No More than Puppets: Godwin on Roles and Scripts

(from William Godwin's 'Thoughts on Man', Essay X, 'Of imitation and Invention'). 

Godwin reflects on the importance of both repetitive imitation AND invention in human nature and society. This brings to mind my father's reflections on what he called 'the praise of Rote', and is an interesting contribution to dramatistic sociology, to discourse analysis, and to the theory of roles, scripts and frames:

"Yet what is human speech for the most part but mere imitation? In the most obvious sense this stands out on the surface. We are like players, who come out as if they were real persons, but only utter what is set down for them. We represent the same drama every day; and, however stale is the eternal repetition, pass it off upon others, and even upon ourselves, as if it were the suggestion of the moment. In reality, in rural or vulgar life, the invention of a new phrase ought to be marked down among the memorable things in the calendar. We afford too much honour to ordinary conversation, when we compare it to the exhibition of the recognised theatres, since men ought for the most part to be considered as no more than puppets. They perform the gesticulations, but the words come from some one else, who is hid from the sight of the general observer. And not only the words, but the cadence: they have not even so much honour as players have, to choose the manner they may deem fittest by which to convey the sense and the passion of what they speak. The pronunciation, the dialect, all, are supplied to them, and are but a servile repetition. Our tempers are merely the work of the transcriber. We are angry, where we saw that others were angry; and we are pleased, because it is the tone to be pleased. We pretend to have each of us a judgment of our own; but in truth we wait with the most patient docility, till he whom we regard as the leader of the chorus gives us the signal, Here you are to appplaud, and Here you are to condemn." (189)

And he goes straight on to comment on cultures, social roles, national styles, professions, mores and manners, as so many dramas scripted for human puppets who act as they think spontaneously. The analyst or deep observer thinks otherwise, and focuses instead on the generative system under the epiphnomena of individual behaviour:

"What is it that constitutes the manners of nations, by which the people of one country are so eminently distinguished from the people of another, as that you cannot cross the channel from Dover to Calais, twenty-one miles, without finding yourself in a new world? Nay, I need not go among the subjects of another government to find examples of this; if I pass into Ireland, Scotland or Wales, I see myself surrounded with a new people, all of whose characters are in a manner cast in one mould, and all different from the citizens of the principal state and from one another. We may go further than this. Not only nations, but classes of men, are contrasted with each other. What can be more different than the gentry of the west end of this metropolis, and the money-making dwellers in the east? From them I will pass to Billingsgate and Wapping. What more unlike than a soldier and a sailor? the children of fashion that stroll in St. James's and Hyde Park, and the care-worn hirelings, that recreate themselves, with their wives and their brats, with a little fresh air on a Sunday near Islington? The houses of lords and commons have each their characteristic manners. Each profession has its own, the lawyer, the divine, and the man of medicine. We are all apes, fixing our eyes upon a model, and copying him, gesture by gesture. We are sheep, rushing headlong through the gap, when the bell-wether shews us the way. We are choristers, mechanically singing in a certain key, and giving breath to a certain tone. 

"Our religion, our civil practices, our political creed, are all imitation. How many men are there, that have examined the evidences of their religious belief, and can give a sound 'reason of the faith that is in them'?  When I was a child, I was taught that there were four religions in the world, the Popish, the Protestant, the Mahometan, the Pagan. It is a phenomenon to find the man, who has held the balance steady, and rendered full and exact justice to the pretensions of each of these. No: tell me the longitude and latitud in which a man is born, and I wil ltell you his religion.

By education most have been misled;

So they believe, because so they were bred:

The priest continues what the nurse began,

And thus the child imposes on the man.

"And, if this happens, where we are told our everlasting salvation is at issue,, we may easily judge of the rest."

Sobre la idea de creencia

—oOo—