flaubert, i believe, designed once to publish a dictionary of errors, and would actually have set about it had he not found the subject growing much too vast for any human pen. he also designed a reference book, or rather anthology, of follies, stupidities, rash judgments, and absurdities, but never lived to complete this great task. now, reading this, i have wondered whether two little books might not be written which should prove useful severally to the undergraduate and to the politician. i do not say to the schoolboy, for no book yet written ever was or ever will be useful to him. but for the undergraduate a useful book might be written which i shall presently describe, and which would make a sort of foundation for all his studies. so also for the politician a second book might be written which should be of the greatest service. let me now describe these two books. perhaps among those who read this there will be so many men of leisure and learning as can in combination give the world the volumes i imagine.
the first book should be called “modern thought,” and in this, without praise or blame and without any wandering into metaphysics or religion, the young fellow should be plainly taught to distinguish the[231] certain from the uncertain. i know of nothing in which academic training just now is more at fault. that training seems to consist in two branches. first, the setting down of a very great number of things each equally certain with the last and all forming together one huge amorphic body or lump of assertion; second, a whole sheaf of theories, the whole fun of which consists in the fact that no one of them can positively be proved but that all are guesswork. these theories change from year to year, and while they are defended with a passion astonishing to those who live in a larger world, there is no pretence that they are true. the whole business of them is quite obviously a game. consider, for instance, history. a lad is taught that william the conqueror won at hastings in 1066; that the opinion of the english people was behind the little wealthy clique that put an end to the stuarts; that london heartily sympathised with the seven bishops; that all parliamentary institutions grew up on the soil of this island in the thirteenth century from saxon origins; and that four people called hengist, and horsa, and aella, and cerdic led a great number of germans to various points of this island, killed the people living there and put the germans in their stead. now of these assertions, all of which he is to receive with equal certitude, all dogmatically affirmed, all taught to him as brute bits of truth—some, as that about hastings, are rigidly true; some, such as the attitude of london towards the seven bishops,[232] are morally certain (though hardly capable of definite proof); some, as the weight of public opinion behind the whigs, debatable though probable; some, like the hengist and horsa business, almost certainly mere legends—and so forth. it is to be noted that, if you are to teach at all, you must always have in your teaching some admixture of this error. no one can exactly balance the degree of probability attaching to each separate statement; there is no time to array all the evidence, and if there were, the mind of the student could not carry it. each teacher, moreover, will have a scheme of values somewhat different from his neighbour’s; but even if some admixture of the error i speak of be necessary, at least let the student be warned that it exists. for if he is not so warned one of two things will happen: either he will believe all he is told, with the most appalling results to himself, and, should he later become powerful, to the whole nation (we are seeing something of that in economics to-day), or he will (as the cleverer undergraduate usually does) become sceptical of all he hears; he will begin to wonder, having once found his teacher out in, let us say, the absurdity of pretending that parliamentary institutions were peculiar to britain, whether the battle of hastings were really fought in 1066 or no. when he has discovered, as any boy of education, travel, and common sense will discover, that the normans were not scandinavians, but frenchmen, he will be led to reason that perhaps william the conqueror[233] never existed at all. this mood of universal scepticism is even more dangerous than that of bovine assurance, more dangerous to character, that is, and more dissolving of national strength.
as with the assertions so with the theories. there was a theory, for instance, that a tenure of land existed in ancient england by which this land was the common property of all, and was called the land of the “folk.” then this theory burst, and another theory swelled, which was that the “folk land” meant the land held by customary right as distinguished from land held by charter. again, there was a theory that an original saxon tendency to breed large landowners had gradually prevailed over feudal tenure. this theory burst, and another theory swelled, which was that the large units of land grew up by an accidental interpretation of roman law.
in the book i propose all these theories could be very simply dealt with. the student should be warned that they are theories, and theories only, that their whole point and value is that they are not susceptible to positive proof; that what makes them amusing and interesting is the certitude that one can go on having a good quarrel about them, and the inner faith that when one is tired of them one can drop them without regret. older men know this, but young men often do not, and they will take a theory in the academies and make a friend of it, and at last, as it were, another self, and clasp it close to their souls and intertwine themselves with[234] it, only to find towards thirty that they have been hugging a shade.
so much, then, for this first book. it would not need to be more than a little pocket volume of fifty or sixty pages, and a young man should have it to refer to at any moment of his studies. one of its maxims would be to look up the original evidence upon which anything he was told was based. another rule he would find in it would be to underline all such words as “seems,” “probably,” and so forth, and watch in his books the way in which they gradually turn, as the argument proceeds, into “is” and “certainly.” he would also be warned before reading the work of any authority to remember that that authority was a human being, to look up his biography, if possible to meet him personally, to find out what general knowledge he had and what impression he made upon the casual man that met him. how many men have written histories of a campaign and yet have been proved at a dinner-table ignorant of the range of artillery during their period! how many men have learnedly criticised the style of rousseau upon a knowledge of french very much inferior to that of most governesses! i at oxford knew a don who exposed and ridiculed the legend of the girondins, but throughout his remarks pronounced their title with a hard g.
as for the politicians, their little guide-book through life should be of another sort. in this the first and most valuable part would deal with political[235] judgment and prophecy. the utmost care would be taken by the author to show how valueless is any determination of the future, and how crass the mind which predicts with confidence. since so very few men happen to have made lucky shots, it would be the peculiar care of the author in a loving manner to collect all the follies and misjudgments which these same men had made upon other grave matters. and, in general, the reader would be left very certain that every pompous prophecy he heard was a piece of folly. next in the book would come examples of all that political men have said and done which they most particularly desired to have forgotten. this would serve a twofold purpose, for first it would amuse and instruct the politician as he read it, since the misfortunes of others are delightful to human kind, and, secondly, it would show him that he could not himself trust to the effect of time, and that his natural desire to turn his coat or to pretend to some policy he did not understand would at last be judged as it deserved. in the third and final portion of the book the politician would be given a list of interesting truths, with regard to the matter of his trade. it would be proved to him in a few sentences that his decisions depend upon various difficult branches of study, and by a few suggested questions he would be convinced of his ignorance therein. the shortness of human life would be insisted upon, with examples showing how a man having painfully[236] reached power was stricken with paralysis or died in torment. the ludicrous miscarriage of great plans would be laid before him, and, better still, the proof that the most successful adventures had proceeded almost entirely from chance, and surprised no one more than their authors.
at the end of the book would be a certain number of coupons permitting the reader to travel to many places which politicians commonly ignore, and there would be a list of the sights that he should see. as, for instance, the troops of such and such a nation upon the march, the artillery of such another at firing practice, and the opinion expressed by the populace in taverns in such and such a town. then at the end would come a number of common phrases such as cui bono, persona grata, toujours perdrix, double entendre, sturm und drang, etc., with their english equivalents, if any, and their approximate meaning, when they possess a meaning. upon the last page would be a list of the duties of a christian man and a short guide to general conduct in conversation with the rich.
armed with these manuals, the youth and manhood of a nation would at once and vastly change. you would find young men recently proceeded from the university filled with laudable doubts arising from the vastness of god’s scheme, and yet modestly secure in certain essential truths such as their own existence and that of an objective universe, the voice of conscience, and the difference between right[237] and wrong. while among those of more mature years, who were controlling the energies of the state, there would appear an exact observance of real things, an admitted inability to know what would happen fifty or even twenty years hence, and a habit of using plain language which they and their audience could easily understand; of using such language tersely, and occasionally with conviction.
but this revolution will not take place. the two books of which i speak will not be written. and if anyone doubts this, let him sit down and try to frame the scheme of one, and he will soon see that it is beyond any man’s power.
