ABSTRACT
And here indeed it is largely upon foreign criticism that we have to depend. We are familiar with the ‘composite photograph’ in which thousands of superimposed likenesses result in the elimination of personal variants, the production of a norm or type. We seek a kind of mental or moral ‘composite photograph’ showing the average sentiment, the average emotion, the average religion. And this is a method of investigation far more familiar to Europe, where introspection is regarded as a
duty, than to England, where introspection is regarded as a disease. Most modern attempts at the analysis of the English character have come from the European resident or visitor. In books translated from the French, like that of M.Boutmy, or from the German, like that of Dr. Karl Peters, the Englishman learns with amazement that he presents this aspect to one observer, that to another. His sentiments are like that of the savage who is suddenly confronted with the looking-glass; or, rather (since he is convinced that all these impressions are distorted or prejudiced), like the crowd which constantly gathers before the shop windows which present convex or concave mirrors-for the pleasure of seeing their natural faces weirdly elongated or foreshortened. Yet we are compelled to read such books. We are compelled to read all such books. Even as a result of such unfair description we acknowledge the stimulus and challenge which such description affords. We cannot help being interested in ourselves. Sometimes, indeed, these impartial minds are able to sting us into anxiety by their agitation over things which we generally accept as normal. Again and again the foreigner and the colonial, entering this rich land with too exuberant ideals of its wealth and comfort, have broken into cries of pain and wonder at the revelation of the life of poverty festering round the pillars which support the material greatness of England. A picture to which we have become accustomed, which we endure as best we may, seems to them a picture of horror and desolation. Again and again we have found our material splendours and extravagances which have developed by almost inconspicuous gradations year by year and generation by generation, set out for surprise or condemnation, by those who had maintained a tradition of simplicity, even of austerity, in England’s social life. Again and again a revisit, after prolonged absence, has exhibited some transformation of things of which those who have been living in the current are hardly themselves conscious-a transformation effected by no man’s definite desires.
