Humanly Speaking — Themes and Context

The Switch of Common Sense

In the title essay, Crothers identifies 'humanly speaking' as a rhetorical device that allows a speaker to acknowledge exceptions without abandoning a general principle. He illustrates this with the theologian who, after building an airtight argument, encounters a fact that should derail it—but the saving clause switches the train onto a parallel track. The metaphor is characteristic: Crothers prefers mechanical images of motion and collision to abstract debate. He applies the same logic to nations: the British Empire, he notes, is 'full of anomalies and temporary makeshifts,' yet it holds together. Strictly speaking, it should not exist. But humanly speaking, it does. This tension between rational coherence and actual messiness becomes a recurring theme.

The Perils of the High Seat

One of the most vivid passages in the collection comes in the essay on travelers, where Crothers describes riding atop a London bus. From his elevated perch, he sees pedestrians and cyclists heading straight for disaster—an old gentleman, two nursemaids, a butcher's boy on a bicycle. 'There is, humanly speaking, no hope for him,' he thinks, yet the expected crunch never comes. The passage works as a miniature of Crothers's method: he sets up a scene of apparent inevitability, then undercuts it with the observation that from a lower angle—sitting with the driver—the outcome would have looked different. The shift in perspective is both literal and philosophical. He quotes the old couplet about mercy between saddle and ground, suggesting that between the pedestrian and the motor-bus there are many chances of safety that the high seat obscures.

The Toryism of the Tourist

Crothers argues that the true enemy of innovation is not the stay-at-home but the traveler. The stay-at-home, he points out, satisfies his desire for change by making small alterations—moving from the blue bed to the brown, or shingling the barn. The traveler, by contrast, becomes a 'hopeless reactionary' the moment he packs his trunk. Having paid to see a celebrated spot, he insists that it remain exactly as it was 'once upon a time.' The present inhabitants are reduced to caretakers. This observation is grounded in a specific detail: the traveler's insistence on one preserved period, with everything else put out of the way. Crothers does not condemn this impulse; he simply notes its irony. The person who seeks novelty in place becomes the most rigid conservative about time.

Crothers writes as a companionable essayist, not a systematic philosopher. His arguments unfold through anecdote and analogy rather than syllogism. Readers will find that the essays reward attention to his shifts in register—from the mock-heroic bus ride to the quiet irony of the tourist's conservatism. The collection does not build to a single conclusion; instead, it offers a series of meditations on how people manage the improbable fact of living together. Crothers's voice is consistent: urbane, amused, and alert to the gap between what we say and what we do.

I often think of Crothers’ Humanly Speaking and how gently it admitted life’s contradictions. There’s a fellow-feeling between that book and Our business civilization — Edition Insights, as if both understood that our strivings rarely match our quietest hopes. Each, in its own way, keeps vigil over the gap, and I find that a tender comfort.