Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1874-03-15
NOT UNDERSTOOD.
What a Veteran Observer Knows
About Human Nature.

nat n veteran ODstENcE Ahoh1
About Human Nature.
The favorite complaint of ninety
nine men and women out of hundred,
Is that they are not understood.
Every married woman with fond
ness for weak sentimentality, confdes
to her intimate friend that her husband,
kind and well-meaning as he is, does
not understand her.
Every married man who is In the
slightest degree addicted TO the morbid
habit of dissecting his own emotions,
firmly believes that hiswife totally fails
to understand him.
As for the unmarried of either sex,
they accept as a matter Of course the
conscious isolation that springs from
being misunderstood by all their kind.
At the same time that we are all
complaining because we are misunder-
stood, We are making 1t the aim of our
lives to conceal our true selves from any
one else.
1t is like the full-dress paradox. The
less lady clothes her shoulders and
arms the nearer she approaches to the
state of full dress" The more We
wish to be understood the more wepose
ourselves in assumed characters.
You, my dear sir, who sadly say to
yourself over your solitary evening
cigar, "No one understands me"
really means that no one accepts you
as the person of unique merit whichyo
wish to convince the world that you
are.
You, my dear madam, who say to
your intimate lady friend, or the SYM
pathetic young man with whom you are
carrying on perfectly unexceptionable
Irritation, Nobody understands me,
simply mean that no one comedies that
YOU have succeeded in perfectly dis
guising yourself as a woman of excep-
tional strength Of mind, delcacy Of
feeling, and capacity for everything
that is noble and excellent In your sex.
Now, the truth is that We are all Of
us understood by our friends quite as
thoroughly as We desire to be.
A man is nearly always accurately
gagged by the world, so far as his
merits are concerned. A woman Is
nearly always understood by her femi-
nine friends as thoroughly as she wishes
them to understand her.
Which of us would be willing that
the secret thoughts and emotions that
we keep carefully hidden should be sur
prised even by our truest and best
friend? Yet that is what must precede
the process of being thoroughly under
stood.
Still there is degree of knowledge
of a man or woman which is some
thing less than this intolerable expo
sure, and something more than the
knowledge which the world attains.
And it is a curious fact that the person
admitted to this knowledge Is always
of the opposite sex to the one making
the revelation.
No woman ever thoroughly under
stands another woman; and 10 man
perfectly comprehends another man.
A woman has an instructive fear of
being thought unwomanly by every
other woman. A man is never free from
the dread of doing something that his
best friend, even if he loves him as
brother, may think unmanly. And so,
whether We are men or women, we
always keep up barrier of convention
atty between ourselves and those of
our own sex.
1t is only to a man that a woman re-
veals herself. tits only in the presence
of a woman that a man lays aside the
reserve that he maintains among his
fellows. No woman knows her own
sister as well as does the young man
with whom she has had six months
friendship. No man understands the
friend of twenty years of masculine
intimacy half so well as the woman
whom the latter has courted for six
weeks, understands him.
Does it follow, then, that married
people know each other perfectly? By
no means.
The doors Of intimacy that were open
during the days of courtship, grow
rusty on their hinges after marriage.
By-and-by, in the confidence of mu-
tual affection, free criticism of one
another's faults becomes frequent, the
atmosphere grows a hotle chilly, and
the doors are shut forever.
A woman does not like to whisper
you may look into my inmost heart, J"
to the man who feels so much at home
with her that he is quite capable of
saying, Thanks; but Just wait till l
find my pipe. 1 can't see why it is that
you women always will put things
where a man can't find them"
There is precisely one relation in
which men and women are known per-
fectly through and through, In their
inmost grain and fibre, by one another.
1t is that of unlawful love.
1t is partly the recklessness that fol-
lows a step once taken that can never
be retraced, and partly the isolation
that shameful secret carries with it,
that lead to this absolute unwilling of
good and bad alike which marks the
relation Of the faIthless wife with her
passionate lover.
And this unwilling is, perhaps, the
reason why it is that the man and his
mistress must ultimately quarrel, and
bitterly despise one another.
1t was never meant that we should
stand mentally and morally naked be-
fore our fellows. If we really long to
do so, it is a morbid longing that ought
to be promptly suppressed. And so let
me say to the wife who walls that she
is not understood, and the husbandwhO
would make a similar plant if he did
not fear ridicule, you are longing for
that which can never be reached by
open and peaceful paths.
Individualism was not made the con-
dition of humanity without a purpose.
The separate soul is not segregated in
its separate body by an expensive error.
1t is worse than folly for us to long for
'Pan- Humanity" in which one vast
and identical soul shall form the myriad
bodies of the race.