Читать книгу The Art of Thinking - Ernest Dimnet - Страница 6

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The quality of a man’s thinking may seem difficult to detect on account of the various strata under which real thought generally is hiding, but, if introspection is applied, all the apparent difficulty vanishes. An experiment or two will make it clear that the criteria of estimation of a man’s thought are, first, the images on which it exercises itself; second, the likes and dislikes corresponding to these images, and lastly, the mental energy which enables us to combine intellectual data with more or less success.

It is evident that a person whose mind is filled with the images of petty pleasure, comfort, good food, good clothes, dancing, traveling, amusing company, in short, material well-being, is farther away from what we call thought than the person whose imagination will be engrossed by beautiful scenes—Italian scenery, for instance—with noble fabrics, the quaintness or the appeal of antiquity, churches and museums full of the realisation of beauty, and the recollections of great artistic lives everywhere. The superiority of an artist to a society man or woman who is nothing else is undisputed, and it comes from no other cause than the superiority of one class of images to another. Again, when the mind of a Ruskin or a William Morris is inhabited, not solely by images of sensuous beauty, but by visions of a better and happier mankind, we bow to nobler images than those which delight the mere artist. It is not difficult to go up the scale of moral values attached to magnetic images by visualizing in succession those characteristic of the patriot, the social reformer, the moral reformer, the saint or the great religious interpreter. These images become more and more sublimized, but they are as vivid to the mystic as to the artist. What visions pass through our mind when it is at leisure, what scenes do we spontaneously imagine? We should know, for the mere description of introspection is inevitably followed by an experiment. So we can be our own judges. The thought is rather formidable.

Of course, our likes and dislikes are of the same order with the images corresponding to them, and it would be tedious to dwell at any length on the subject. It is evident that any images of which we have no particular right to be proud would not be frequent in our minds if they were met with the verdict: not wanted, not liked.

On the other hand, attention should be drawn to the fact that most people are more conscious of their dislikes than of their sympathies. The latter are weak while hatreds are strong. It is one of the humiliating features of human nature that we resent a few little things which happen to irritate us more than we appreciate a great deal for which we ought to be grateful. A traveler’s point of view can be modified quite unjustly because, during the last few days of his visit, he has been unlucky enough to meet bores, fools, or bullies. But sometimes he prefers meeting them because he enjoys grievances, and irritation agrees with him. A critic who feels like praising a book will gladly damn it if the last chapter antagonizes some pet idea of his. High-minded men and women endowed with warm natures are almost invariably optimistic, even when they realise the rottenness of the world, but how few they are! It is striking to reflect that Antoine, the Belgian faith-healer, made a European reputation by preaching love of our enemies—a doctrine so traditional (theoretically) for Christians. Thousands fortunately took it as a novelty and were enthusiastic in consequence.

Another symptom or cause of the pessimistic tendency is the presence in our consciousness or subconsciousness of the depressing mental habits which Freudians call complexes. We shall revert to them in the second part of this book but we must note them here at once because their effects cannot be overlooked in an estimation of the quality of our thinking.

Introspection can be supplemented and controlled by two sources of information which we can hardly hold in suspicion: our private letters, and above all our talk. Both are open to the full light of wide-awake consciousness and need not be investigated through the more psychological process. What are we hearing ourselves say? Are we satisfied with merely speaking the exterior or interior cinema? (“This car is going too fast.” ... “I wish we had a Studebaker.” ... “I feel quite ready for tea.”) In the same way, are not our letters full of small talk and cheap details, different from the cook’s only by virtue of a little more grammar and spelling? Does not our pleasure in criticizing rather than appreciating break out in many sentences beginning “I hate,” “I detest,” “I despise,” “how I loathe” ... and so forth? If so, we cannot help escaping the self-pronounced verdict: ORDINARY.

The third element to be taken into consideration if we want our inventory to be complete is mental resilience. Glibness, confidence, a retentive memory enabling its possessor to air easily acquired, sometimes shamelessly pirated, knowledge, can deceive observation at first, but not for long. As a rule, we can tell which of two men is the more energetic thinker as we can tell in a natatorium who is the swiftest swimmer. As for our estimate of our own mental elasticity, it is a matter of mere honesty requiring only the simplest investigation. If our mind is little better than the cinema mentioned above, we do not think any more than does a mirror. If we are bored by any topic above those which give food to our small dislikes or even smaller likes, we do not think. If, the moment a book or a newspaper raises a question demanding some supplementary information or reflection, we yawn, fidget, or hurriedly do something else, we abhor thinking. If, when trying to reflect, we at once feel a weariness, a drowsiness or a tendency to repeat mere words, we do not know what thought is. If we do know what it is, but, as Montaigne says, are too lazy to tackle a problem with more than “a charge or two,” we are feeble thinkers. Then what are we really?

Copy-cats, humble slaves imitating their masters. When a traveller visits the United States for the first time he cannot help noticing a curious phenomenon. Americanization, the transforming of foreign dissimilarity into American conformity, is not done, as Americanizing centres imagine, by the substitution of a new set of ideas for another. The thing is done more simply. Long before the new arrival begins to know the language which he calls the American, and even before changing his name from Silvio into Sullivan, he is trying to be as American as his simple resources will let him. He shaves off his moustache and has his hair cut in the most military style. He goes to games and quickly learns to yell. Soon he begins to suppress the native vivacity on his face and replaces it by good-natured slowness. Nine times out of ten you will see him copy the hesitancy before speaking accompanied by a mute motion of the lips which is frequent in Americans of his class. He has no difficulty in adopting the salute with the hand which possibly America has borrowed from his Roman ancestors. He has been told, before leaving Naples, that a good American consists largely of good clothes, and his first money goes to that. He has no doubt that a country in which a boy of eighteen makes a hundred and fifty lire a day cannot but be God’s own country. The notion gives him a horror for the smells of Italy. Shortly after this he has the revelation of the abyss there is between “the girls” and “le donne.” By the time he can write home that he now speaks the “American” he is ready to make the world safe, at any cost, for democracy and the American woman, and he should be given his papers without another week’s delay. The whole process has come from outside and its chief element may have been the mute motion of the lips which is a symptom of high receptivity.

What do most people do who are not poor emigrants but “people”? Do they not consist of clothes, fashions, mannerisms, formulas (listen to what you hear at the opera or at art exhibitions)? Are not only their attitudes, but even their attitude before life, copied from models approved for standardization? Are not their lives all alike?

Most of this questioning is superfluous. We know that nineteen people in twenty do not think but live like automata. I once reproached Mr. Arnold Bennett for entitling one of his books How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day. This title evidently suggests a book for hectic people in quest of a method to compress forty-eight hours into twenty-four. On the contrary, the book is destined for idle people and intended to make them live twenty-four hours a day. The real title ought to have been: “How to Live Twenty-four Hours,” or “an hour” or “ten minutes” a day. For most people do not live even that long a day, and Mr. Bennett’s book was worth writing.