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Updated: June 22, 2025
The world became full of easy-mannered, graceful, gracefully-dressed, conversationally dexterous, finally shallow Wedderburns, Bishops Wedderburn, Wedderburn M.P.'s, Professors Wedderburn, Wedderburn landlords, all with finger-bowl shibboleths and epigrammatic cities of refuge from a sturdy debater.
Surely in such a day as this it is no time to discuss shibboleths. Its is a time for brotherly sympathy and great- hearted work. With such responsibilities around us there must be no divisions among those who love the same Saviour and look for the same heavenly home.
But the Jap reminds us of our reputation for fair play, and smilingly asks us if we are going to prejudice that reputation by discriminating unjustly against him?" "It appears," the girl suggested, "that all these ancient national brags come home, like curses, to roost." "Indeed they do, Miss Parker! But to get on with our shibboleths.
As for 1875, "Many things have happened since then" as Beaconsfield used to say, but of all that has happened nothing could have given more cynical pleasure to the "Old Jew" than the lack of faith in its own shibboleths which has seized the cocksure pompous society in which he disported himself.
The evil heritage of the sixteenth century is still heavy upon us, and this heritage is one of jealousy and hate, not of charity and toleration. It is an heritage of legalism and technicalities, of self-will and individualism, of shibboleths that have become a dead letter, of prejudices that are fostered on distorted history and the propaganda of the self-seeking and the vain.
New-comers into the little boarding-house where we, by reason of prior possession, hold a kind of sway are apt to fare hardly at our hands unless they come up to our standard. We are not exacting in the matter of clothes; we are liberal on creeds; but we have our shibboleths.
At the present day, when belief is so weak, we doubt whether the young would be excluded from the companionship of their equals in age, merely because they had not been trained in some of the conventional shibboleths. Even if it were so, there are certainly some ways of compensating for the disadvantages of exclusion from orthodox circles.
They explain the Balance of Power, the competition in armaments, the belief in the inevitability and the moral value of war, and all those common European shibboleths which seem so inexplicable to citizens of the more modern-minded States and communities of the world. Why should Germany and Austria arm against France and Russia when Canada does not arm against the United States?
It is Criticism that, recognising no position as final, and refusing to bind itself by the shallow shibboleths of any sect or school, creates that serene philosophic temper which loves truth for its own sake, and loves it not the less because it knows it to be unattainable. How little we have of this temper in England, and how much we need it! The English mind is always in a rage.
In every other European country, however, able men are encouraged to talk; in England alone they are discouraged. People in society use a debased jargon or slang, snobbish shibboleths for the most part, and the majority resent any one man monopolising attention.
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