Impressions of Theophrastus Such | Page 2

I
can now picture the amusement they had in the incongruity of my
solemn face and ridiculous legs. What sort of hornpipe am I dancing
now?
Thus if I laugh at you, O fellow-men! if I trace with curious interest
your labyrinthine self-delusions, note the inconsistencies in your
zealous adhesions, and smile at your helpless endeavours in a rashly
chosen part, it is not that I feel myself aloof from you: the more
intimately I seem to discern your weaknesses, the stronger to me is the
proof that I share them. How otherwise could I get the
discernment?--for even what we are averse to, what we vow not to
entertain, must have shaped or shadowed itself within us as a

possibility before we can think of exorcising it. No man can know his
brother simply as a spectator. Dear blunderers, I am one of you. I wince
at the fact, but I am not ignorant of it, that I too am laughable on
unsuspected occasions; nay, in the very tempest and whirlwind of my
anger, I include myself under my own indignation. If the human race
has a bad reputation, I perceive that I cannot escape being
compromised. And thus while I carry in myself the key to other men's
experience, it is only by observing others that I can so far correct my
self-ignorance as to arrive at the certainty that I am liable to commit
myself unawares and to manifest some incompetency which I know no
more of than the blind man knows of his image in the glass.
Is it then possible to describe oneself at once faithfully and fully? In all
autobiography there is, nay, ought to be, an incompleteness which may
have the effect of falsity. We are each of us bound to reticence by the
piety we owe to those who have been nearest to us and have had a
mingled influence over our lives; by the fellow-feeling which should
restrain us from turning our volunteered and picked confessions into an
act of accusation against others, who have no chance of vindicating
themselves; and most of all by that reverence for the higher efforts of
our common nature, which commands us to bury its lowest fatalities,
its invincible remnants of the brute, its most agonising struggles with
temptation, in unbroken silence. But the incompleteness which comes
of self-ignorance may be compensated by self-betrayal. A man who is
affected to tears in dwelling on the generosity of his own sentiments
makes me aware of several things not included under those terms. Who
has sinned more against those three duteous reticences than Jean
Jacques? Yet half our impressions of his character come not from what
he means to convey, but from what he unconsciously enables us to
discern.
This naïve veracity of self-presentation is attainable by the slenderest
talent on the most trivial occasions. The least lucid and impressive of
orators may be perfectly successful in showing us the weak points of
his grammar. Hence I too may be so far like Jean Jacques as to
communicate more than I am aware of. I am not indeed writing an
autobiography, or pretending to give an unreserved description of

myself, but only offering some slight confessions in an apologetic light,
to indicate that if in my absence you dealt as freely with my
unconscious weaknesses as I have dealt with the unconscious
weaknesses of others, I should not feel myself warranted by
common-sense in regarding your freedom of observation as an
exceptional case of evil-speaking; or as malignant interpretation of a
character which really offers no handle to just objection; or even as an
unfair use for your amusement of disadvantages which, since they are
mine, should be regarded with more than ordinary tenderness. Let me at
least try to feel myself in the ranks with my fellow-men. It is true, that I
would rather not hear either your well-founded ridicule or your
judicious strictures. Though not averse to finding fault with myself, and
conscious of deserving lashes, I like to keep the scourge in my own
discriminating hand. I never felt myself sufficiently meritorious to like
being hated as a proof of my superiority, or so thirsty for improvement
as to desire that all my acquaintances should give me their candid
opinion of me. I really do not want to learn from my enemies: I prefer
having none to learn from. Instead of being glad when men use me
despitefully, I wish they would behave better and find a more amiable
occupation for their intervals of business. In brief, after a close
intimacy with myself for a longer period than I choose to mention, I
find within me a permanent longing for approbation, sympathy, and
love.
Yet I am a bachelor, and the person I love best has