Hard And Soft

Until some time in the recent past, the term “Software,” if it was used at all, probably referred to linens and drapes and other such “soft” merchandise, as opposed to the tools, building-materials, etc., which you would find in the “Hardware” section of a department store. But the Computer Era changed all that. It started with referring to the computers themselves, and any physical attachments, as being “hardware.” Then some genius had the inspiration of referring to the programs and other non-physical elements of a computer system, in contradistinction to the hardware, as its “Software.” This gave a whole new dimension to the term “Soft,” which soon started cropping up in the names of products, and even of companies, such as “Microsoft.”

This may in some ways be thought of as a happy development for the concept of softness, which has often connoted weakness or inadequacy, as in calling someone ”soft-hearted,” a “soft touch” (easily exploited) or simply an all-around ”softie” – or referring to questionable flattery as “soft soap.”

Conversely, however, softness is often considered a great virtue, as in the case of toilet paper. You may remember a brand whose advertising gurus came up with a character called Mr. Whipple, whose adorable eccentricity was that he could not resist squeezing the wonderfully soft rolls of Charmin.

There is actually a universally recognized scale of hardness, called the Mohs Scale, which runs from the very softest, Talc (from which, when ground, we get Talcum Powder) to the very hardest – the diamond, which is sometimes used to cut other hard things, like glass. (I don’t know where Charmin would fit on that scale.)

In common parlance, we speak of things being “hard as nails” (and indeed a nail has to be pretty hard, in order to penetrate whatever it’s being driven into) or as “soft as butter” – which everybody could relate to in the days before refrigeration. Now, of course, butter can be so hard that a special type is marketed as being “spreadable,” regardless of its temperature.

But, speaking of foods, there are at least two in which the degree of hardness is a key factor. One is cheese, the hardest varieties of which have to be cut with special tools, some actually involving a stretched wire instead of a “blade.” The other is eggs, which, of course, can be cooked in many different ways – but a few minutes of boiling can make a dramatic difference in the entire appearance, taste, and of course the hardness of any ordinary egg. P.G. Wodehouse sometimes described one of his dourest characters as a “twenty-minute egg.”

Then there are fancy chocolates, in which a major distinction is made between “hard” and “soft” centers. Preferences vary, and regular assortments usually contain some of each. But there are those among us who will insist on getting only all-hard or all-soft. It is this factor (apart from such questions as “milk” or “dark”) which can make buying chocolates, for people you don’t know very well, a risky proposition.

It may seem a giant leap from eggs and chocolates to pencils, but here again the question of hardness or softness, in this case of the “lead” or graphite core, which the wooden casing is wrapped around, can be of crucial importance – particularly to artists. But any reference to pencils, particularly in the United States, would be incomplete without at least a passing tribute to Henry David Thoreau, who, before he entered history and legend as the author of Walden, was a manufacturer of pencils (a family business), and he personally had much to do with the improvement of processes and product which at last enabled Americans to boast of home-produced pencils as good as any imported from Europe.

One might list many other things having a range of hard- and softness, such as wood (hard: mahogany, soft: balsa.) And how could we not mention baseball, which has given “playing Hardball” (as opposed to Softball) the meaning of getting serious.

But the big instance, which I’ve been leaving to the end, is US. In medical terms, we all consist of hard and soft tissue. The hard part is our skeletal structure. The soft part is everything else – including that strangely creased and folded lump of matter inside the cranium – yes, the brain. Considering all the data it contains, and how much it seems to be in command, we might call it, not only our topmost soft tissue, but also our ultimate piece of SOFTWARE!