With this set Tom soon fraternized, and drank in many new ideas, and took to himself also many new crotchets besides those with which he was really weighted. Almost all his new acquaintances were Liberal in politics, but a few only were ready to go all lengths with him. They were all union men, and Tom, of course, followed the fashion, and soon propounded2 theories in that institution which gained him the name of Chartist Brown.
There was a strong mixture of self-conceit in it all. He had a kind of idea that he had discovered something which it was creditable to have discovered, and that it was a very fine thing to have all these feelings for, and sympathies with, “the masses,” and to believe in democracy, and “glorious humanity,” and “a good time coming,” and I know not what other big matters. And, although it startled and pained him at first to hear himself called ugly names, which he had hated and despised from his youth up, and to know that many of his old acquaintances looked upon him, not simply as a madman, but as a madman with snobbish3 proclivities4; yet, when the first plunge5 was over, there was a good deal on the other hand which tickled6 his vanity, and was far from being unpleasant.
To do him justice, however, the disagreeables were[159] such that, had there not been some genuine belief at the bottom, he would certainly have been headed back very speedily into the fold of political and social orthodoxy. As it was, amidst the cloud of sophisms, and platitudes7, and big one-sided ideas half-mastered, which filled his thoughts and overflowed8 in his talk, there was growing in him and taking firmer hold on him daily a true and broad sympathy for men as men, and especially for poor men as poor men, and a righteous and burning hatred9 against all laws, customs, or notions, which, according to his light, either were or seemed to be setting aside, or putting anything else in the place of, or above the man. It was with him the natural outgrowth of the child’s and boy’s training (though his father would have been much astonished to be told so), and the instincts of those early days were now getting rapidly set into habits and faiths, and becoming a part of himself.
In this stage of his life, as in so many former ones, Tom got great help from his intercourse10 with Hardy11, now the rising tutor of the college. Hardy was travelling much the same road himself as our hero, but was somewhat further on, and had come into it from a different country, and through quite other obstacles. Their early lives had been so different; and, both by nature and from long and severe self-restraint and discipline, Hardy was much the less impetuous and demonstrative of the two. He did not rush out, therefore (as Tom was too much inclined to do), the moment he had seized[160] hold of the end of a new idea which he felt to be good for him and what he wanted, and brandish12 it in the face of all comers, and think himself a traitor13 to the truth if he wasn’t trying to make everybody he met with eat it. Hardy, on the contrary, would test his new idea, and turn it over, and prove it as far as he could, and try to get hold of the whole of it, and ruthlessly strip off any tinsel or rose-pink sentiment with which it might happen to be mixed up.
Often and often did Tom suffer under this severe method, and rebel against it, and accuse his friend, both to his face and in his own secret thought, of coldness, and want of faith, and all manner of other sins of omission14 and commission. In the end, however, he generally came round, with more or less of rebellion, according to the severity of the treatment, and acknowledged that, when Hardy brought him down from riding the high horse, it was not without good reason, and that the dust in which he was rolled was always most wholesome15 dust.
For instance, there was no phrase more frequently in the mouths of the party of progress than “the good cause.” It was a fine big-sounding phrase, which could be used with great effect in perorations16 of speeches at the union, and was sufficiently17 indefinite to be easily defended from ordinary attacks, while it saved him who used it the trouble of ascertaining18 accurately19 for himself or settling for his hearers what it really did mean.[161] But, however satisfactory it might be before promiscuous20 audiences, and so long as vehement21 assertion or declaration was all that was required to uphold it, this same “good cause” was liable to come to much grief when it had to get itself defined. Hardy was particularly given to persecution22 on this subject, when he could get Tom, and, perhaps, one or two others, in a quiet room by themselves. While professing23 the utmost sympathy for “the good cause,” and a hope as strong as theirs that all its enemies might find themselves suspended to lamp-posts as soon as possible, he would pursue it into corners from which escape was most difficult, asking it and its supporters what it exactly was, and driving them from one cloud-land to another, and from “the good cause” to the “people’s cause,” “the cause of labor,” and other like troublesome definitions, until the great idea seemed to have no shape or existence any longer even in their own brains.
But Hardy’s persecution, provoking as it was for the time, never went to the undermining of any real conviction in the minds of his juniors, or the shaking of anything which did not need shaking, but only helped them to clear their ideas and brains as to what they were talking and thinking about, and gave them glimpses—soon clouded over again, but most useful, nevertheless—of the truth, that there were a good many knotty24 questions to be solved before a man could be quite sure that he had found out the way to set the world[162] thoroughly25 to rights, and heal all the ills that flesh is heir to.
Hardy treated another of his friend’s most favorite notions even with less respect than this one of “the good cause.” Democracy, that “universal democracy,” which their favorite author had recently declared to be “an inevitable26 fact of the days in which we live,” was, perhaps, on the whole the pet idea of the small section of liberal young Oxford27, with whom Tom was now hand and glove. They lost no opportunity of worshipping it, and doing battle for it; and, indeed, did most of them very truly believe that that state of the world which this universal democracy was to bring about and which was coming no man could say how soon, was to be in fact that age of peace and good-will which men had dreamt of in all times, when the lion should lie down with the kid, and nation should not vex28 nation any more.
After hearing something to this effect from Tom on several occasions, Hardy cunningly lured29 him to his rooms on the pretence30 of talking over the prospects31 of the boat club, and then, having seated him by the fire, which he himself proceeded to assault gently with the poker32, propounded suddenly to him the question:
“Brown, I should like to know what you mean by ‘democracy?’”
Tom at once saw the trap into which he had fallen, and made several efforts to break away, but unsuccessfully;[163] and, being seated to a cup of tea, and allowed to smoke, was then and there grievously oppressed, and mangled33, and sat upon, by his oldest and best friend. He took his ground carefully, and propounded only what he felt sure that Hardy himself would at once accept—what no man of any worth could possibly take exception to. “He meant much more,” he said, “than this; but for the present purpose it would be enough for him to say that, whatever else it might mean, democracy in his mouth always meant that every man should have a share in the government of his country.”
Hardy, seeming to acquiesce34, and making a sudden change in the subject of their talk, decoyed his innocent guest away from the thought of democracy for a few minutes, by holding up to him the flag of hero-worship, in which worship Tom was, of course, a sedulous35 believer. Then, having involved him in most difficult country, his persecutor36 opened fire upon him from masked batteries of the most deadly kind, the guns being all from the armory37 of his own prophets.
“You long for the rule of the ablest man, everywhere, at all times? To find your ablest man, and then give him power, and obey him—that you hold to be about the highest act of wisdom which a nation can be capable of?”
“Yes; and you know you believe that too, Hardy, just as firmly as I do.”
“I hope so. But then, how about our universal[164] democracy, and every man having a share in the government of his country?”
Tom felt that his flank was turned; in fact, the contrast of his two beliefs had never struck him vividly38 before, and he was consequently much confused. But Hardy went on tapping a big coal gently with the poker, and gave him time to recover himself and collect his thoughts.
“I don’t mean, of course, that every man is to have an actual share in the government,” he said at last.
“But every man is somehow to have a share; and, if not an actual one, I can’t see what the proposition comes to.”
“I call it having a share in the government when a man has share in saying who shall govern him.”
“Well, you’ll own that’s a very different thing. But, let’s see; will that find our wisest governor for us—letting all the foolishest men in the nation have a say as to who he is to be?”
“Come now, Hardy, I’ve heard you say that you are for manhood suffrage39.”
“That’s another question; you let in another idea there. At present we are considering whether the vox populi is the best test for finding your best man. I’m afraid all history is against you.”
“That’s a good joke. Now, there I defy you, Hardy.”
“Begin at the beginning, then, and let us see.”
“I suppose you’ll say, then, that the Egyptian and[165] Babylonian empires were better than the little Jewish republic.”
“Republic! well, let that pass. But I never heard that the Jews elected Moses, or any of the judges.”
“Well, never mind the Jews; they’re an exceptional case: you can’t argue from them.”
“I don’t admit that. I believe just the contrary. But go on.”
“Well, then, what do you say to the glorious Greek republics, with Athens at the head of them?”
“I say that no nation ever treated their best men so badly. I see I must put on a lecture in Aristophanes for your special benefit. Vain, irritable40, shallow, suspicious old Demus, with his two oboli in his cheek, and doubting only between Cleon and the sausage-seller, which he shall choose for his wisest man—not to govern, but to serve his whims41 and caprices. You must call another witness, I think.”
“But that’s a caricature.”
“Take the picture, then, out of Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon, how you will—you won’t mend the matter much. You shouldn’t go so fast, Brown; you won’t mind my saying so, I know. You don’t get clear in your own mind before you pitch into every one who comes across you, and so do your own side (which I admit is mostly the right one) more harm than good.”
Tom couldn’t stand being put down so summarily, and fought over the ground from one country to another,[166] from Rome to the United States, with all the arguments he could muster42, but with little success. That unfortunate first admission of his, he felt it throughout, like a mill-stone round his neck, and could not help admitting to himself, when he left, that there was a good deal in Hardy’s concluding remark: “You’ll find it rather a tough business to get your ‘universal democracy,’ and ‘government by the wisest,’ to pull together in one coach.”
Notwithstanding all such occasional reverses and cold baths, however, Tom went on strengthening himself in his new opinions, and maintaining them with all the zeal43 of a convert. The shelves of his bookcase, and the walls of his room, soon began to show signs of the change which was taking place in his ways of looking at men and things. Hitherto a framed engraving44 of George III. had hung over his mantel-piece; but early in this, his third year, the frame had disappeared for a few days, and when it reappeared, the solemn face of John Milton looked out from it, while the honest monarch45 had retired46 into a portfolio47. A facsimile of Magna Charta soon displaced a large colored print of “A Day with the Pycheley;” and soon afterwards the death-warrant of Charles I., with its grim and resolute48 rows of signatures and seals, appeared on the wall in a place of honor, in the neighborhood of Milton.
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1
boisterous
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| adj.喧闹的，欢闹的 | |
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2
propounded
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| v.提出（问题、计划等）供考虑[讨论]，提议( propound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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snobbish
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| adj.势利的，谄上欺下的 | |
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proclivities
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| n.倾向，癖性( proclivity的名词复数 ) | |
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plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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tickled
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| （使）发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）愉快，逗乐 | |
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7
platitudes
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| n.平常的话，老生常谈，陈词滥调( platitude的名词复数 )；滥套子 | |
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8
overflowed
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| 溢出的 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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10
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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brandish
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| v.挥舞，挥动；n.挥动，挥舞 | |
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traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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omission
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| n.省略，删节；遗漏或省略的事物，冗长 | |
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15
wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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16
perorations
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| n.（演说等的）结束语，结论( peroration的名词复数 )；夸夸其谈的演说 | |
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17
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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18
ascertaining
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| v.弄清，确定，查明( ascertain的现在分词 ) | |
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accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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promiscuous
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| adj.杂乱的，随便的 | |
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vehement
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| adj.感情强烈的；热烈的；(人)有强烈感情的 | |
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persecution
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| n. 迫害,烦扰 | |
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professing
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| 声称( profess的现在分词 )； 宣称； 公开表明； 信奉 | |
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24
knotty
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| adj.有结的，多节的，多瘤的，棘手的 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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26
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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28
vex
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| vt.使烦恼，使苦恼 | |
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29
lured
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| 吸引，引诱（lure的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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30
pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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32
poker
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| n.扑克；vt.烙制 | |
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33
mangled
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| vt.乱砍（mangle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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34
acquiesce
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| vi.默许，顺从，同意 | |
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35
sedulous
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| adj.勤勉的，努力的 | |
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36
persecutor
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| n. 迫害者 | |
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37
armory
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| n.纹章，兵工厂，军械库 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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39
suffrage
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| n.投票，选举权，参政权 | |
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40
irritable
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| adj.急躁的；过敏的；易怒的 | |
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41
WHIMS
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| 虚妄，禅病 | |
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42
muster
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| v.集合，收集，鼓起，激起；n.集合，检阅，集合人员，点名册 | |
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43
zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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44
engraving
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| n.版画；雕刻（作品）；雕刻艺术；镌版术v.在（硬物）上雕刻（字，画等）( engrave的现在分词 )；将某事物深深印在（记忆或头脑中） | |
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45
monarch
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| n.帝王，君主，最高统治者 | |
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46
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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47
portfolio
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| n.公事包；文件夹；大臣及部长职位 | |
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48
resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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