THE BENEFICENT COMPARISON.

Otago Witness, Issue 3348, 15 May 1918, Page 54

THE BENEFICENT COMPARISON.

(The Spectator.) ! It is a common cause of thankfulness that there are people worse off than ourselves. So accustomed are we to hearing people give thanks upon this score that it is only in our more cynical moments that the logical import of their words strikes us. In theory the point of view ! is an odious one, but in practice how i could we get on without the help of the beneficent comparison? The inevitable conditions of life are rendered more acceptable by it. It is wretched to be getting older at such a pace and so unceasinglv. Now and then -we are all greatly depressed by the thought, and probably we all find a certain relief in thinking of some particular friend who is older still. We wish him no harm. If there were any chance of his finding the secret of youth, we should not stand in his way. All the same, if he found it, one of the thoughts which console us in our advance towards decay would be gone. We do not want him to get old; we only want him to prove to us that we are still young. We compare ourselves with him and take comfort. Very much the same thing is true of health. Sup- : pose we have some very small ordeal to go through, such as having a tooth out, and are feeling depressed by the consideration of our little woe. If we hear of someone who has lately resigned himself with undaunted courage to some far more serious ordeal, we cease to be afraid. The comparison between his case and our own restores us to equanimity. It is difficult to say why. It is not only that we are ashamed to fume outwardly, we do not fume inwardly. Some sort of a suggestion-cure has been worked upon our nerves. Some spring of thankfulness has been unloosed in oiir souls by a process of reasoning which rve cannot follow. Very much the same thing is true where poverty is concerned —so long only as it does not go too far. It is of no use to a man who has lost half his income to reflect that all things are a matter of ! comparison. He might as well seek relief i from financial care in trying to grasp the Kantian doctrine of the Ding an sich. But if his next-door neighbour has lost three-quarters of his incony, he does, without the least ill-nature, feel a little better able to bear up. The process of i his reasoning is again impossible to find out, but it is certainly not just Schadenfreude, though perhaps the best imaginable character would not feel it. Pity for his neighbour would overcome the thought of himself. As it is, if he is a decent man, he does not feel the slightest pleasure in another man’s misfortune, but the sight of«st instantly reduces the volume of his self-pity. That his conscience is not iniured by the acceptance of this relief is obvious, because it is one which he will instantly offer to his child. “Come, cheer up ! Look how much worse off poor So-and-so is,” ho will say, without a thought that he is giving a -wrong turn to the boy’s imagination. More often than not the beneficent comparison will dry any tears that are not really bitter. Needless to say, where real grief is concerned, even the real griefs of childhood, such distractions are vain. Real griefs, however, are few, and their consolations fewer. That is no reason why wo should not be unfeignedly pleased with the many small considerations which make the crowd of small ills endurable. There are moments when all those who are not conceited fools groan under the burden of their own stupidity. They go about their work day after day for a long time together with a sense that they are bringing to it no insight, no spark of originality. They are working without pleasure and with, bad result. To see a fellow-workman, especially if he is, as a rule, a better man than themselves, in

the same case will often lift the cloud. Here, again, we suppose the depression arises from self-pity, whose only antidote would seem to be pity for someone else. There is another form of conscious stupidity from which the sight of worse

stupidity removes the sting. The fact that he has ''said the wrong thing," hurt someone's feelings, showed himself in a ridiculous or a contemptible light, will weigh upon a man (and still more upon a woman) for days. There is no denying that to see another person whom he realises to be quite as clever, dignified, or good-hearted as himself do the same thing will cause him to forget his own vexation. It is mere superficial cynicism to say that he takes pleasure in the social smart his friends is swearing about. He is more sorry for him than he could be if he had not just been through the same discomfort himself. At the same time his self-concentration is dissipated, and he goes heme in better spirits and can laugh at both mishaps. How far it is reprehensible to take comfort in remorse from the thought of someone who has done worse is a difficult question. Here we suppose the effect of comparison ceases to be. beneficent, from the point of view of the moralist at any rate. For all that, if we could not make it, the punishment might seem greater than we could bear. This is surely true whether it is a truth whose moral effect is good or bad. Of course every frank man knows that there are scores and thousands of people worse than himself, but that is one of the generalisations which are absolutely ineffectual. To know ourselves the worst of our intimates would be a hellish situation, yet none of us is so wicked as to desire that anyone else should be worse than he need be. For his own part, the present writer has always thought that to be least in the Kingdom of Heaven would not be an altogether blissful position, and, considering the persons for whom it was suggested, it has always seemed to him that it was not intended to be. On the whole, however, we must admit that longing for companions in guilt is indefensible, just as envy of the mental peace of very good people is the only justifiable form of envy.

We do, though, seriously think that to obtain a little comfort from the thought of those worse off than ourselves is less represensible than to allow the thought of those better off to make us miserable. The sort of comparison which produces envy, though "it must needs be that offences come," is certainly more nearly odious than the other in its result upon conduct. Human nature, however, is not logical. A few very good people can rejoice in- a friend's success and work for it who at the same time feel personally discouraged bv it when it is attained. This sort of discouragement, even though thev themselves may call it envy, is often connected with a root of humility in their hearts. They are not in the least inclined to detract from the other man's talent, but the fact that it is forced upon their notice increases the poor opinion that they have of their own. It is always sad to have littleness than we should like—whether we speak of a material or a spiritual fortune. We have all felt a certain discouragement in the presence of an absolutely certain faith. Very few people like to sav this, and even avoid all mention of uncertainty lest they shouM pro-

voke it in others. The present -writer has often thought that if preachers were mere frank in this matter they would have more hearers. They discourage by an assumption of courage. But there is, however, an envy for which no defence can bo made. The person who is put off a childish and wholly innocent, if occasionally ridiculous, pleasure in his own possessions by the sight of someone else s finer wares or who looks always tor worse qualities in the better off, is either a very unwise or a very unjust man. His only course is to regard comparison as a temptation, or, acknowledging his weakness, to compare himself diligently with the less lucky as a deliberate moral antidote. Many antidotes are in themselves poisonous, it is true. This one which we have called the beneficent comparison, however, has, wo think, fewpractical ill-effects. But, it may be said, surely a true independence should free us all both from envy and from all sense of relief in the contemplation of the illluck and shortcomings of others. The argument is unanswerable. We can only plead against it that such independence will never be common till we get rid of a fear which is as natural to man as the fear of death itself, and that is the fear of isolation. Both dreads are part and parcel of human nature, and can never be eradicated.