The Henson Journals

[30]

Monday, July 5th, 1926.

[']Swift has described his sentiments in the well–known passage of a letter to Pope, Sept. 29, 1725, written at the time of Gulliver's Travels: "I heartily hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, & so forth." Is there any reason to doubt Swift's honesty in this? And is this misanthropy? If it be misanthropy, is it a heart burning with hatred against the whole human race? Is not Swift's misanthropy really just the converse of philanthropy? The philanthropist, the friend of humanity, combines love of the whole human race with indifference to John, Peter, Thomas, & so forth. From these hustings I ask you to vote for the misanthrope.[']

W. P. Ker, Collected Essays, i, 82.

On the whole I give my vote for the misanthrope, if only because the luscious generality of philanthropists' charity tells so fatally on personal character, & on the standard of sincerity in public speaking. But democracy has no use for misanthropes. They are to it what Mordecai was to Haman, the embodied evidence of failure. For democracy abounds in philanthropy, and cares nothing for personal character, or for sincerity in its orators. Hence the invariable concentration in democracies of the amplest theories of cosmopolitan goodwill and the most cynical contempt for private rights. The one costs nothing; the other may cost much.

[31]

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Mr Harrison, the organ–builder from Durham, came to ascertain the right heraldic form of Langley's shield, which is to enter into the ornamentation of the school–chapel. After inspecting the shield in the Chapel, he conversed with me for a short time, & introduced me to his two sons, of whom one is in the navy, & the other is an Oxford undergraduate.

Macdonald formerly Vicar of Christ Church, West Hartlepool, came to see me, together with Hamilton, the present assistant–curate of the parish, & Mr Heseldon, the secretary of the Parochial Church Council. They stayed to tea.

Somebody has been at the pains of posting a cutting from some newspaper on to a post–card, & sending it to me. It is addressed in leaded type "To Dr Hensley Henson, alias Herbert Dunedin (sic), alias Bishop of Durham". It is sufficiently uncomplimentary, & would appear to be the work of a religious person, since it quotes scripture. The final paragraph runs thus: "You, my Lord, will go down to history as one of those by whom offences come, & of whom our Lord said: 'It were better for him that a mill–stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.'" It is, no doubt, a wholesome thing to see one's self as others see us; & yet, when I reflect that, if I had but vented a few canting platitudes about the miners' children &c &c, the author of this effusion would have exalted me as a very Saint of God. I cannot be much impressed by his denunciation. The misfortune of these Labour folk is that they are so wholly destitute of the power of self–criticism, that any divergence from their point of view seems to them the demonstration of moral turpitude. They exhibit the same kinds of fault as distinguish the baser types of religious fanatick. Hence the futility of attempting to argue with working men. They are swayed by instincts, not by ideas.

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