John Henry Raleigh
THE "TRUTH"
I
There are two mysteries in human life, history and per–
sonality, and they are both studied and comprehended in two anti–
thetical ways: either by the intuitive generalization or by a detailed
study, either the forest at a glance or a tree by tree examination.
The time-honored, everyday, pragmatic way of reading character is
to do it at a glance. In Santayana's words:
It is a mark of the connoisseur to be able to read character and habit
and to divine at a glance all a creature's potentialities. The sort of
penetration characterized the man with an eye for horse-flesh, the dog–
fancier, and men and women of the world.
But the intuitive glance of the connoisseur cannot tell the whole
story, any more than the telling historical generalization can com–
prehend the all of an historical situation. Personality is doubly mysti–
fying because, unlike history, it is a consciousness itself and more
often than not a dishonest one. Santayana continues:
\
If
Rousseau, for instance, after writing those Confessions in which
candor and ignorance of self are equally conspicuous, had heard some
intelligent friend, like Hume, draw up in a few words an account of
this author's true and contemptible character, he would have been loud
in protestations that no such ignoble characteristics existed in his elo–
quent consciousness.
No one has ever been able to tell the truth about himself. Practically
all human lives have too much that is trivial and much that is too
mean to bear telling by their perpetrator. Goethe said he could not
bear to write his own autobiography, and he was right. St. Augus–
tine's treatment of his concubine, by whom he had a son, was shabby.
John Stuart Mill's treatment of his mother and sisters, in the affair
of Mrs. Taylor, was deplorable, but neither of those "Saints"-the
Saint of the Catholic Church and the "Saint of Rationalism"- could
