"O, the difference of man and man"
"I do not much dislike the matter,
But the manner of his speech"
Anthony and Cleopatra. Act 11.Sc11
Almost all of us are like chameleons in that we subtly take our colour from our surroundings. But we also take it in more decided manner from other people and we react accordingly, just as they do to us.
With one person we feel, perhaps, an immediate affinity oft-times even before they speak. But let another come and for no apparent reason, deep within us we feel a sudden, inexplicable animosity, bordering on actual hostility.
With one person we are relaxed and feel free to speak from the heart. We ring in sympathetic vibration and by some strange and wonderful alchemy they bring out the very best in us. Yet with another, we close up and grow watchful and defensive in their presence and become like Macbeth: "cabin'd, cribb'd and confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears."
And how would those two people later describe us to their friends. The one would surely say: "What a charming, friendly person - so open and warm". While the other?
"I have seldom met such a rude, arrogant and unpleasant person!"
Two totally different perspectives - both right - both wrong, and both partial one way or the other. Truly, as the proverb has it: "A landscape artist does not see the same tree as a carpenter".
But yet it really goes much deeper than this, and carries more far-reaching implications than mere differences of taste and of likes and dislikes. For suppose, as is very likely, the two people we have spoken of are writers or artists, judges or school teachers, politicians or film stars.
What then?
The amazing and devastating truth is that we can learn nothing, teach nothing, and do nothing when we are in the presence of someone for whom we feel an instinctive aversion or whose fundamental personality and outlook; whose basic way of thinking and feeling is not in complete harmony with our own.
Our genius is rebuked as Anthony's was said to be by Caesar Augustus. Even Jesus "could there do no mighty work because of their unbelief": a truly amazing remark.
And it just these very same atavistic and irrational responses that explain all the apparent inexplicables of everyday life; why, for example, x, though unworthy, gets promotion, while hard-working and reliable y plods along unrewarded and unrecognised; why a certain child in a maths class who is labelled an irredeemable dunce, will, for no apparent reason, suddenly blossom and top the class merely (and seemingly coincidentally!) because of a change of teachers - from an unsympathetic to a sympathetic one.
We love certain books, certain artists and composers, while others we cannot stand. And from those we dislike we will learn nothing - they have nothing to teach us be they ever so wise, sacred or erudite for "I do not much dislike the matter but the manner of his speech". They are books written in tongues that we do not understand, and something mysteriously blocks the channels through which knowledge and inspiration normally flows.
For deny it as strongly as we will, the truth is that however rational and objective our judgements appear to be on the surface, the actual content of them has already been fashioned deep-down inside ourselves long before. Something within us has already whispered: "I don't like him/her" or the contrary. It's always a case of "Your cow may graze in my field - yours mustn't even look over the hedge" - or as Shakespeare put it: "I have no other but a woman's reason: I think him so because I think him so". But it's not only women who think so. We all do.
Was not this same fundamental truth exposed by Aesop centuries ago:
"Last year you insulted me" said the wolf.
"It couldn't have been me, Mr Wolf. I wasn't even born then" pleaded the little lamb.
"Well, you drink from my stream and make the water muddy".
"Please, Mr Wolf, I still drink only my mother's milk".
Mr Wolf is irritated and angry, but at least he tells the truth in the end.
"You can say what you like: I'm going to eat you anyway".
That's Realpolotik in action.
Fundamentally, all the affairs of this world, from the smallest to the largest, be they parochial or national, are decided in such manner. Justice, reason and tolerance may all strenuously claim they reign, but dig deep and long enough and one eventually discovers that the power that really moves us is nothing other than our hidden likes and dislikes. As the Romans used to say: "De gustibus non est disputandum" - there is no arguing about likes and dislikes.
It is a wonder, is it not, that the study of these basic reactions and interactions - these compatibles and incompatibles - has not been raised to the level of THE science supreme, for seen in all its manifold ramifications, therein lies the key to the whole gamut of mans' puzzling and apparently inexplicable dealings with man.
"I do not like thee, Dr Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell,
But this I know and know full well,
I do not like thee Dr Fell".
However qualified for the post, I'm afraid Dr Fell is very unlikely to get it. "For some much watch, while some must sleep, so runs the world away."
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