The “Iliad” for war;
the “Odyssey” for wandering; but where is the great domestic epic? Yet it is
but commonplace to say that passions may rage round a tea-table which would not
have misbecome men dashing at one another in war chariots; and evolutions of
patience and temper are performed at the fireside, worthy to be compared with
the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Men have worshipped some fantastic being for
living alone in a wilderness; but social martyrdoms place no saints upon the
calendar. Many of the rules for
people living together in peace follow from the above. For instance, not to
interfere unreasonably with others, not to ridicule their tastes, not to
question and requestion their resolves, not to indulge in perpetual comment on
their proceedings, and to delight in their having other pursuits than ours, are
all based upon a thorough perception of the simple fact that they are not we. Another rule for
living happily with others is to avoid having stock subjects of disputation. It
mostly happens, when people live much together, that they come to have certain
set topics, around which, from frequent dispute, there is such a growth of
angry words, mortified vanity, and the like, that the original subject of
difference becomes a standing subject for quarrel; and there is a tendency in
all minor disputes to drift down to it. Again, if people wish
to live well together, they must not hold too much to logic, and suppose that
everything is to be settled by sufficient reason. Dr. Johnson saw this clearly
with regard to married people, when he said: “Wretched would be the pair above
all names of wretchedness, who should be doomed to adjust by reason every
morning all the minute detail of a domestic day.” But the application should be
much more general than he made it. There is no time for such reasonings, and
nothing that is worth them. And when we recollect how two lawyers, or two
politicians, can go on contending, and that there is no end of one-sided
reasoning on any subject, we shall not be sure that such contention is the best
mode for arriving at truth. But certainly it is not the way to arrive at good
temper. If you would be loved
as a companion, avoid unnecessary criticism upon those with whom you live. The
number of people who have taken out judge’s patents for themselves is very
large in any society. Now it would be hard for a man to live with another who
was always criticizing his actions, even if it were kindly and just criticism.
It would be like living between the glasses of a microscope. But these
self-elected judges, like their prototypes, are very apt to have the persons
they judge brought before them in the guise of culprits. One of the most provoking forms of the criticism above alluded to is that which may be called criticism over the shoulder. “Had I been consulted,” “Had you listened to me,” “But you always will,” and such short scraps of sentences may remind many of us of dissertations which we have suffered and inflicted, and of which we cannot call to mind any soothing effect. |
