4 December: Boreham on Dr Fell

Our Likes and Dislikes
As we approach the Christmas season, with its atmosphere of peace and goodwill, we are all secretly disturbed by the thought of the people whom we instinctively dislike. They are epitomised in Doctor Fell.

Doctor Fell is the natural representative of the people we instinctively dislike. We have nothing against them; we wish we had; it would act as a salve to our uneasy consciences. We should feel, in that case, that we were justified in detesting them. But these people have done us no injury. Neither in thought, word, nor deed have they offended us. They have left undone no single thing that they should have done; and they have been guilty of nothing that they should have left undone. Yet there it is!

I do not like you, Doctor Fell;
The reason why I cannot tell:
But this I know, and know full well,
I do not like you, Doctor Fell.

In our better moments we take ourselves to task for cherishing so unworthy a feeling concerning those who have done nothing to deserve our disapprobation; but it makes no difference.

There are two classes of people that are an abomination to most of us. There are the people whom we dislike with a clear perception of the reasons for our aversion, and there are the people whom we dislike without knowing why we dislike them. Concerning the former we lose very little sleep. The qualities in them that have excited our loathing affectively vindicate us. Knowing the cause of our antipathy, we have something to say to our consciences. Our defence may be a pitifully lame one, but, for all that, it is a defence; and it is always a comfort, when accused, to have a retort on the tip of one's tongue. The Poet at the Breakfast Table made a list of these people—the people whom he disliked, knowing why he disliked them. They were five in number. There was the man who seemed omniscient; he knew everything. There was the loud man; the man who bursts upon the company like a tidal wave of animal vitality. There was the antithesis to this man, the man who was always talking of his aches and pains. There was the man who, bubbling over with family pride, always adopted the grand manner. And there was the man who, fawning and gushing goes into boisterous ecstacies whenever he meets you in the street. He is really too glad to see you.

Dislike, Like Murder, Will Out
Most of us could drew up a similar list. Our list might differ from the Poet's list; but the principle is the same. We dislike these people; we know why we dislike them; and our knowledge sets all our scruples at rest. But this does not cover the case of Doctor Fell. Doctor Fell represents quite another kettle of fish; and in that kettle are all the people whom we dislike for no apparent reason. We feel ashamed of our unreasoning antipathy; and the worst of it is that the discovery of our misdemeanour is so certain. One may be able to withdraw a man's purse from his pocket without them detecting the larceny, but no man can withdraw his affection from his friend's person without being found out. The network of nerves by which we sense such things is extremely delicate and marvellously accurate. By the time that one recognises his antipathy for a man, he has described a triangle. The three sides, so far as Doctor Fell is concerned are these: (l) I do not like Dr. Fell; (2) Dr. Fell knows that I dislike him; and (3) Dr. Fell does not like me.

These three things are inseparable. There are some things that must exist with all their parts or they do not exist at all. You can take the arm from a chair and still have a chair; you can remove the shell from an egg and still have an egg; but you cannot detach any section from a triangle and still have a triangle. In exactly the same way, these three emotional conditions subsist together in uttermost dependence on each other. I dislike him; he knows that I dislike him; he dislikes me. The vital question is: Is this state of things necessarily permanent?

Whys And Wherefores Of Personal Prejudice
It is important that on its first appearance a prejudice should be challenged. It may be fundamental and ineradicable; it probably is, but we must not too easily take such finality for granted. We very seldom form an enduring attachment for those whom, at the first, we thoroughly dislike; yet it does occasionally happen that we learn to love one from whom we at first shrank in uncertainty. We must give Dr. Fell a fair chance. It may be cruelly unjust to him, and a life-long deprivation to ourselves, to add his name too hurriedly to the list of our pet aversions. When we are conscious that a pronounced dislike is creeping into our hearts, we must, in fairness alike to its object and to ourselves, dispute its entrance and endeavour to keep it out, and then, if its exclusion proves absolutely impossible, we must give it houseroom only under protest.

The danger is that most of us are too prone to get into ruts and grooves. We read a certain book; are infatuated by it; and henceforth we need only books by the same author, or by men of his class. We take a fancy to a certain flower; the garden is soon full of it to the exclusion of many other blooms of surpassing loveliness and perfume. In the same way, we cultivate a taste for a certain species of individuality, and we collect about us some very fine specimens of that particular pattern. It may be that our repugnance for Dr. Fell arises from the fact that he, with all his excellences, does not conform to that exact type. We meet him on the street. We squirm inwardly as we see him approach and wish that we could have been spared the necessity of conversing with him; and then, as soon as he has gone, we lash ourselves unmercifully for cherishing so unworthy a sentiment. In this matter, as in so many others, the root of the matter is to be found in the choicest personal record ever penned. The Central Figure in the New Testament had His preferences. He particularly loved the rich young ruler and the members of the Bethany household. But He managed His preferences and His prejudices so skilfully that He attracted everybody and alienated nobody. Even His enemies secretly felt that the uncrossable chasm between themselves and Him was a chasm of their own creation.

F W Boreham

Image: G K Chesterton's Dr. Gideon Fell