That these conventions defeat their own
ends is no new assertion. Swift, criticising the manners of his day,
says--"Wise men are often more uneasy at the over-civility of these
refiners than they could possibly be in the conversation of peasants and
mechanics."
But it is not only in these details that the self-defeating action of
our arrangements is traceable: it is traceable in the very substance and
nature of them. Our social intercourse, as commonly managed, is a mere
semblance of the reality sought. What is it that we want? Some
sympathetic converse with our fellow-creatures: some converse that shall
not be mere dead words, but the vehicle of living thoughts and
feelings--converse in which the eyes and the face shall speak, and the
tones of the voice be full of meaning--converse which shall make us feel
no longer alone, but shall draw us closer to another, and double our own
emotions by adding another's to them. Who is there that has not, from
time to time, felt how cold and flat is all this talk about politics and
science, and the new books and the new men, and how a genuine utterance
of fellow-feeling outweighs the whole of it? Mark the words of
Bacon:--"For a crowd is not a company, and faces are but a gallery of
pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.
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