Human Nature - An Essay

William Lyon Phelps

• Publisher: White Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781473329331
• eBook ISBN: 9781473362130
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mind & Body in Philosophy
• Index: Psychology

This early work by William Lyon Phelps was originally published in 1931 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Human Nature' is an essay about the curiosities of human nature referenced to well-known authors. William Lyon Phelps was born on 2nd January 1865, in New Haven, Conneticut, United States. Phelps earned a B.A. in 1887, writing his thesis on the Idealism of George Berkeley. He then gained an M.A. in 1891 from Yale and his PhD from Harvard in the same year. During his time a Yale, he offered a course in modern novels which brought the university considerable attention both nationally and internationally. Phelps published many essays on modern and European literature, including titles such as 'Essays on Modern Novelists' (1910), 'Some Makers of American Literature' (1923), and 'As I Like it' (1923).

HUMAN NATURE

WHEN I WAS EIGHT years old and was spending a week-end visiting my Aunt Libby Linsley, at her home in Stratford on the Housatonic, a middle-aged man called one evening, and after a polite skirmish with my aunt, he devoted his attention to me. At that time I happened to be excited about boats, and the visitor discussed the subject in a way that seemed to me particu­larly interesting. After he left, I spoke of him with enthusiasm. What a man! And how tremendously inter­ested in boats! My aunt informed me he was a New York lawyer; that he cared nothing whatever about boats­took not the slightest interest in the subject. “But why then did he talk all the time about boats?” “Because he is a gentleman. He saw you were interested in boats, and he talked about the things he knew would inter­est and please you. He made himself agreeable.” I never forgot my aunt’s remark.

Like many boys of my time, I learned about religion and morality from my mother, and about etiquette, clothes, and the ways of the world from my aunt. For some reason vir­gin aunts were always more worldly minded than mothers.

On this occasion Aunt Libby made clear the difference between a gentle­man and a bore. A gentleman puts his companions or guests or casual ac­quaintances at their ease; he is con­siderate; he has tact; he draws out the contents of the other man’s mind, and thus enables him to appear at his best. A bore talks only about the things that interest him himself; he has lit­tle perception of the impression he is making, or of the actual state of mind of his victim.

Perhaps the final test of a gentleman is his attitude toward children. I wonder if all men remember as vivid­ly as I do the occasions when grown­up people treated us neither with contempt nor with indifference nor with what is worse, grinning conde­scension-I’ And how is my little man today?”-but with unassumed re­spect. The few occasions in my child­hood when strangers treated me with courtesy produced an indelible im­pression.

In conversation, the time and the place and the subject should harmo­nise. There are talkers who have a positive genius for the inopportune.

Not so many years ago, as I was leav­ing my house to walk to the Yale-Harvard football game, I met a man I knew only slightly, who insisted on discussing literature all the way to the arena of combat. There were the streets crowded with an excited throng, all-except my friend thinking of only one thing; in the midst of this joyous, laughing, noisy multitude, this man wished to know what I thought of the contemporary condition of American poetry.

The relative importance of poetry and football had nothing to do with the occasion. As humour is out of place at a funeral, so a discussion of literature is out of place at the great game of the year. A man’s soul is of more importance than a trivial engagement; but if a zealous evan­gelist stops a man running to catch a train to enquire about his salvation, it is probable he will miss both.

A...

Table of contents

• William Lyon Phelps
• HUMAN NATURE