Quote Interpretation

     I have never managed to lose my old conviction that travel narrows the mind. At least a man must make a double effort of moral humility and imaginative energy to prevent it from narrowing his mind. Indeed there is something touching and even tragic about the thought of the thoughtless tourist, who might have stayed at home loving Laplanders, embracing Chinamen, and clasping Patagonians to his heart in Hampstead or Surbiton, but for his blind and suicidal impulse to go and see what they looked like. This is not meant for nonsense; still less is it meant for the silliest sort of nonsense, which is cynicism. The human bond that he feels at home is not an illusion. On the contrary, it is rather an inner reality. Man is inside all men. In a real sense any man may be inside any men. But to travel is to leave the inside and draw dangerously near the outside. So long as he thought of men in the abstract, like naked toiling figures in some classic frieze, merely as those who labour and love their children and die, he was thinking the fundamental truth about them. By going to look at their unfamiliar manners and customs he is inviting them to disguise themselves in fantastic masks and costumes. Many modern internationalists talk as if men of different nationalities had only to meet and mix and understand each other. In reality that is the moment of supreme danger—the moment when [Pg 2] they meet. We might shiver, as at the old euphemism by which a meeting meant a duel.

     This passage describes the idea that when a person travels outside of their sphere they leave themselves open to unknown forces that can influence self.  The undertaking of the unknown and the giddy surface acceptance/tolerance of it should be viewed with a more serious eye to see the undertone of what is actually in front of you. The concept of acceptance of all people as human beings as the same class as oneself, and the relation that everyone is brothers/sisters is not true.  The portrayal of a smile from another can really be a gauntlet of calculation for an opening of vulnerability, a beginning battle of a way to overtake and convert the opposition.   

     I chose this passage because I found the cynicism displayed highly amusing, and unfortunately (or fortunately) I find I have some of these cynical ideas imbedded in me also.