A Man of the World
BY
ANNIE PAYSON CALL
Author of
"Power Through Repose," "As a Matter of Course,"
"The Freedom of Life"
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1906
Copyright, 1905,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved
Published October, 1905
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
A MAN of the WORLD
I
There are two worlds in the minds of men: the one is artificial,selfish, and personal, the other is real and universal; the one islimited, material, essentially of the earth, the other supposes a kindof larger cosmopolitanism, and has no geographical limits at all; it isas wide as humanity itself, and only bounded by the capacity for[Pg 2]experience, insight, and sympathy in the mind and heart of man. A trueman of the world, therefore, is not primarily of it,—a true man of theworld must know and understand the world; and in order to do so, heshould be able at any time to get it into perspective.
Charles Dickens says that by a man who knows the world is too frequentlyunderstood "a man who knows all the villains in it." It is of course, bygentlemen, also understood that a man who knows the world knows all itsmanners and customs, and can adapt himself to them easily and entirely,[Pg 3]wherever he may be. But this external polish does not preclude theidea, even among so-called well-bred men, that a man who knows the worldknows all the villains in it, and such a man may be more or less of avillain himself, provided he has the cleverness and the ingenuity tohide his villainy. To a certain extent the appearance of virtue has beenalways more or less of a necessity in the world, but the moral standardsin social, professional, and business life are inconsistent and mixed.Even in essentials the highest standards are often modified to suit thepreference of the majority. It is not always considered dishonorable for[Pg 4]a man to cheat in business, so long as the cheating is done withoutinterfering in any way with the general customs of the business world.
When we say that a man of the world is generally understood to be a manwho "knows all the villains in it," it seems at first sight an extremestatement, but as the world goes now, it certainly represents thegeneral tendency of thought. The distinction is too seldom made betweena man of the world and a worldly man,—between a man who really knowsthe world as it is and a man whose familiarity with it is narrow and[Pg 5]sordid. When people speak of "seeing life" they seldom mean seeing thebest of it.
The same tendency toward perversion, as being the more interesting phaseof life, is found among physicians and trained nurses. A good physicianonce told me, with pained indignation, that his students would go milesto see an abnormal growth of tumor, but not one of them would turnaround to enjoy the mechanism of a healthy heart. And it is a well-knownfact that many trained nurses will lose interest in a case the moment a[Pg 6]patient begins to recover. "A splendid case of typhoid fever" is, not acase in which the patient is throwing off the effects of the germ withwholesome promptness, but one in which th