WHAT IS A GENTLEMAN?

Evening Star, Issue 20422, 1 March 1930, Page 20

WHAT IS A GENTLEMAN?

DEAN INGE'S ANALYSIS The ideal of an English gentleman (said Dean Inge, in a recent address) has been for centuries the lay religion, the week-day religion of a great part of our nation; and it embodies those qualities which are most distinctive ot our national -character. The only unpardonable am in Lug land is to be a cad; that m to say fji fall short of a standard of honour to f whi(ffi all gentlemen have to conidea is so sacred to ns that wa don’t like to talk about it, or to it, and it seems almost mdqlicata to drag it out. If we lose this we lose the sheet anchor of our natioMt character; we lose what, for -“g Englishmen, is the religion of them heart, whatever other colours they; wear on their sleeve. THE ONLY pride JUSTIFIABLE, What are the essentials of a gently man I ask? Is gentle birth one on them? The whole cult of old families is perhaps rather absurd. At any raW it has decayed very rapidly m thelastf 100 years. From the eugemc poms o® view, which, is the only bHjK* ox t 7\ pride than can be justified by wawnj the best families are probably those which constitute a kind $ aristocracy—names like Darwin, ridge Wordsworth, Pollock, Napiery, and in scholarship Butler and Kcff Health will not find many de&m* ers, but fine manners are certainly ingredient, though we should dirtfcw suish between mere fashionable tncts of behaviour which are the cactet ej belonging to a select circle from i tM real good breeding, which is found i* every class that is content to be self. Vulgarity, not rusticity, * ttn opposite of good., manners. _ Much as I dislike most of Mr Bent? ard Shaw’s doctrines be has said on« good thing about work and gentility» « A gentleman is a man who tries notj to take out of life more than be P™* in.” • • This is a revolutionexy definition, but is strictly true to what, at heart, we all feel to be the character of a gentleman. The ideal has been sd distorted on this side that we cannot rub in this saying of B.earnard Shaw s too vigorously in training the young generation. ~ , , , . The moral qualities which belong to the English ideal axe truthfulness, courage, justice, and fair play, ana an abhorrence of meanness and crooked dealing, together with respect for the personality of all human be. ings as such. . Has a fine intellect any connection with our ideal? Most Englishmen will say “No.” There are still some survivals of the time when the feudal baron would have been ashamed to be able to write his name. This contempt for the intellectual side of Ufa is making the upper classes as such both useless under any conditions to the community, and helpless to keep their own position. It is a vulgar; mistake, it implies a want of sensibility to the higher values of life. The beefy fox hunter who never opens a book is a pathetic anachron* ism, only fit for a museum of fossils. It is on this side that our . upper classes’ ideal needs most vigorous criticism. . ... Anti-intelleotualism in our chief now tional failing. It has earned us the contempt and dislike ot other who cannot understand the success Q| a nation which seems to them halfbarbarous on one side. • . . No doubt the apparent stupidity o? the Englishmen is a useful camouflage He looks like a fool, and talks like a fool, but when he has his back to the wall he wakes up to some pur. pose. But it is not a thing to be proud of, and. it has very nearly ruined us again and again. There seems to bo a notion in our minds that cleverness and knavery w-a near akin. We must 'learn from democracy the truth wluch it has to teach us, that every human being has personal rights wmch must not be violated. WASTING- AN HONEST DAY’S WORK.

The Englishman accepts social difi* erences, he knows that they are accldental, and that at the bottom 0 man’s a man for all that. The old idea that a gentleman should fling money about needs correction. We all ought to think before spending 10s. This is a fair ,wage for an honest day’s work, and if I waste it, I am wasting some nine hours of the sweat and brain of an average good workman. . Have I a right to waste it, and wuat shall I have to show for having had the disposal of it? We want our sons to be trained to be men of honour, truthful, courteous, and fair-minded, to respect the personality of all with whom they come in contact, to pay their way through life by putting into the common stock as good values as they take out of it, and to be glad if they are nblo to put in a little more than they took out. We want them to have healthy, bodies and healthy minds, with a certain grace and beautv and distinction physical, mental, and moral. Liberal education must be disinterested, with r no ulterior motive behind. We may divide all the value* ofi human life into two classes. One ekes consists of all the good things which’ religion calls worldly, sensuous, plea-: sure, luxury, accumulated money* honours, and the like. The character* istios or this class are that in it .one man’s gain is another man’s loss. iripte the possession of them is exclusive* that they are strictly limited in qnaa* tity and they perish in the that they are detachable from K*e4» owner without his choice. The other class consists of spmwig goods—the goods of the moral will Os the intellect, and of, the aesthetic* sense. The characteristics of these ate exactly opposite to those of the other class. They are actually increased sharing them, they are unlimited la quantity, they do not perish in the using, and they are so intimately bound up with the personality of mm who has acquired them that they cannot be taken away from him. THE REAL TEST. The expansion of u personality the widening and deepening or the sympathies seems to me to be the rear test of liberal education. It cuts at the root of all vulgarity. We know the various types of tans uu pleasing vice—the boro who always talks of himself, the proud, sensitive man, the gossip, the slave of fasnion, the man or woman of one idea, the religious bigot, the violent and unbalanced faddist, the characteristic product of Anglo-Saxon civilisation. The reallv well-educated man is never tempted to fall in to them. These vulgarities are crowded out by better things. It does not matter so very much what is taught, but it matters a great deal what is ieamt.