Impressions of Theophrastus Such

Theophrastus Such, by George
Eliot

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Title: Impressions of Theophrastus Such
Author: George Eliot
Release Date: January 26, 2007 [EBook #10762] [This file was first
posted on January 21, 2004]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH
GEORGE ELIOT

Second Edition
William Blackwood and Sons Edinburgh and London MDCCCLXXIX

"Suspicione si quis errabit sua, Et rapiet ad se, quod erit commune
omnium, Stulte nudabit animi conscientiam Huic excusatum me velim
nihilominus Neque enim notare singulos mens est mihi, Verum ipsam
vitam et mores hominum ostendere"
--Phaedrus
CONTENTS
I. LOOKING INWARD
II. LOOKING BACKWARD
III. HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH
IV. A MAN SURPRISED AT HIS ORIGINALITY
V. A TOO DEFERENTIAL MAN
VI. ONLY TEMPER
VII. A POLITICAL MOLECULE
VIII. THE WATCH-DOG OF KNOWLEDGE
IX. A HALF-BREED
X. DEBASING THE MORAL CURRENCY
XI. THE WASP CREDIT
ED WITH THE HONEYCOMB
XII. "SO YOUNG!"

XIII. HOW WE COME TO GIVE OURSELVES FALSE
TESTIMONIALS, AND BELIEVE IN THEM
XIV. THE TOO READY WRITER
XV. DISEASES OF SMALL AUTHORSHIP
XVI. MORAL SWINDLERS
XVII. SHADOWS OF THE COMING RACE
XVIII. THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP!

I.
LOOKING INWARD.
It is my habit to give an account to myself of the characters I meet with:
can I give any true account of my own? I am a bachelor, without
domestic distractions of any sort, and have all my life been an attentive
companion to myself, flattering my nature agreeably on plausible
occasions, reviling it rather bitterly when it mortified me, and in
general remembering its doings and sufferings with a tenacity which is
too apt to raise surprise if not disgust at the careless inaccuracy of my
acquaintances, who impute to me opinions I never held, express their
desire to convert me to my favourite ideas, forget whether I have ever
been to the East, and are capable of being three several times
astonished at my never having told them before of my accident in the
Alps, causing me the nervous shock which has ever since notably
diminished my digestive powers. Surely I ought to know myself better
than these indifferent outsiders can know me; nay, better even than my
intimate friends, to whom I have never breathed those items of my
inward experience which have chiefly shaped my life.
Yet I have often been forced into the reflection that even the
acquaintances who are as forgetful of my biography and tenets as they
would be if I were a dead philosopher, are probably aware of certain

points in me which may not be included in my most active suspicion.
We sing an exquisite passage out of tune and innocently repeat it for
the greater pleasure of our hearers. Who can be aware of what his
foreign accent is in the ears of a native? And how can a man be
conscious of that dull perception which causes him to mistake
altogether what will make him agreeable to a particular woman, and to
persevere eagerly in a behaviour which she is privately recording
against him? I have had some confidences from my female friends as to
their opinion of other men whom I have observed trying to make
themselves amiable, and it has occurred to me that though I can hardly
be so blundering as Lippus and the rest of those mistaken candidates
for favour whom I have seen ruining their chance by a too elaborate
personal canvass, I must still come under the common fatality of
mankind and share the liability to be absurd without knowing that I am
absurd. It is in the nature of foolish reasoning to seem good to the
foolish reasoner. Hence with all possible study of myself, with all
possible effort to escape from the pitiable illusion which makes men
laugh, shriek, or curl the lip at Folly's likeness, in total unconsciousness
that it resembles themselves, I am obliged to recognise that while there
are secrets in me unguessed by others, these others have certain items
of knowledge about the extent of my powers and the figure I make with
them, which in turn are secrets unguessed by me. When I was a lad I
danced a hornpipe with arduous scrupulosity, and while suffering pangs
of pallid shyness was yet proud of my superiority as a dancing pupil,
imagining for myself a high place in the estimation of beholders; but