Welsh Journals

THE MEANING OF BROAD- MINDEDNESS THE majority of men in all ages have been governed by catch-words and catch-phrases, for they save thought, and thought at all times is a most unpopular form of exercise with the help of half-a-dozen catch-words it is possible to sail through conversation for an almost unlimited time mechanically you become a sort of penny-in-the-slot machine with appropriate phrases always waiting for their in- tellectual pennies. But the words and phrases change time-snobbery sees to that; they must be more or less up-to-date; we must seem, at any rate, to be in the movement, for it is far harder to run counter to intellectual fashion of the moment than it is to disregard such minor conventions as dress and good form. At the present time, however, we seem to be at one of the changing periods; new words and phrases will doubtless arise to hold us in their intellectual bondage, but while those fetters are being forged we are hastily dropping the old ones. Some, indeed, have so completely disappeared as to seem now almost prehistoric. The eighties and the nineties of the last century are as dead as Queen Anne; indeed, I am not sure that Swift is not far nearer to the present time than The Yellow Book," or Pope than Edwin Arnold. Just think for one moment of the phrases which ruled that period art for art's sake (which belonged to the eighties and nineties in England though its genesis in France was of course much earlier) will hardly find a single defender; fin de siecle has naturally disappeared, and fortunately much that it stood for; the religion of science has turned out to be a myth; the apostles of free-thought have failed to show wherein they are essentially freer than those who believe in the older and more authentic dogmas our pride in efficiency" with Tommy Atkins showing the less favoured nations how to keep their arms in order, and that terrible spirit that held sway among the Philistines and found its perfect form in the swagger of Let'em all come," these lie buried in South Africa, and their resurrection, we may hope, will never come; and finally the meaning that was attached to broad-mindedness in that distant age is gradually, though very slowly, dis- appearing. I say the meaning that was attached to it, for the purpose of this essay is to attempt to show the real meaning of that word, and to rescue it if possible from the odour which still clings to it. We all know the man who, in the midst of some dis- cussion, interposes the remark that we're all broad- minded now-a-days, or that as for him he doesn't care what a man believes, so long as he does what's right, or, worse than all, who always insists on tacking on the little preposition for" to the adjective "true." Let us examine those three statements, and see if we can arrive thereby at all that the word broad- mindedness" ought not to mean. Take the first remark it will carry us some of the way. We want to find out what that word signifies to him. Seeing that he has uttered it at a moment of discussion, it usually seems to imply something like this I know you two disagree on this point, but can't you shelve your differences, can't you recognise that every man has a right to his opinion, and therefore (the hiatus in the argument is not mine but his) they are surely equally legitimate, even equally right? No man has the right to say that his point of view, which may be true enough for him, should annihilate another's." He seems to mean by broad-mindedness either a state of mind where nothing matters vitally, or a state of mind of complete hotch-potch, where irreconcilables can live together peaceably, not because the miracle of reconcilement has been worked, but because the need for it has not been recognised. He seems to think that broad-minded- ness consists in not making up one's mind, in sitting on the fence, in the refusal to follow one's opinions to their logical conclusions. He will usually end by adding there are two sides to every question, to which one sometimes feels inclined to answer angrily Yes, a right side and a wrong." And seriously, if this is what broad-mindedness means, then is it's very essence of the devil, for it leads inevitably to an attitude of laisser faire. And that brings us to the man who says that he doesn't mind what you believe so long as you do what's right, for he forgets entirely that what a man believes, that he becomes. The man who is continually saying that nothing matters comes in time to act on his beliefs, just as the man who believes in persecution, in time and if given the chance, becomes a persecutor, or the man who believes completely in searching for new sensations and following every impulse becomes a decadent. And as for the last man, the man who says a thing is "true for" — have never been able to understand what he means by true that word for" always seems to me to cancel out the word true"