现代大学英语精读第四册 6b

　　Corn-pone 1 Opinions Mark Twain

Fifty years ago, when I was a boy of fifteen and helping 2 to inhabit a Missourian village on the banks of the Mississippi, I had a friend whose society was very dear to me because I was forbidden by my mother to partake of it. He was a gay and impudent 3 and satirical and delightful 4 young black man-a slave-who daily preached sermons from the top of his master’s woodpile, with me for sole audience. He imitated the pulpit style of the several clergymen of the village, and did it well, and with fine passion and energy. To me he was a wonder. I believed he was the greatest orator 6 in the United States and would some day be heard rom. But it did not happen; in the distribution of rewards he was overlooked. It is the way, in this world.

He interrupted his preaching, now and then, to saw a stick of wood; but the sawing was pretense-he did it with his mouth; exactly imitating the sound the bucksaw makes in shrieking 7 its way through the wood. But it served its purpose; it kept his master from coming out to see how the work was getting along. I listened to the sermons from the open window of a lumber 8 room at the back the house. One of his texts was this:

“You tell me what a man gits his corn pone, en I’ll tell you what his ’pinions is.”

I can never forget it. It was deeply impressed upon me. By my mother. Not upon my memory, but elsewhere. She had slipped in upon me while I was absorbed and not watching. The black philosopher’s idea was that a man is not independent, and cannot afford vies which might interfere 9 with his bread and butter. It he would prosper 10, he must train with the majority; in matters of large moment, like politics and religion, he must think and feel with the bulk of his neighbors, or suffer damage in his social standing 11 and in his business prosperities. He must get his opinions from other people; he must reason out none for himself; he must have no first-hand views.

I think Jerry was right, in the main, but I think he did not go far enough.

1. It was his idea that a man conforms to the majority view of his locality by calculation and intention.

2. it was his idea that there is such a thing as a first-hand opinion; an original opinion; an opinion which is coldly reasoned out in a man’s head, by a searching analysis of the facts involved, with the heart unconsulted, and the jury room closed against outside influences. It may be that such an opinion has been born somewhere, at some time or other, but I suppose it got away before they t could catch it and stuff it and put it in the museum.

I am persuaded that a coldly-thought-out and independent verdict upon a fashion in clothes, or manners, or literature, or politics, or religions, or any other matter that is projected into the field of our notice and interest, is a most rare thing-if it had indeed ever existed.

A new thing in costume appears-the flaring 12 hoopskirt, for example-and the passers by are shocked, and the irreverent laugh. Six months later everybody is reconciled; the fashion has established itself; it is admired, now and no one laughs. Public opinion resented it before, public opinion accepts it now, and is happy in it. Why? Was the resentment 13 reasoned out? Was the acceptance reasoned out? No. the instinct that moves to conformity 14 did the work. It is our nature to conform; it is a force which not many can successfully resist. What is its seat? The inborn 15 requirement of self-approval. We all have to bow to that; there are no exceptions. Even the woman who refuses from first to last to wear the hoopskirt comes under that law and is its slave; she could not wear the skirt and have her own approval; and that she must have, she cannot help herself. But as a rule our self-approval has its source in but one place and not elsewhere-the approval of other people. A person of vast consequences can introduce any kind of novelty in dress and the general world will presently adopt it-moved to do it, in the first place, by the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority, and in the second place by the human instinct to train with the multitude and have its approval. An empress introduced the hoopskirt,and we know the result. A nobody introduced the bloomer, and we know the result. If eve should come again, in her ripe renown 16, and reintroduce her quaint 17 styles-well, we know what would happen. And we should be cruelly embarrassed, at least at first.

The hoopskirt runs its course and disappears. Nobody reasons about it. One woman abandons the fashion; her neighbor notices this and follows her lead; this influences the next woman; and so on and so on, and presently the skirt has vanished out of the world, no one knows how nor why, nor cares, for that matter. It will come again by and by and in due course will go again.

Twenty-five years ago, in England, six or eight wine glasses stood grouped by each person’s plate at a dinner party, and they were used, not left idle and empty; today there are but three or four in the group, and the average guest sparingly uses about two of them. We have not adopted this new fashion yet, but we shall do it presently. We shall not think it out; we shall merely conform, and let it go at that. We get our notions and habits and opinions from outside influences; we do not have to study them out.

Our table manners and company manners, and street manners change from time to time, but the changes are not reasoned out; we merely notice and conform. We are creatures of outside influences; as a rule we do not think, we only imitate. We cannot invent standards that will stick; what we mistake for standards are only fashions, and perishable 18. We may continue to admire them, but we drop the use of them. We notice this in literature. Shakespeare is a standard, and fifty years ago we used to write tragedies which we couldn’t tell from-from somebody else’s; but we don’t do it any more, now. Our prose standard, three quarters of a century ago, was ornate and diffuse 19; some authority or other changed it in the direction of compactness and simplicity 20, and conformity followed, without argument. The historical novel starts up suddenly, and sweeps the land. Everybody writes one, and the nation is glad. We had historical novels before; but nobody read them, and rest of us conformed-without reasoning it out. We are conforming in the other way, now, because it is another case of everybody.

The outside influences are always pouring in upon us, and we are always obeying their orders and accepting their verdicts. The smiths like the new play; the joneses go to see it, and they copy the smith verdict. Morals, religions, politics, get their following from surrounding influences and atmospheres, almost entirely 21; not from study, not from thinking. A man must and will have his own approval first of all, in each and every moment and circumstance of his life-even if he must repent 22 of a self-approved act the moment after its commission, in order to get is self-approval again: but, speaking in general terms, a man’s self-approval in the large concern of life has its source in the approval of the people about him, and not in a searching personal examination of the matter. Mohammedans are Mohammedans because they are born and reared among the sect 23, not because they have thought it out and can furnish sound reasons for being Mohammedans; we know why Catholics are Catholics; why Presbyterians are Presbyterian; why Baptists are Baptists; why Mormons are Mormons; why thieves are thieves; why monarchists are monarchists; why republicans are republicans and Democrats 24, Democrats. We know it is a matter of association and sympathy, not reasoning and examination; that hardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, politics, or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, corn-pone stands for self-approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is conformity. Sometimes conformity has a sordid 25 business interest-the bread and-butter interest-but not in the most cases. I think. I think that in the majority of cases it is unconscious and not calculated; that it is born of the human being’s natural yearning 26 to stand well with his fellows and have their inspiring approval and praise-a yearning which is commonly so strong and so insistent 27 that it cannot be effectually resisted, and must have its way.

A political emergency brings out the corn-pone opinion in fine force in its two chief varieties-the pocketbook variety, which has its origin in self-interest, and the bigger variety, the sentimental 28 variety-the one which can’t bear to be outside the pale; can’t bear to be in disfavor; can’t endure the averted 29 face and the cold shoulder; wants to stand well with his friends, wants to be smiled upon, wants to be welcome, wants to be hear the precious words, “He’s on the right track!”

Uttered, perhaps by an ass 5, but still an ass of high degree, an ass whose approval is gold and diamonds to a smaller ass, and confers glory and honor and happiness, and membership in the herd 30. For these gauds many a man will dump his life-long principles into the street, and his conscience along with them. We have seen it happen. In some millions of instances.

Men think they think upon great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side; they arrive at convictions, but they are drawn 31 from a partial view of the matter in hand and are of no particular value. They swarm 32 with their party, they feel with their party, they are happy in their party’s approval; and where the party leads they will follow, whether for right and honor, or through blood and dirt and a mush of mutilated morals.

In our late canvass 33 half of the nation passionately 34 believed that in silver lay salvation 35, the other half as passionately believed that that way lay destruction. Do you believe that a tenth part of the people, on either side, had any rational excuse for having an opinion about the matter at all? I studied that mighty 36 question to the bottom-came out empty. Half of our people passionately believe in high tariff,the other half believe otherwise. Does this mean study and examination, or only feeling? The latter, I think. I have deeply studied that question, too – and didn’t arrive. We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation 37 which we consider a boon 38. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence 39. It settles everything. Some think it the Voice of the God.