By the Christmas Fire | Page 9

place. If something
turns up for which he cannot find a place, he sends it to the junk shop.
When the Doctrinaire descends from the homogeneous world which he
has constructed, into the actual world which, in the attempt to get itself
made, is becoming more amazingly heterogeneous all the time, he is in
high dudgeon. The existence of these varied contradictorinesses seems
to him a personal affront.
It is as if a person had lived in a natural history museum, where every
stuffed animal knew his place, and had his scientific name painted on
the glass case. He is suddenly dropped into a tropical jungle where the
animals act quite differently. The tigers won't "stay put," and are liable
to turn up just when he doesn't want to see them.
I should not object to his unpreparedness for the actual state of things if
the Doctrinaire did not assume the airs of a superior person. He lays all
the blame for the discrepancy between himself and the universe on the
universe. He has the right key, only the miserable locks won't fit it.
Having formed a very clear conception of the best possible world, he
looks down patronizingly upon the commonplace people who are
trying to make the best out of this imperfect world. Having large
possessions in Utopia, he lives the care-free life of an absentee landlord.
His praise is always for the dead, or for the yet unborn; when he looks
on his contemporaries he takes a gloomy view. That any great man
should be now alive, he considers a preposterous assumption. He treats
greatness as if it were a disease to be determined only by post-mortem
examination.
One of the earliest satires on the character of the Doctrinaire is to be
found in the Book of Jonah. Jonah was a prophet by profession. He
received a call to preach in the city of Nineveh, which he accepted after
some hesitation. He denounced civic corruption and declared that in
forty days the city would be destroyed. Having performed this

professional duty, Jonah felt that there was nothing left for him but to
await with pious resignation the fulfillment of his prophecy. But in this
case the unexpected happened, the city repented and was saved. This
was gall and wormwood to Jonah. His orderly mind was offended by
the disarrangement of his schedule. What was the use of being a
prophet if things did not turn out as he said? So we are told "it
displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry," Still he clung to the
hope that, in the end, things might turn out badly enough to justify his
public utterances. "Then Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east
side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the
shadow, till he might see what would become of the city."
Poor grumpy old Jonah! Have we not sat under his preaching, and read
his editorials, and pondered his books, full of solemn warnings of what
will happen to us if we do not mend our ways? We have been deeply
impressed, and in a great many respects we have mended our ways, and
things have begun to go better. But Jonah takes no heed of our
repentance. He is only thinking of those prophecies of his. Just in
proportion as things begin to look up morally, he gets low in his mind
and begins to despair of the Republic.
The trouble with Jonah is that he can see but one thing at a time, and
see that only in one way. He cannot be made to appreciate the fact that
"the world is full of a number of things," and that some of them are not
half bad. When he sees a dangerous tendency he thinks that it will
necessarily go on to its logical conclusion. He forgets that there is such
a thing as the logic of events, which is different from the logical
processes of a person who sits outside and prognosticates. There is one
tendency which all tendencies have in common, that is, to develop
counter tendencies.
There is, for example, a tendency on the part of the gypsy-moth
caterpillar to destroy utterly the forests of the United States. But were I
addressing a thoughtful company of these caterpillars I should urge
them to look upon their own future with modest self-distrust. However
well their programme looks upon paper, it cannot be carried out
without opposition. Long before the last tree has been vanquished, the

last of the gypsy moths may be fighting for its life against the enemies
it has made.
The Doctrinaire is very quick at generalizing. This is greatly to his
credit. One of the powers of the human mind on which