half-dark. The best that can be said for them is that they are very happy, being lifted above their fellows by the conviction that wisdom will die with them. They become more and more expert at seeing all things as they like. At last the strain thus put upon their imaginations renders them quite dazed. They attract to themselves a little circle of the colour-blind, and grope about in an ecstasy until their life's end.
Among travelled perilous, again, we find instances of extreme " narrow-wideness." Such people come home having, as they say, "knocked about,"—generally not for very long. The less civilised the place of their sojourn, the more certain they are that such sojourn stretches the mind. The sight of a few black savages has assured many a man that he has succeeded in finding the philosopher's stone. When he comes home he finds everything "provincial." His friends may live in the social centre of the most civilised city—whichever that is—in the werld, but because they have lived at home they have become "provincial" in his sight. Why to stay a short while in a hut in a wilderness should teach a man so much that he could never learn in a villa in a suburb it is not easy to say offhand. On the face of it, the latter would appear the better centre for acquiring knowledge. If one of his former friends should ask him for details about the character or inhabitants of the far country wherein he has acquired so much experience, he will probably have less information than might be found in. any cheap book the inquirer could pick up. Very often one might as well look at a pedometer when one wants to know the time as try to find out any- thing worth knowing about a place from the man who has been there. What he has learned is not about foreign parts, but about his own country and its affairs. In his wilderness he has become enlightened upon the subject of home politics, and he knows them to consist of a mass of parochial details easily disposed of by a wide. minded (i.e., a travelled) man; and he knows a great deal about European politics, though he has been living out of Europe. If men would but accept the key of statecraft which he would give them, all would be well. If they would cease from the consideration of political principles, and think of present expediency—i.e., if they would forget the past and not look to the future—they could, he is certain, solve all difficulties without so much talk. They have all, he argues, got into a groove. They think where they are is the hub of the universe. They are so obstinate they will not believe that the real hub is outside their little tracks altogether. It lies around the hut where he lived with a few other select persons, illuminated by exile, and the company and example of an inferior race whose language they could not understand. Again we would guard ourselves against being misunderstood. Many travellers return—even after a very short interval—without the slightest tendency to consider themselves omniscient, and
are able by their delightful word-pictures to illnatrate anal elucidate whole shelves of Blue-books.
The &nth is that width of mind is a question outside opinion, and to a great extent outside circumstance. To unpack the narrow mind of any given person, and supply him with a change of convictions or an outfit of doubts, is a very different thing from altering the dimensions of Ida mind. Can, then, an originally narrow mind never expand ? We would answer that question by reconnueudiug our readers to consider a parallel case,—the case of moral con. version. Is it not one of those possibilities which we may not reckon without, but which no wise man will ever reckon upon P
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