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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/16340-8.txt b/16340-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cea95e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/16340-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2165 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Cynic Looks at Life, by Ambrose Bierce + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: A Cynic Looks at Life + Little Blue Book #1099 + +Author: Ambrose Bierce + +Editor: E. Haldeman-Julius + +Release Date: July 21, 2005 [EBook #16340] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CYNIC LOOKS AT LIFE *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Dave Macfarlane and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[Transcriber's note: _ is equivalent to italics markup.] + + +LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 1099 +Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius + + +A Cynic Looks at Life + +Ambrose Bierce + + +HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY +GIRARD, KANSAS + +Copyright, 1912, by +The Neale Publishing Company + +Reprinted by Special Arrangement With +Albert and Charles Boni, New York + +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + +A CYNIC LOOKS AT LIFE + + + + +CIVILIZATION + + +I + +The question "Does civilization civilize?" is a fine example of _petitio +principii_, and decides itself in the affirmative; for civilization must +needs do that from the doing of which it has its name. But it is not +necessary to suppose that he who propounds is either unconscious of his +lapse in logic or desirous of digging a pitfall for the feet of those +who discuss; I take it he simply wishes to put the matter in an +impressive way, and relies upon a certain degree of intelligence in the +interpretation. + +Concerning uncivilized peoples we know but little except what we are +told by travelers--who, speaking generally, can know very little but the +fact of uncivilization, as shown in externals and irrelevances, and are +moreover, greatly given to lying. From the savages we hear very little. +Judging them in all things by our own standards in default of a +knowledge of theirs, we necessarily condemn, disparage and belittle. One +thing that civilization certainly has not done is to make us intelligent +enough to understand that the contrary of a virtue is not necessarily a +vice. Because, as a rule, we have but one wife and several mistresses +each it is not certain that polygamy is everywhere--nor, for that +matter, anywhere--either wrong or inexpedient. Because the brutality of +the civilized slave owners and dealers created a conquering sentiment +against slavery it is not intelligent to assume that slavery is a +maleficent thing amongst Oriental peoples (for example) where the slave +is not oppressed. Some of these same Orientals whom we are pleased to +term half-civilized have no regard for truth. "Takest thou me for a +Christian dog," said one of them, "that I should be the slave of my +word?" So far as I can perceive, the "Christian dog" is no more the +slave of his word than the True Believer, and I think the +savage--allowing for the fact that his inveracity has dominion over +fewer things--as great a liar as either of them. For my part, I do not +know what, in all circumstances, is right or wrong; but I know that, if +right, it is at least stupid, to judge an uncivilized people by the +standards of morality and intelligence set up by civilized ones. Life in +civilized countries is so complex that men there have more ways to be +good than savages have, and more to be bad; more to be happy, and more +to be miserable. And in each way to be good or bad, their generally +superior knowledge--their knowledge of more things--enables them to +commit greater excesses than the savage can. The civilized +philanthropist wreaks upon his fellows a ranker philanthropy, the +civilized rascal a sturdier rascality. And--splendid triumph of +enlightenment!--the two characters are, in civilization, frequently +combined in one person. + +I know of no savage custom or habit of thought which has not its mate +in civilized countries. For every mischievous or absurd practice of the +natural man I can name you one of ours that is essentially the same. And +nearly every custom of our barbarian ancestors in historic times +persists in some form today. We make ourselves look formidable in +battle--for that matter, we fight. Our women paint their faces. We feel +it obligatory to dress more or less alike, inventing the most ingenious +reasons for doing so and actually despising and persecuting those who do +not care to conform. Almost within the memory of living persons bearded +men were stoned in the streets; and a clergyman in New York who wore his +beard as Christ wore his, was put into jail and variously persecuted +till he died. + +Civilization does not, I think, make the race any better. It makes men +know more: and if knowledge makes them happy it is useful and desirable. +The one purpose of every sane human being is to be happy. No one can +have any other motive than that. There is no such thing as +unselfishness. We perform the most "generous" and "self-sacrificing" +acts because we should be unhappy if we did not. We move on lines of +least reluctance. Whatever tends to increase the beggarly sum of human +happiness is worth having; nothing else has any value. + +The cant of civilization fatigues. Civilization, is a fine and beautiful +structure. It is as picturesque as a Gothic cathedral, but it is built +upon the bones and cemented with the blood of those whose part in all +its pomp is that and nothing more. It cannot be reared in the +ungenerous tropics, for there the people will not contribute their +blood and bones. The proposition that the average American workingman or +European peasant is "better off" than the South Sea islander, lolling +under a palm and drunk with over-eating, will not bear a moment's +examination. It is we scholars and gentlemen that are better off. + +It is admitted that the South Sea islander in a state of nature is +overmuch addicted to the practice of eating human flesh; but concerning +that I submit: first, that he likes it; second, that those who supply it +are mostly dead. It is upon his enemies that he feeds, and these he +would kill anyhow, as we do ours. In civilized, enlightened and +Christian countries, where cannibalism has not yet established itself, +wars are as frequent and destructive as among the maneaters. The +untitled savage knows at least why he goes killing, whereas our private +soldier is commonly in black ignorance of the apparent cause of +quarrel--of the actual cause, always. Their shares in the fruits of +victory are about equal, for the chief takes all the dead, the general +all the glory. + + +II + +Transplanted institutions grow slowly; civilization can not be put into +a ship and carried across an ocean. The history of this country is a +sequence of illustrations of these truths. It was settled by civilized +men and women from civilized countries, yet after two and a half +centuries, with unbroken communication with the mother systems, it is +still imperfectly civilized. In learning and letters, in art and the +science of government, America is but a faint and stammering echo of +Europe. + +For nearly all that is good in our American civilization we +are indebted to the Old World; the errors and mischiefs are of our own +creation. We have originated little, because there is little to +originate, but we have unconsciously reproduced many of the discredited +systems of former ages and other countries--receiving them at second +hand, but making them ours by the sheer strength and immobility of the +national belief in their novelty. Novelty! Why, it is not possible to +make an experiment in government, in art, in literature, in sociology, +or in morals, that has not been made over, and over, and over again. + +The glories of England are our glories. She can achieve nothing that our +fathers did not help to make possible to her. The learning, the power, +the refinement of a great nation, are not the growth of a century, but +of many centuries; each generation builds upon the work of the +preceding. For untold ages our ancestors wrought to rear that "reverend +pile," the civilization of England. And shall we now try to belittle the +mighty structure because other though kindred hands are laying the top +courses while we have elected to found a new tower in another land? The +American eulogist of civilization who is not proud of his heritage in +England's glory is unworthy to enjoy his lesser heritage in the lesser +glory of his own country. + +The English, are undoubtedly our intellectual superiors; and as the +virtues are solely the product of intelligence and cultivation--a rogue +being only a dunce considered from another point of view--they are our +moral superiors likewise. Why should they not be? Theirs is a land, not +of ugly schoolhouses grudgingly erected, containing schools supported by +such niggardly tax levies as a sparse and hard-handed population will +consent to pay, but of ancient institutions splendidly endowed by the +state and by centuries of private benefaction. As a means of dispensing +formulated ignorance our boasted public school system is not without +merit; it spreads out education sufficiently thin to give everyone +enough to make him a more competent fool than he would have been without +it; but to compare it with that which is not the creature of legislation +acting with malice aforethought, but the unnoted out-growth of ages, is +to be ridiculous. It is like comparing the laid-out town of a western +prairie, its right-angled streets, prim cottages, and wooden a-b-c +shops, with the grand old town of Oxford, topped with the clustered +domes and towers of its twenty-odd great colleges, the very names of +many of whose founders have perished from human record, as have the +chronicles of the times in which they lived. + +It is not only that we have had to "subdue the wilderness"; our +educational conditions are adverse otherwise. Our political system is +unfavorable. Our fortunes, accumulated in one generation, are dispersed +in the next. If it takes three generations to make a gentleman one will +not make a thinker. Instruction is acquired, but capacity for +instruction is transmitted. The brain that is to contain a trained +intellect is not the result of a haphazard marriage between a clown and +a wench, nor does it get its tractable tissues from a hard-headed farmer +and a soft-headed milliner. If you confess the importance of race and +pedigree in a horse and a dog how dare you deny it in a man? + +I do not hold that the political and social system that creates an +aristocracy of leisure is the best possible kind of human organization; +I perceive its disadvantages clearly enough. But I do hold that a system +under which most important public trusts, political and professional, +civil and military ecclesiastical and secular, are held by educated +men--that is, men of trained faculties and disciplined judgment--is +not an altogether faulty system. + +It is a universal human weakness to disparage the knowledge that we do +not ourselves possess, but it is only my own beloved country that can +justly boast herself the last refuge and asylum of the impotents and +incapables who deny the advantage of all knowledge whatsoever. It was an +American senator who declared that he had devoted a couple of weeks to +the study of finance, and found the accepted authorities all wrong. It +was another American senator who, confronted with certain hostile facts +in the history of another country, proposed "to brush away all facts, +and argue the question on consideration of plain common sense." + +Republican institutions have this disadvantage: by incessant changes in +the _personnel_ of government--to say nothing of the manner of men that +ignorant constituencies elect; and all constituencies are ignorant--we +attain to no fixed principles and standards. There is no such thing here +as a science of politics, because it is not to any one's interest to +make politics the study of his life. Nothing is settled; no truth finds +general acceptance. What we do one year we undo the next, and do over +again the year following. Our energy is wasted in, and our prosperity +suffers from, experiments endlessly repeated. + +Every patriot believes his country better than any other country. Now, +they cannot all be the best; indeed, only one can be the best, and it +follows that the patriots of all the others have suffered themselves to +be misled by a mere sentiment into blind unreason. In its active +manifestation--it is fond of killing--patriotism would be well if it +were simply defensive; but it is also aggressive, and the same feeling +that prompts us to strike for our altars and our fires impels us over +the border to quench the fires and overturn the altars of our neighbors. +It is all very pretty and spirited, what the poets tell us about +Thermopylæ, but there was as much patriotism at one end of that pass as +there was at the other. + +Patriotism deliberately and with folly aforethought subordinates the +interests of a whole to the interests of a part. Worse still, the +fraction so favored is determined by an accident of birth or residence. +The Western hoodlum who cuts the tail from a Chinaman's nowl, and would +cut the nowl from the body, if he dared, is simply a patriot with a +logical mind, having the courage of his opinions. Patriotism is fierce +as a fever, pitiless as the grave and blind as a stone. + + +III + +There are two ways of clarifying liquids--ebullition and precipitation; +one forces the impurities to the surface as scum, the other sends them +to the bottom as dregs. The former is the more offensive, and that seems +to be our way; but neither is useful if the impurities are merely +separated but not removed. We are told with tiresome iteration that our +social and political systems are clarifying; but when is the skimmer to +appear? If the purpose of free institutions is good government where is +the good government?--when may it be expected to begin?--how is it to +come about? Systems of government have no sanctity; they are practical +means to a simple end--the public welfare; worthy of no respect if they +fail of its accomplishment. The tree is known by its fruit. Ours is +bearing crab-apples. If the body politic is constitutionally diseased, +as I verily believe; if the disorder inheres in the system; there is no +remedy. The fever must burn itself out, and then Nature will do the +rest. One does not prescribe what time alone can administer. We have put +our criminals and dunces into power; do we suppose they will efface +themselves? Will they restore to _us_ the power of governing _them_? +They must have their way and go their length. The natural and immemorial +sequence is: tyranny, insurrection, combat. In combat everything that +wears a sword has a chance--even the right. History does not forbid us +to hope. But it forbids us to rely upon numbers; they will be against +us. If history teaches anything worth learning it teaches that the +majority of mankind is neither good nor wise. When government is founded +upon the public conscience and the public intelligence the stability of +states is a dream. + +In that moment of time that is covered by historical records we have +abundant evidence that each generation has believed itself wiser and +better than any of its predecessors; that each people has believed +itself to have the secret of national perpetuity. In support of this +universal delusion there is nothing to be said; the desolate places of +the earth cry out against it. Vestiges of obliterated civilizations +cover the earth; no savage but has camped upon the sites of proud and +populous cities; no desert but has heard the statesman's boast of +national stability. Our nation, our laws, our history--all shall go down +to everlasting oblivion with the others, and by the same road. But I +submit that we are traveling it with needless haste. + +It can be spared--this Jonah's gourd civilization of ours. We have +hardly the rudiments of a true one; compared with the splendors of which +we catch dim glimpses in the fading past, ours are as an illumination of +tallow candles. We know no more than the ancients; we only know other +things, but nothing in which is an assurance of perpetuity, and little +that is truly wisdom. Our vaunted _elixir vitae_ is the art of +printing. What good will that do when posterity, struck by the +inevitable intellectual blight, shall have ceased to read what is +printed? Our libraries will become its stables, our books its fuel. + +Ours is a civilization that might be heard from afar in space as a +scolding and a riot; a civilization in which the race has so +differentiated as to have no longer a community of interest and feeling; +which shows as a ripe result of the principles underlying it a +reasonless and rascally feud between rich and poor; in which one is +offered a choice (if one have the means to take it) between American +plutocracy and European militocracy, with an imminent chance of +renouncing either for a stultocratic republic with a headsman in the +presidential chair and every laundress in exile. + +I have not a "solution" to the "labor problem." I have only a story. +Many and many years ago lived a man who was so good and wise that none +in all the world was so good and wise as he. He was one of those few +whose goodness and wisdom are such that after some time has passed their +foolish fellowmen begin to think them gods and treasure their words as +divine law; and by millions they are worshiped through centuries of +time. Amongst the utterances of this man was one command--not a new nor +perfect one--which has seemed to his adorers so preeminently wise that +they have given it a name by which it is known over half the world. One +of the sovereign virtues of this famous law is its simplicity, which is +such that all hearing must understand; and obedience is so easy that +any nation refusing is unfit to exist except in the turbulence and +adversity that will surely come to it. When a people would avert want +and strife, or, having them, would restore plenty and peace, this noble +commandment offers the only means--all other plans for safety or relief +are as vain as dreams, as empty as the crooning of hags. And behold, +here is it: "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, +do ye even so to them." + +What! you unappeasable rich, coining the sweat and blood of your workmen +into drachmas, understanding the law of supply and demand as mandatory +and justifying your cruel greed by the senseless dictum that "business +is business"; you lazy workmen, railing at the capitalist by whose +desertion, when you have frightened away his capital, you +starve--rioting and shedding blood and torturing and poisoning by way of +answer to exaction and by way of exaction; you foul anarchists, +applauding with untidy palms when one of your coward kind hurls a bomb +amongst powerless and helpless women and children; you imbecile +politicians with a plague of remedial legislation for the irremediable; +you writers and thinkers unread in history, with as many "solutions to +the labor problem" as there are among you those who can not coherently +define it--do you really think yourselves wiser than Jesus of Nazareth? +Do you seriously suppose yourselves competent to amend his plan for +dealing with evils besetting nations and souls? Have you the effrontery +to believe that those who spurn his Golden Rule you can bind to +obedience of an act entitled an act to amend an act? Bah! you fatigue +the spirit. Go get ye to your scoundrel lockouts, your villain strikes, +your blacklisting, your boycotting, your speeching, marching and +maundering; but if ye do not to others as ye would that they do to you +it shall occur, and that right soon, that ye be drowned in your own +blood and your pick-pocket civilization quenched as a star that falls +into the sea. + + + + +THE GIFT O' GAB + + +A book entitled _Forensic Eloquence_, by Mr. John Goss, appears to have +for purpose to teach the young idea how to spout, and that purpose, I +dare say, it will accomplish if something is not done to prevent. I know +nothing of the matter myself, a strong distaste for forensic eloquence, +or eloquence of any kind implying a man mounted on his legs and doing +all the talking, having averted me from its study. The training of the +youth of this country to utterance of themselves after that fashion I +should regard as a disaster of magnitude. So far as I know it, forensic +eloquence is the art of saying things in such a way as to make them pass +for more than they are worth. Employed in matters of importance (and for +other employment it were hardly worth acquiring) it is mischievous +because dishonest and misleading. In the public service Truth toils best +when not clad in cloth-of-gold and bedaubed with fine lace. If eloquence +does not beget action it is valueless; but action which results from the +passions, sentiments and emotions is less likely to be wise than that +which comes of a persuaded judgment. For that reason I cannot help +thinking that the influence of Bismarck in German politics was more +wholesome than is that of Mr. John Temple Graves. + +For eloquence _per se_--considered merely as an art of pleasing--I +entertain something of the respect evoked by success; for it always +pleases at least the speaker. It is to speech what an ornate style is to +writing--good and pleasant enough in its time and place and, like +pie-crust and the evening girl, destitute of any basis in common sense. +Forensic eloquence, on the contrary, has an all too sufficient +foundation in reason and the order of things: it promotes the ambition +of tricksters and advances the fortunes of rogues. For I take it that +the Ciceros, the Mirabeaus, the Burkes, the O'Connells, the Patrick +Henrys and the rest of them--pets of the text-bookers and scourges of +youth--belong in either the one category or the other, or in both. +Anyhow I find it impossible to think of them as highminded men and +right-forth statesmen--with their actors' tricks, their devices of the +countenance, inventions of gesture and other cunning expedients having +nothing to do with the matter in hand. Extinction of the orator I hold +to be the most beneficent possibility of evolution. If Mr. Goss has done +anything to retard that blessed time when the Bourke Cockrans shall +cease from troubling and the weary be at rest he is an enemy of his race. + +"What!" exclaims the thoughtless reader--I have but one--"are not the +great forensic speeches by the world's famous orators good reading? +Considering them merely as literature do you not derive a high and +refining pleasure from them?" I do not: I find them turgid and tumid no +end. They are bad reading, though they may have been good hearing. In +order to enjoy them one must have in memory what, indeed, one is seldom +permitted to forget: that they were addressed to the ear; and in +imagination one must hold some shadowy simulacrum of the orator himself, +uttering his work. These conditions being fulfilled there remains for +application to the matter of the discourse too little attention to get +much good of it, and the total effect is confusion. Literature by which +the reader is compelled to bear in mind the producer and the +circumstances under which it was produced can be spared. + + + + +NATURA BENIGNA + + +It is not always on remote islands peopled with pagans that great +disasters occur, as memory witnesseth. Nor are the forces of nature +inadequate to production of a fiercer throe than any that we have known. +The situation is this: we are tied by the feet to a fragile shell +imperfectly confining a force powerful enough under favoring conditions, +to burst it asunder and set the fragments wallowing and grinding +together in liquid flame, in the blind fury of a readjustment. Nay, it +needs no such stupendous cataclysm to depeople this uneasy orb. Let but +a square mile be blown out of the bottom of the sea, or a great rift +open there. Is it to be supposed that we would be unaffected in the +altered conditions generated by a contest between the ocean and the +earth's molten core? These fatalities are not only possible but in the +highest degree probable. It is probable, indeed, that they have occurred +over and over again, effacing all the more highly organized forms of +life, and compelling the slow march of evolution to begin anew. Slow? On +the stage of Eternity the passing of races--the entrances and exits of +Life--are incidents in a brisk and lively drama, following one another +with confusing rapidity. + +Mankind has not found it practicable to abandon and avoid those places +where the forces of nature have been most malign. The track, of the +Western tornado is speedily repeopled. San Francisco is still populous, +despite its earthquake, Galveston despite its storm, and even the courts +of Lisbon are not kept by the lion and the lizard. In the Peruvian +village straight downward into whose streets the crew of a United States +warship once looked from the crest of a wave that stranded her a half +mile inland are heard the tinkle of the guitar and the voices of +children at play. There are people living at Herculaneum and Pompeii. On +the slopes about Catania the goatherd endures with what courage he may +the trembling of the ground beneath his feet as old Enceladus again +turns over on his other side. As the Hoang-Ho goes back inside its banks +after fertilizing its contiguity with hydrate of China-man the living +agriculturist follows the receding wave, sets up his habitation beneath +the broken embankment, and again the Valley of the Gone Away blossoms +as the rose, its people diving with Death. + +This matter can not be amended: the race exposes itself to peril because +it can do no otherwise. In all the world there is no city of refuge--no +temple in which to take sanctuary, clinging to the horns of the +altar--no "place apart" where, like hunted deer, we can hope to elude +the baying pack of Nature's malevolences. The dead-line is drawn at the +gate of life: Man crosses it at birth. His advent is a challenge to the +entire pack--earthquake, storm, fire, flood, drought, heat, cold, wild +beasts, venomous reptiles, noxious insects, bacilli, spectacular plague +and velvet-footed household disease--all are fierce and tireless in +pursuit. Dodge, turn and double how he can, there's no eluding them; +soon or late some of them have him by the throat and his spirit returns +to the God who gave it--and gave them. + +We are told that this earth was made for our inhabiting. Our dearly +beloved brethren in the faith, our spiritual guides, philosophers and +friends of the pulpit, never tire of pointing out the goodness of God in +giving us so excellent a place to live in and commending the admirable +adaptation of all things to our needs. + +What a fine world it is, to be sure--a darling little world, "so suited +to the needs of man." A globe of liquid fire, straining within a shell +relatively no thicker than that of an egg--a shell constantly cracking +and in momentary danger of going all to pieces! Three-fourths of this +delectable field of human activity are covered with an element in which +we can not breathe, and which swallows us by myriads: + + With moldering bones the deep is white + From the frozen zones to the tropic bright. + +Of the other one-fourth more than one-half is uninhabitable by reason of +climate. On the remaining one-eighth we pass a comfortless and +precarious existence in disputed occupancy with countless ministers of +death and pain--pass it in fighting for it, tooth and nail, a hopeless +battle in which we are foredoomed to defeat. Everywhere death, terror, +lamentation and the laughter that is more terrible than tears--the fury +and despair of a race hanging on to life by the tips of its fingers. And +the prize for which we strive, "to have and to hold"--what is it? A +thing that is neither enjoyed while had, or missed when lost. So +worthless it is, so unsatisfying, so inadequate to purpose, so false to +hope and at its best so brief, that for consolation and compensation we +set up fantastic faiths of an aftertime in a better world from which no +confirming whisper has ever reached us across the void. Heaven is a +prophecy uttered by the lips of despair, but Hell is an inference from +analogy. + + + + +THE DEATH PENALTY + + +I + +"Down with the gallows!" is a cry not unfamiliar in America. There is +always a movement afoot to make odious the just principle; of "a life +for a life"--to represent it as "a relic of barbarism," "a usurpation of +the divine authority," and the rest of it. The law making murder +punishable by death is as purely a measure of self-defense as is the +display of a pistol to one diligently endeavoring to kill without +provocation. It is in precisely the same sense an admonition, a warning +to abstain from crime. Society says by that law: "If you kill one of us +you die," just as by display of the pistol the individual whose life is +attacked says: "Desist or be shot." To be effective the warning in +either case must be more than an idle threat. Even the most unearthly +reasoner among the anti-hanging unfortunates would hardly expect to +frighten away an assassin who knew the pistol to be unloaded. Of course +these queer illogicians can not be made to understand that their +position commits them to absolute non-resistance to any kind of +aggression; and that is fortunate for the rest of us, for if as +Christians they frankly and consistently took that ground we should be +under the miserable necessity of respecting them. + +We have good reason to hold that the horrible prevalence of murder in +this country is due to the fact that we do not execute our laws--that +the death penalty is threatened but not inflicted--that the pistol is +not loaded. In civilized countries where there is enough respect for the +laws to administer them, there is enough to obey them. While man still +has as much of the ancestral brute as his skin can hold without cracking +we shall have thieves and demagogues and anarchists and assassins and +persons with a private system of lexicography who define murder as +disease and hanging as murder, but in all this welter of crime and +stupidity are areas where human life is comparatively secure against the +human hand. It is at least a significant coincidence that in these the +death penalty for murder is fairly well enforced by judges who do not +derive any part of their authority from those for whose restraint and +punishment they hold it. Against the life of one guiltless person the +lives of ten thousand murderers count for nothing; their hanging is a +public good, without reference to the crimes that disclose their +deserts. If we could discover them by other signs than their bloody +deeds they should be hanged anyhow. Unfortunately we must have a death +as evidence. The scientist who will tell us how to recognize the +potential assassin, and persuade us to kill him, will be the greatest +benefactor of his century. + +What would these enemies of the gibbet have--these lineal descendants +of the drunken mobs that hooted the hangman at Tyburn Tree; this progeny +of criminals, which has so defiled with the mud of its animosity the +noble office of public executioner that even "in this enlightened age" +he shirks his high duty, entrusting it to a hidden or unnamed +subordinate? If murder is unjust of what importance is it whether its +punishment by death be just or not?--nobody needs to incur it. Men are +not drafted for the death penalty; they volunteer. "Then it is not +deterrent," mutters the gentleman whose rude forefather hooted the +hangman. Well, as to that, the law which is to accomplish more than a +part of its purpose must be awaited with great patience. Every murder +proves that hanging is not altogether deterrent; every hanging, that it +is somewhat deterrent--it deters the person hanged. A man's first murder +is his crime, his second is ours. + +The socialists, it seems, believe with Alphonse Karr, in the expediency +of abolishing the death penalty; but apparently they do not hold, with +him, that the assassins should begin. They want the state to begin, +believing that the magnanimous example will effect a change of heart in +those about to murder. This, I take it, is the meaning of their +assertion that death penalties have not the deterring influence that +imprisonment for life carries. In this they obviously err: death deters +at least the person who suffers it--he commits no more murder; whereas +the assassin who is imprisoned for life and immune from further +punishment may with impunity kill his keeper or whomsoever he may be +able to get at. Even as matters now are, incessant vigilance is required +to prevent convicts in prison from murdering their attendants and one +another. How would it be if the "life-termer" were assured against any +additional inconvenience for braining a guard occasionally, or +strangling a chaplain now and then? A penitentiary may be described as a +place of punishment and reward; and under the system proposed, the +difference in desirableness between a sentence and an appointment would +be virtually effaced. To overcome this objection a life sentence would +have to mean solitary confinement, and that means insanity. Is that what +these gentlemen propose to substitute for death? + +The death penalty, say these amiables and futilitarians, creates +blood-thirstiness in the unthinking masses and defeats its own ends--is +itself a cause of murder, not a check. These gentlemen are themselves of +"the unthinking masses"--they do not know how to think. Let them try to +trace and lucidly expound the chain of motives lying between the +knowledge that a murderer has been hanged and the wish to commit a +murder. How, precisely, does the one beget the other? By what unearthly +process of reasoning does a man turning away from the gallows persuade +himself that it is expedient to incur the danger of hanging? Let us have +pointed out to us the several steps in that remarkable mental progress. +Obviously, the thing is absurd; one might as reasonably say that +contemplation of a pitted face will make a man wish to go and catch +smallpox, or the spectacle of an amputated limb on the scrap-heap of a +hospital tempt him to cut off his arm or renounce his leg. + +"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," say the opponents of the +death penalty, "is not justice; it is revenge and unworthy of a +Christian civilization." It is exact justice: nobody can think of +anything more accurately just than such punishments would be, whatever +the motive in awarding them. Unfortunately such a system is not +practicable, but he who denies its justice must deny also the justice of +a bushel of corn for a bushel of corn, a dollar for a dollar, service +for service. We can not undertake by such clumsy means as laws and +courts to do to the criminal exactly what he has done to his victim, +but to demand a life for a life is simple, practicable, expedient and +(therefore) right. + +"Taking the life of a murderer does not restore the life he took, +therefore it is a most illogical punishment. Two wrongs do not make a +right." + +Here's richness! Hanging an assassin is illogical because it does not +restore the life of his victim; incarceration is logical; therefore, +incarceration does--_quod, erat demonstrandum._ + +Two wrongs certainly do not make a right, but the veritable thing in +dispute is whether taking the life of a life-taker is a wrong. So naked +and unashamed an example of _petitio principii_ would disgrace a debater +in a pinafore. And these wonder-mongers have the effrontery to babble of +"logic"! Why, if one of them were to meet a syllogism in a lonely road +he would run away in a hundred and fifty directions as hard as ever he +could hoof it. One is almost ashamed to dispute with such intellectual +cloutlings. + +Whatever an individual may rightly do to protect himself society may +rightly do to protect him, for he is a part of itself. If he may rightly +take life in defending himself society may rightly take life in +defending him. If society may rightly take life in defending him it may +rightly threaten to take it. Having rightly and mercifully threatened to +take it, it not only rightly may take it, but expediently must. + + +II + +The law of a life for a life does not altogether prevent murder. No law +can altogether prevent any form of crime, nor is it desirable that it +should. Doubtless God could so have created us that our sense of right +and justice could have existed without contemplation of injustice and +wrong; as doubtless he could so have created us that we could have felt +compassion without a knowledge of suffering; but he did not. Constituted +as we are, we can know good only by contrast with evil. Our sense of sin +is what our virtues feed upon; in the thin air of universal morality the +altar-fires of honor and the beacons of conscience could not be kept +alight. A community without crime would be a community without warm and +elevated sentiments--without the sense of justice, without generosity, +without courage, without mercy, without magnanimity--a community of +small, smug souls, uninteresting to God and uncoveted by the Devil. We +can have, and do have, too much crime, no doubt; what the wholesome +proportion is none can tell. Just now we are running a good deal to +murder, but he who can gravely attribute that phenomenon, or any part of +it, to infliction of the death penalty, instead of to virtual immunity +from any penalty at all, is justly entitled to the innocent satisfaction +that comes of being a simpleton. + + +III + +The New Woman is against the death penalty, naturally, for she is hot +and hardy in the conviction that whatever is is wrong. She has visited +this world in order to straighten things about a bit, and is in distress +lest the number of things be insufficient to her need. The matter is +important variously; not least so in its relation to the new heaven and +the new earth that are to be the outcome of woman suffrage. There can be +no doubt that the vast majority of women have sentimental objections to +the death penalty that quite outweigh such practical considerations in +its favor as they can be persuaded to comprehend. Aided by the minority +of men afflicted by the same mental malady, they will indubitably effect +its abolition in the first lustrum of their political "equality." The +New Woman will scarcely feel the seat of power warm beneath her before +giving to the assassin's "unhand me, villain!" the authority of law. So +we shall make again the old experiment, discredited by a thousand +failures, of preventing crime by tenderness to caught criminals. And the +criminal uncaught will treat us to a quantity and quality of crime +notably augmented by the Christian spirit of the new _régime_. + + +IV + +As to painless execution, the simple and practical way to make them both +just and expedient is the adoption by murderers of a system of painless +assassinations. Until this is done there seems to be no call to +renounce the wholesome discomfort of the style of executions endeared to +us by memories and associations of the tenderest character. There is, I +fancy, a shaping notion in the observant mind that the penologists and +their allies have gone about as far as they can safely be permitted to +go in the direction of a softer suasion of the criminal nature toward +good behavior. The modern prison has become a rather more comfortable +habitation than the dangerous classes are accustomed to at home. Modern +prison life has in their eyes something of the charm and glamor of an +ideal existence, like that in the Happy Valley from which Rasselas had +the folly to escape. Whatever advantages to the public may be secured by +abating the rigors of imprisonment and inconveniences incident to +execution, there is this objection: it makes them less deterrent. Let +the penologers and philanthropers have their way and even hanging might +be made so pleasant and withal so interesting a social distinction that +it would deter nobody but the person hanged. Adopt the euthanasian +method of electricity, asphyxia by smothering in rose-leaves, or slow +poisoning with rich food, and the death penalty may come to be regarded +as the object of a noble ambition to the _bon vivant_, and the rising +young suicide may go and kill somebody else instead of himself, in order +to receive from the public executioner a happier dispatch than his own +'prentice hand can assure him. + +But the advocates of agreeable pains and penalties tell us that in the +darker ages, when cruel and degrading punishment was the rule, and was +freely inflicted for every light infraction of the law, crime was more +common than it is now; and in this they appear to be right. But one and +all, they overlook a fact equally obvious and vastly significant, that +the intellectual, moral and social condition of the masses was very low. +Crime was more common because ignorance was more common, poverty was +more common, sins of authority, and therefore hatred of authority, were +more common. The world of even a century ago was a different world from +the world of today, and a vastly more uncomfortable one. The popular +adage to the contrary notwithstanding, human nature was not by a long +cut the same then that it is now. In the very ancient time of that early +English king, George III, when women were burned at the stake in public +for various offenses and men were hanged for "coining" and children for +theft, and in the still remoter period (_circa_ 1530), when prisoners +were boiled in several waters, divers sorts of criminals were +disemboweled and some are thought to have undergone the _peine forte et +dure_ of cold-pressing (an infliction which the pen of Hugo has since +made popular--in literature)--in these wicked old days crime flourished, +not because of the law's severity, but in spite of it. It is possible +that our law-making ancestors understood the situation as it then was a +trifle better than we can understand it on the hither side of this gulf +of years, and that they were not the reasonless barbarians that we +think them to have been. And if they were, what must have been the +unreason and barbarity of the criminal element with which they had to +deal? + +I am far from thinking that severity of punishment can have the same +restraining effect as probability of some punishment being inflicted; +but if mildness of penalty is to be superadded to difficulty of +conviction, and both are to be mounted upon laxity in detection, the +pile will be complete indeed. There is a peculiar fitness, perhaps, in +the fact that all these pleas for comfortable punishment should be urged +at a time when there appears to be a general disposition to inflict no +punishment at all. There are, however, still a few old-fashioned persons +who hold it obvious that one who is ambitious to break the laws of his +country will not with so light a heart and so airy an indifference incur +the peril of a harsh penalty as he will the chance of one more nearly +resembling that which he would himself select. + + +V + +After lying for more than a century dead I was revived, dowered with a +new body, and restored to society. The first thing of interest that I +observed was an enormous building, covering a square mile of ground. It +was surrounded on all sides by a high, strong wall of hewn stone upon +which armed sentinels paced to and fro. In one face of the wall was a +single gate of massive iron, strongly guarded. While admiring the +Cyclopean architecture of the "reverend pile" I was accosted by a man in +uniform, evidently the warden, with a cheerful salutation. + +"Colonel," I said, "pray tell me what is this building." + +"This," said he, "is the new state penitentiary. It is one of twelve, +all alike." + +"You surprise me," I replied. "Surely the criminal element must have +increased enormously." + +"Yes, indeed," he assented; "under the Reform _régime_, which began in +your day, crime became so powerful, bold and fierce that arrests were no +longer possible and the prisons then in existence were soon overcrowded. +The state was compelled to erect others of greater capacity." + +"But, Colonel," I protested, "if the criminals were too bold and +powerful to be taken into custody, of what use are the prisons? And how +are they crowded?" + +He fixed upon me a look that I could not fail to interpret as expressing +a doubt of my sanity. "What!" he said, "is it possible that the modern +penology is unknown to you? Do you suppose we practice the antiquated +and ineffective method of shutting up the rascals? Sir, the growth of +the criminal element has, as I said, compelled the erection of more and +larger prisons. We have enough to hold comfortably all the honest men +and women of the state. Within these protecting walls they carry on all +the necessary vocations of life excepting commerce. That is necessarily +in the hands of the rogues, as before." + +"Venerated representative of Reform," I exclaimed, wringing his hand +with effusion, "you are Knowledge, you are History, you are the Higher +Education! We must talk further. Come, let us enter this benign edifice; +you shall show me your dominion and instruct me in the rules. You shall +propose me as an inmate." + +I walked rapidly to the gate. When challenged by the sentinel, I turned +to summon my instructor. He was nowhere visible. I turned again to look +at the prison. Nothing was there: desolate and forbidding, as about the +broken statue of Ozymandias. + +The lone and level sands stretched far away. + + + + +IMMORTALITY + + +The desire for life everlasting has commonly been affirmed to be +universal--at least that is the view taken by those unacquainted with +Oriental faiths and with Oriental character. Those of us whose knowledge +is a trifle wider are not prepared to say that the desire is universal +nor even general. + +If the devout Buddhist, for example, wishes to "live always," he has not +succeeded in very clearly formulating the desire. The sort of thing that +he is pleased to hope for is not what we should call life, and not what +many of us would care for. + +When a man says that everybody has "a horror of annihilation," we may +be very sure that he has not many opportunities for observation, or that +he has not availed himself of all that he has. Most persons go to sleep +rather gladly, yet sleep is virtual annihilation while it lasts; and if +it should last forever the sleeper would be no worse off after a million +years of it than after an hour of it. There are minds sufficiently +logical to think of it that way, and to them annihilation is not a +disagreeable thing to contemplate and expect. + +In this matter of immortality, people's beliefs appear to go along with +their wishes. The man who is content with annihilation thinks he will +get it; those that want immortality are pretty sure they are immortal; +and that is a very comfortable allotment of faiths. The few of us that +are left unprovided for are those who do not bother themselves much +about the matter, one way or another. + +The question of human immortality is the most momentous that the mind is +capable of conceiving. If it is a fact that the dead live all other +facts are in comparison trivial and without interest. The prospect of +obtaining certain knowledge with regard to this stupendous matter is not +encouraging. In all countries but those in barbarism the powers of the +profoundest and most penetrating intelligences have been ceaselessly +addressed to the task of glimpsing a life beyond this life; yet today no +one can truly say that he knows. It is as much a matter of faith as ever +it was. + +Our modern Christian nations profess a passionate hope and belief in +another world, yet the most popular writer and speaker of his time, the +man whose lectures drew the largest audiences, the work of whose pen +brought him the highest rewards, was he who most strenuously strove to +destroy the ground of that hope and unsettle the foundations of that +belief. + +The famous and popular Frenchman, Professor of Spectacular Astronomy, +Camille Flammarion, affirms immortality because he has talked with +departed souls who said that it was true. Yes, monsieur, but surely you +know the rule about hearsay evidence. We Anglo-Saxons are very +particular about that. + +M. Flammarion says: + +"I don't repudiate the presumptive arguments of schoolmen. I merely +supplement them with something positive. For instance, if you assumed +the existence of God this argument of the scholastics is a good one. God +has implanted in all men the desire of perfect happiness. This desire +cannot be satisfied in our lives here. If there were not another life +wherein to satisfy it then God would be a deceiver. _Voila tout_." + +There is more: the desire of perfect happiness does not imply +immortality, even if there is a God, for + +(1) God may not have implanted it, but merely suffers it to exist, as he +suffers sin to exist, the desire of wealth, the desire to live longer +than we do in this world. It is not held that God implanted all the +desires of the human heart. Then why hold that he implanted that of +perfect happiness? + +(2) Even if he did--even if a divinely implanted desire entail its own +gratification--even if it cannot be gratified in this life--that does +not imply immortality. It implies _only_ another life long enough for +its gratification just once. An eternity of gratification is not a +logical inference from it. + +(3) Perhaps God _is_ "a deceiver;" who knows that he is not? Assumption +of the existence of a God is one thing; assumption of the existence of a +God who is honorable and candid according to our conception of honor and +candor is another. + +(4) There may be an honorable and candid God. He may have implanted in +us the desire of perfect happiness. It may be--it is--impossible to +gratify that desire in this life. Still, another life is not implied, +for God may not have intended us to draw the inference that he is going +to gratify it. If omniscient and omnipotent, God must be held to have +intended whatever occurs, but no such God is assumed in M. Flammarion's +illustration, and it may be that God's knowledge and power are limited, +or that one of them is limited. + +M. Flammarion is a learned, if somewhat theatrical, astronomer. He has a +tremendous imagination, which naturally is more at home in the marvelous +and catastrophic than in the orderly regions of familiar phenomena. To +him the heavens are an immense pyrotechnicon and he is the master of the +show and sets off the fireworks. But he knows nothing of logic, which is +the science of straight thinking, and his views of things have +therefore no value; they are nebulous. + +Nothing is clearer than that our pre-existence is a dream, having +absolutely no basis in anything that we know or can hope to know. Of +after-existence there is said to be evidence, or rather testimony, in +assurances of those who are in present enjoyment of it--if it is +enjoyable. Whether this testimony has actually been given--and it is the +only testimony worth a moment's consideration--is a disputed point. Many +persons living this life profess to have received it. But nobody +professes, or ever has professed, to have received a communication of +any kind from one in actual experience of the fore-life. "The souls as +yet ungarmented," if such there are, are dumb to question. The Land +beyond the Grave has been, if not observed, yet often and variously +described: if not explored and surveyed, yet carefully charted. From +among so many accounts of it that we have, he must be fastidious indeed +who cannot be suited. But of the Fatherland that spreads before the +cradle--the great Heretofore, wherein we all dwelt if we are to dwell in +the Hereafter, we have no account. Nobody professes knowledge of that. +No testimony reaches our ears of flesh concerning its topographical or +other features; no one has been so enterprising as to wrest from its +actual inhabitants any particulars of their character and appearance. +And among educated experts and professional proponents of worlds to be +there is a general denial of its existence. + +I am of their way of thinking about that. The fact that we have no +recollection of a former life is entirely conclusive of the matter. To +have lived an unrecollected life is impossible and unthinkable, for +there would be nothing to connect the new life with the old--no thread +of continuity--nothing that persisted from the one life to the other. +The later birth would be that of another person, an altogether different +being, unrelated to the first--a new John Smith succeeding to the late +Tom Jones. + +Let us not be misled here by a false analogy. Today I may get a thwack +o' the mazzard which will give me an intervening season of +unconsciousness between yesterday and to-morrow. Thereafter I may live to +a green old age with no recollection of anything that I knew, or did, or +was before the accident; yet I shall be the same person, for between the +old life and the new there will be a _nexus_, a thread of continuity, +something spanning the gulf from the one state to the other, and the +same in both--namely, my body with its habits, capacities and powers. +That is I; that identifies me to others as my former self--authenticates +and credentials me as the person that incurred the cranial mischance, +dislodging memory. + +But when death occurs _all_ is dislodged if memory is; for between two +merely mental or spiritual existences memory is the only _nexus_ +conceivable; consciousness of identity is the only identity. To live +again without memory of having lived before is to live another. +Re-existence without recollection is absurd. There is nothing to +re-exist. + + + + +EMANCIPATED WOMAN + + +What I should like to know is, how "the enlargement of woman's sphere" +by her entrance into various activities of commercial, professional and +industrial life benefits the sex. It may please Helen Gougar and satisfy +her sense of logical accuracy to say, as she does: "We women must work +in order to fill the places left vacant by liquor-drinking men." But who +filled these places before? Did they remain vacant, or were there then +disappointed applicants, as now? If my memory serves, there has been no +time in the period that it covers when the supply of workers--abstemious +male workers--was not in excess of the demand. That it has always been +so is sufficiently attested by the universally inadequate wage rate. + +Employers seldom fail, and never for long, to get all the workmen they +need. The field into which women have put their sickles was already +overcrowded with reapers. Whatever employment women have obtained has +been got by displacing men--who would otherwise be supporting women. +Where is the general advantage? We may shout "high tariff," "combination +of capital," "demonetization of silver," and what not, but if searching +for the cause of augmented poverty and crime, "industrial discontent" +and the tramp evil, instead of dogmatically expounding it, we should +take some account of this enormous, sudden addition to the number of +workers seeking work. If any one thinks that within the brief period of +a generation the visible supply of labor can be enormously augmented +without profoundly affecting the stability of things and disastrously +touching the interests of wage-workers let no rude voice dispel his +dream of such maleficent agencies as his slumbrous understanding may joy +to affirm. And let our Widows of Ashur unlung themselves in advocacy of +quack remedies for evils of which themselves are cause; it remains true +that when the contention of two lions for one bone is exacerbated by the +accession of a lioness the squabble is not composable by stirring up +some bears in the cage adjacent. + +Indubitably a woman is under no obligation to sacrifice herself to the +good of her sex by foregoing needed employment in the hope that it may +fall to a man gifted with dependent women. Nevertheless our +congratulations are more intelligent when bestowed upon her individual +head than when sifted into the hair of all Eve's daughters. This is a +world of complexities, in which the lines of interest are so +intertangled as frequently to transgress that of sex; and one ambitious +to help but half the race may profitably know that every effort to that +end provokes a counterbalancing mischief. The "enlargement of woman's +opportunities" has benefited individual women. It has not benefited the +sex as a whole, and has distinctly damaged the race. The mind that can +not discern a score of great and irreparable general evils distinctly +traceable to "emancipation of woman" is as impregnable to the light as a +toad in a rock. + +A marked demerit of the new order of things--the _régime_ of female +commercial service--is that its main advantage accrues, not to the race, +not to the sex, not to the class, not to the individual woman, but to +the person of least need and worth--the male employer. (Female employers +in any considerable number there will not be, but those that we have +could give the male ones profitable instruction in grinding the faces of +their employees.) This constant increase of the army of labor--always and +everywhere too large for the work in sight--by accession of a new +contingent of natural oppressibles makes the very teeth of old Munniglut +thrill with a poignant delight. It brings in that situation known as two +laborers seeking one job--and one of them a person whose bones he can +easily grind to make his bread; and Munniglut is a miller of skill and +experience, dusted all over with the evidence of his useful craft. When +Heaven has assisted the Daughters of Hope to open to women a new "avenue +of opportunities" the first to enter and walk therein, like God in the +Garden of Eden, is the good Mr. Munniglut, contentedly smoothing the +folds out of the superior slope of his paunch, exuding the peculiar +aroma of his oleaginous personality and larding the new roadway with +the overflow of a righteousness stimulated to action by relish of his +own identity. And ever thereafter the subtle suggestion of a fat +philistinism lingers along that path of progress like an assertion of a +possessory right. + +It is God's own crystal truth that in dealing with women unfortunate +enough to be compelled to earn their own living and fortunate enough to +have wrested from Fate an opportunity to do so, men of business and +affairs treat them with about the same delicate consideration that they +show to dogs and horses of the inferior breeds. It does not commonly +occur to the wealthy "professional man," or "prominent merchant," to be +ashamed to add to his yearly thousands a part of the salary justly due +to his female bookkeeper or typewriter, who sits before him all day with +an empty belly in order to have an habilimented back. He has a vague, +hazy notion that the law of supply and demand is mandatory, and that in +submitting himself to it by paying her a half of what he would have to +pay a man of inferior efficiency he is supplying the world with a noble +example of obedience. I must take the liberty to remind him that the law +of supply and demand is not imperative; it is not a statute but a +phenomenon. He may reply: "It is imperative; the penalty for +disobedience is failure. If I pay more in salaries and wages than I need +to, my competitor will not; and with that advantage he will drive me +from the field." If his margin of profit is so small that he must eke it +out by coining the sweat of his workwomen into nickels I've nothing to +say to him. Let him adopt in peace the motto, "I cheat to eat." I do not +know why he should eat, but Nature, who has provided sustenance for the +worming sparrow, the sparrowing owl and the owling eagle, approves the +needy man of prey and makes a place for him at table. + +Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is +a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch--as cunning is the wisdom +of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward. Nobody is +altogether bad; the scoundrel who has grown rich by underpaying workmen +in his factory will sometimes endow an asylum for indigent seamen. To +oppress one's own workmen, and provide for the workmen of a neighbor--to +skin those in charge of one's own interests while cottoning and oiling +the residuary product of another's skinnery--that is not very good +benevolence, nor very good sense, but it serves in place of both. The +man who eats _pâté de fois gras_ in the sweat of his girl cashier's +face, or wears purple and fine linen in order that his typewriter may +have an eocene gown and a pliocene hat, seems a tolerably satisfactory +specimen of the genus thief; but let us not forget that in his own +home--a fairly good one--he may enjoy and merit that highest and most +honorable title on the scroll of woman's favor, "a good provider." One +having a claim to that glittering distinction should enjoy immunity from +the coarse and troublesome question, "From whose backs and bellies do +you provide?" + +So much for the material results to the sex. What are the moral results? +One does not like to speak of them, particularly to those who do not and +can not know--to good women in whose innocent minds female immorality is +inseparable from flashy gowning and the painted face; to foolish, +book-taught men who honestly believe in some protective sanctity that +hedges womanhood. If men of the world with years enough to have lived +out of the old _régime_ into the new would testify in this matter there +would ensue a great rattling of dry bones in bodices of reform-ladies. +Nay, if the young man about town, knowing nothing of how things were in +the "dark backward and absym of time," but something of the moral +distance between even so free-running a creature as the society girl and +the average working girl of the factory, the shop and the office, would +speak out (under assurance of immunity from prosecution) his testimony +would be a surprise to the cartilaginous virgins, blowsy matrons, acrid +relicts and hairy males of Emancipation. It would pain, too, some very +worthy but unobservant persons not in sympathy with "the cause." + +Certain significant facts are within the purview of all but the very +young and the comfortably blind. To the woman of to-day the man of +to-day is imperfectly polite. In place of reverence he gives her +"deference"; to the language of compliment has succeeded the language of +raillery. Men have almost forgotten how to bow. Doubtless the advanced +female prefers the new manner, as may some of her less forward sisters, +thinking it more sincere. It is not; our giddy grandfather talked +high-flown nonsense because his heart had tangled his tongue. He treated +his woman more civilly than we ours because he loved her better. He +never had seen her on the "rostrum" and in the lobby, never had heard +her in advocacy of herself, never had read her confessions of his sins, +never had felt the stress of her competition, nor himself assisted by +daily personal contact in rubbing the bloom off her. He did not know +that her virtues were due to her secluded life, but thought, dear old +boy, that they were a gift of God. + + + + +A MAD WORLD + + +Let us suppose that in tracing its cycloidal curves through the +unthinkable reaches of space traversed by the solar system our planet +should pass through a "belt" of attenuated matter having the property of +dementing us! It is a conception easily enough entertained. That space +is full of malign conditions incontinuously distributed; that we are at +one time traversing a zone comparatively innocuous and at another +spinning through a region of infection; that away behind us in the wake +of our swirling flight are fields of plague and pain still agitated by +our passage through them,--all this is as good as known. It is almost as +certain as it is that in our little annual circle round the sun are +points at which we are stoned and brick-batted like a pig in a +potato-patch--pelted with little nodules of meteoric metal flung like +gravel, and bombarded with gigantic masses hurled by God knows what? +What strange adventures await us in those yet untraveled regions toward +which we speed?--into what malign conditions may we not at any time +plunge?--to the strength and stress of what frightful environment may +we not at last succumb? The subject lends itself readily enough to a +jest, but I am not jesting: it is really altogether probable that our +solar system, racing through space with inconceivable velocity, will one +day enter a region charged with something deleterious to the human +brain, minding us all mad-wise. + +By the way, dear reader, did you ever happen to consider the possibility +that you are a lunatic, and perhaps confined in an asylum? It seems to +you that you are not--that you go with freedom where you will, and use a +sweet reasonableness in all your works and ways; but to many a lunatic +it seems that he is Rameses II, or the Holkar of Indore. Many a plunging +maniac, ironed to the floor of a cell, believes himself the Goddess of +Liberty careering gaily through the Ten Commandments in a chariot of +gold. Of your own sanity and identity you have no evidence that is any +better than he has of his. More accurately, I have none of mine; for +anything I know, you do not exist, nor any one of all the things with +which I think myself familiarly conscious. All may be fictions of my +disordered imagination. I really know of but one reason for doubting +that I am an inmate of an asylum for the insane--namely, the probability +that there is nowhere any such thing as an asylum for the insane. + +This kind of speculation has charms that get a good neck-hold upon +attention. For example, if I am really a lunatic, and the persons and +things that I seem to see about me have no objective existence, what an +ingenious though disordered imagination I must have! What a clever +_coup_ it was to invent Mr. Rockefeller and clothe him with the +attribute of permanence! With what amusing qualities I have endowed my +laird of Skibo, philanthropist. What a masterpiece of creative humor is +my Fatty Taft, statesman, taking himself seriously, even solemnly, and +persuading others to do the same! And this city of Washington, with its +motley population of silurians, parvenoodles and scamps pranking +unashamed in the light of day, and its saving contingent of the forsaken +righteous, their seed begging bread,--did Rabelais' exuberant fancy ever +conceive so--but Rabelais is, perhaps, himself a conception. + +Surely he is no common maniac who has wrought out of nothing the +history, the philosophies, sciences, arts, laws, religions, politics and +morals of this imaginary world. Nay, the world itself, tumbling uneasily +through space like a beetle's ball, is no mean achievement, and I am +proud of it. But the mental feat in which I take most satisfaction, and +which I doubt not is most diverting to my keepers, is that of creating +Mr. W.R. Hearst, pointing his eyes toward the White House and endowing +him with a perilous Jacksonian ambition to defile it. The Hearst is +distinctly a treasure. + +On the whole, I have done, I think, tolerably well, and when I +contemplate the fertility and originality of my inventions, the queer +unearthliness and grotesque actions of the characters whom I have +evolved, isolated and am cultivating, I cannot help thinking that if +Heaven had not made me a lunatic my peculiar talent might have made me +an entertaining writer. + + + + +EPIGRAMS OF A CYNIC + + +If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day +the country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike +hypocrites of Canada. + +To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil, +and to pictures of the latter it appends a tail to represent the note of +interrogation. + +"Immoral" is the judgment of the stalled ox on the gamboling lamb. + +In forgiving an injury be somewhat ceremonious, lest your magnanimity be +construed as indifference. + +True, man does not know woman. But neither does woman. + +Age is provident because the less future we have the more we fear it. + +Reason is fallible and virtue invincible; the winds vary and the needle +forsakes the pole, but stupidity never errs and never intermits. Since +it has been found that the axis of the earth wabbles, stupidity is +indispensable as a standard of constancy. + +In order that the list of able women may be memorized for use at +meetings of the oppressed sex, Heaven has considerately made it brief. + +Firmness is my persistency; obstinacy is yours. + + A little heap of dust, + A little streak of rust, + A stone without a name-- + Lo! hero, sword and fame. + +Our vocabulary is defective; we give the same name to woman's lack of +temptation and man's lack of opportunity. + +"You scoundrel, you have wronged me," hissed the philosopher. "May you +live forever!" + +The man who thinks that a garnet can be made a ruby by setting it in +brass is writing "dialect" for publication. + +"Who art thou, stranger, and what dost thou seek?" "I am Generosity, and +I seek a person named Gratitude." "Then thou dost not deserve to find +her." "True. I will go about my business and think of her no more. But +who art thou, to be so wise?" "I am Gratitude--farewell forever." + +There was never a genius who was not thought a fool until he disclosed +himself; whereas he is a fool then only. + +The boundaries that Napoleon drew have been effaced; the kingdoms that +he set up have disappeared. But all the armies and statecraft of Europe +cannot unsay what you have said. + + Strive not for singularity in dress; + Fools have the more and men of sense the less. + To look original is not worth while, + But be in mind a little out of style. + +A conqueror arose from the dead. "Yesterday," he said, "I ruled half the +world." "Please show me the half that you ruled," said an angel, +pointing out a wisp of glowing vapor floating in space. "That is the +world." + +"Who art thou, shivering in thy furs?" "My name is Avarice. What is +thine?" "Unselfishness." "Where is thy clothing, placid one?" "Thou art +wearing it." + +To be comic is merely to be playful, but wit is a serious matter. To +laugh at it is to confess that you do not understand. + +If you would be accounted great by your contemporaries, be not too much +greater than they. + +To have something that he will not desire, nor know that he has--such is +the hope of him who seeks the admiration of posterity. The character of +his work does not matter; he is a humorist. + +Women, and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact. + +To fatten pigs, confine and feed them; to fatten rogues, cultivate a +generous disposition. + +Every heart is the lair of a ferocious animal. The greatest wrong that +you can put upon a man is to provoke him to let out his beast. + +When two irreconcilable propositions are presented for assent the safest +way is to thank Heaven that we are not as the unreasoning brutes, and +believe both. + +Truth is more deceptive than falsehood, for it is more frequently +presented by those from whom we do not expect it, and so has against it +a numerical presumption. + +A bad marriage is like an electrical thrilling machine: it makes you +dance, but you can't let go. + +Meeting Merit on a street-crossing, Success stood still. Merit stepped +off into the mud and went around him, bowing his apologies, which +Success had the grace to accept. + +"I think," says the philosopher divine, "Therefore I am." Sir, here's a +surer sign: We know we live, for with our every breath we feel the fear +and imminence of death. + +The first man you meet is a fool. If you do not think so ask him and he +will prove it. + +He who would rather inflict injustice than suffer it will always have +his choice, for no injustice can be done to him. + +There are as many conceptions of a perfect happiness hereafter as there +are minds that have marred their happiness here. + +We yearn to be, not what we are, but what we are not. If we were +immortal we should not crave immortality. + +A rabbit's foot may bring good luck to you, but it brought none to the +rabbit. + +Before praising the wisdom of the man who knows how to hold his tongue +ascertain if he knows how to hold his pen. + +The most charming view in the world is obtained by introspection. + +Love is unlike chess, in that the pieces are moved secretly and the +player sees most of the game. But the looker-on has one incomparable +advantage: he is not the stake. + +It is not for nothing that tigers choose to hide in the jungle, for +commerce and trade are carried on, mostly, in the open. + +We say that we love, not whom we will, but whom we must. Our judgment +need not, therefore, go to confession. + +Of two kinds of temporary insanity, one ends in suicide, the other in +marriage. + +If you give alms from compassion, why require the beneficiary to be "a +deserving object?" No other adversity is so sharp as destitution of +merit. + +Bereavement is the name that selfishness gives to a particular +privation. + + O proud philanthropist, your hope is vain + To get by giving what you lost by gain. + With every gift you do but swell the cloud + Of witnesses against you, swift and loud-- + Accomplices who turn and swear you split + Your life: half robber and half hypocrite. + You're least unsafe when most intact you hold + Your curst allotment of dishonest gold. + +The highest and rarest form of contentment is approval of the success of +another. + + If Inclination challenge, stand and fight-- + From Opportunity the wise take flight. + +What a woman most admires in a man is distinction among men. What a man +most admires in a woman is devotion to himself. + +Those who most loudly invite God's attention to themselves when in peril +of death are those who should most fervently wish to escape his +observation. + +When you have made a catalogue of your friend's faults it is only fair +to supply him with a duplicate, so that he may know yours. + +How fascinating is Antiquity!--in what a golden haze the ancients lived +their lives! We, too, are ancients. Of our enchanting time Posterity's +great poets will sing immortal songs, and its archaeologists will +reverently uncover the foundations of our palaces and temples. Meantime +we swap jack-knives. + +Observe, my son, with how austere a virtue the man without a cent puts +aside the temptation to manipulate the market or acquire a monopoly. + +For study of the good and the bad in woman two women are a needless +expense. + + "There's no free will," says the philosopher; + "To hang is most unjust." + "There is no free will," assents the officer; + "We hang because we must." + +Hope is an explorer who surveys the country ahead. That is why we know +so much about the Hereafter and so little about the Heretofore. + +Remembering that it was a woman who lost the world, we should accept the +act of cackling geese in saving Rome as partial reparation. + +There are two classes of women who may do as they please; those who are +rich and those who are poor. The former can count on assent, the latter +on inattention. + +When into the house of the heart Curiosity is admitted as the guest of +Love she turns her host out of doors. + +Happiness has not to all the same name: to Youth she is known as the +Future; Age knows her as the Dream. + +"Who art thou, there in the mire?" "Intuition. I leaped all the way +from where thou standest in fear on the brink of the bog." "A great +feat, madam; accept the admiration of Reason, sometimes known as +Dryfoot." + +In eradicating an evil, it makes a difference whether it is uprooted or +rooted up. The difference is in the reformer. + +The Audible Sisterhood rightly affirms the equality of the sexes: no man +is so base but some woman is base enough to love him. + +Having no eyes in the back of the head, we see ourselves on the verge of +the outlook. Only he who has accomplished the notable feat of turning +about knows himself the central figure in the universe. + +Truth is so good a thing that falsehood can not afford to be without it. + +If women did the writing of the world, instead of the talking, men would +be regarded as the superior sex in beauty, grace and goodness. + +Love is a delightful day's journey. At the farther end kiss your +companion and say farewell. + +Let him who would wish to duplicate his every experience prate of the +value of life. + +The game of discontent has its rules, and he who disregards them cheats. +It is not permitted to you to wish to add another's advantages or +possessions to your own; you are permitted only to wish to be another. + +The creator and arbiter of beauty is the heart; to the male rattlesnake +the female rattlesnake is the loveliest thing in nature. + +Thought and emotion dwell apart. When the heart goes into the head there +is no dissension; only an eviction. + +If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it. + +"Where goest thou, Ignorance?" "To fortify the mind of a maiden against +a peril." "I am going thy way. My name is Knowledge." "Scoundrel! Thou +art the peril." + +A prude is one who blushes modestly at the indelicacy of her thoughts +and virtuously flies from the temptation of her desires. + +The man who is always taking you by the hand is the same who if you were +hungry would take you by the cafe. + +When a certain sovereign wanted war he threw out a diplomatic +intimation; when ready, a diplomat. + +If public opinion were determined by a throw of the dice, it would in +the long run be half the time right. + +The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the +business known as gambling. + +A virtuous widow is the most loyal of mortals; she is faithful to that +which is neither pleased nor profited by her fidelity. + +Of one who was "foolish" the creators of our language said that he was +"fond." That we have not definitely reversed the meanings of the words +should be set down to the credit of our courtesy. + +Rioting gains its end by the power of numbers. To a believer in the +wisdom and goodness of majorities it is not permitted to denounce a +successful mob. + + Artistically set to grace + The wall of a dissecting-place, + A human pericardium + Was fastened with a bit of gum, + While, simply underrunning it, + The one word, "Charity," was writ + To show the student band that hovered + About it what it once had covered. + +Virtue is not necessary to a good reputation, but a good reputation is +helpful to virtue. + +When lost in a forest go always down hill. When lost in a philosophy or +doctrine go up-ward. + +We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled +to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect. + +Pascal says that an inch added to the length of Cleopatra's nose would +have changed the fortunes of the world. But having said this, he has +said nothing, for all the forces of nature and all the power of +dynasties could not have added an inch to the length of Cleopatra's +nose. + +Our luxuries are always masquerading as necessaries. Woman is the only +necessary having the boldness and address to compel recognition as a +luxury. + +"I am the seat of the affections," said the heart. "Thank you," said the +judgment, "you save my face." + +"Who art thou that weepest?" "Man." "Nay, thou art Egotism. I am the +Scheme of the Universe. Study me and learn that nothing matters." "Then +how does it happen that I weep?" + +A slight is less easily forgiven than an injury, because it implies +something of contempt, indifference, an overlooking of our importance; +whereas an injury presupposes some degree of consideration. "The +blackguards!" said a traveler whom Sicilian brigands had released +without ransom; "did they think me a person of no consequence?" + +The people's plaudits are unheard in hell. + +Generosity to a fallen foe is a virtue that takes no chances. + +If there was a world before this we must all have died impenitent. + +We are what we laugh at. The stupid person is a poor joke, the clever, a +good one. + +If every man who resents being called a rogue resented being one this +would be a world of wrath. + +Force and charm are important elements of character, but it counts for +little to be stronger than honey and sweeter than a lion. + + Grief and discomfiture are coals that cool: + Why keep them glowing with thy sighs, poor fool? + +A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites +them to think something else. + +Asked to describe the Deity, a donkey would represent him with long ears +and a tail. Man's conception is higher and truer: he thinks of him as +somewhat resembling a man. + +Christians and camels receive their burdens kneeling. + +The sky is a concave mirror in which Man sees his own distorted image +and seeks to propitiate it. + +Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land, +but do not hope that the life insurance companies will offer thee +special rates. + +Persons who are horrified by what they believe to be Darwin's theory of +the descent of Man from the Ape may find comfort in the hope of his +return. + +A strong mind is more easily impressed than a weak; you shall not so +readily convince a fool that you are a philosopher as a philosopher that +you are a fool. + +A cheap and easy cynicism rails at everything. The master of the art +accomplishes the formidable task of discrimination. + +When publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a +codefendant. + + O lady fine, fear not to lead + To Hymen's shrine a clown: + Love cannot level up, indeed, + But he can level down. + +Men are polygamous by nature and monogamous for opportunity. It is a +faithful man who is willing to be watched by a half-dozen wives. + +The virtues chose Modesty to be their queen. "I did not know that I was +a virtue," she said. "Why did you not choose Innocence?" "Because of her +ignorance," they replied. "She knows nothing but that she is a virtue." + +It is a wise "man's man" who knows what it is that he despises in a +"ladies' man." + +If the vices of women worshiped their creators men would boast of the +adoration they inspire. + +The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of +conformity. + +Slang is the speech of him who robs the literary garbage carts on their +way to the dumps. + +A woman died who had passed her life in affirming the superiority of her +sex. "At last," she said, "I shall have rest and honors." "Enter," said +Saint Peter; "thou shalt wash the faces of the dear little cherubim." + +To woman a general truth has neither value nor interest unless she can +make a particular application of it. And we say that women are not +practical! + +The ignorant know not the depth of their ignorance, but the learned know +the shallowness of their learning. + +He who relates his success in charming woman's heart may be assured of +his failure to charm man's ear. + + What poignant memories the shadows bring + What songs of triumph in the dawning ring! + By night a coward and by day a king. + +When among the graves of thy fellows, walk with circumspection; thine +own is open at thy feet. + +As the physiognomist takes his own face as the highest type and +standard, so the critic's theories are imposed by his own limitations. + +"Heaven lies about us in our infancy," and our neighbors take up the +tale as we mature. + + "My laws," she said, "are of myself a part: + I read them by examining my heart." + "True," he replied; "like those to Moses known, + Thine also are engraven upon stone." + +Love is a distracted attention: from contemplation of one's self one +turns to consider one's dream. + +"Halt!--who goes there?" "Death." "Advance, Death, and give the +countersign." "How needless! I care not to enter thy camp tonight. Thou +shalt enter mine." "What! I a deserter?" "Nay, a great soldier. Thou +shalt overcome all the enemies of mankind." "Who are they?" "Life and +the Fear of Death." + +The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they +signify character. The philosopher reads character by what the hand most +loves to close upon. + + Ah, woe is his, with length of living cursed, + Who, nearing second childhood, had no first. + Behind, no glimmer, and before no ray-- + A night at either end of his dark day. + +A noble enthusiasm in praise of Woman is not incompatible with a +spirited zeal in defamation of women. + +The money-getter who pleads his love of work has a lame defense, for +love of work at money-getting is a lower taste than love of money. + +He who thinks that praise of mediocrity atones for disparagement of +genius is like one who should plead robbery in excuse of theft. + +The most disagreeable form of masculine hypocrisy is that which finds +expression in pretended remorse for impossible gallantries. + +Any one can say that which is new; any one that which is true. For that +which is both new and true we must go duly accredited to the gods and +await their pleasure. + +The test of truth is Reason, not Faith; for to the court of Reason must +be submitted even the claims of Faith. + +"Whither goest thou?" said the angel. "I know not." "And whence hast +thou come?" "I know not." "But who art thou?" "I know not." "Then thou +art Man. See that thou turn not back, but pass on to the place whence +thou hast come." + +If Expediency and Righteousness are not father and son they are the most +harmonious brothers that ever were seen. + +Train the head, and the heart will take care of itself; a rascal is one +who knows not how to think. + + Do you to others as you would + That others do to you; + But see that you no service good + Would have from others that they could + Not rightly do. + +Taunts are allowable in the case of an obstinate husband: balky horses +may best be made to go by having their ears bitten. + +Adam probably regarded Eve as the woman of his choice, and exacted a +certain gratitude for the distinction of his preference. + +A man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a +dead ape and work downward through a million graves. He is like the +lower end of a suspended chain; you can sway him slightly to the right +or the left, but remove your hand and he falls into line with the other +links. + +He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity. A fool is a +natural proselyte, but he must be caught young, for his convictions, +unlike those of the wise, harden with age. + +These are the prerogatives of genius: To know without having learned; to +draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of +things. + +Although one love a dozen times, yet will the latest love seem the +first. He who says he has loved twice has not loved once. + +Men who expect universal peace through invention of destructive weapons +of war are no wiser than one who, noting the improvement of agricultural +implements, should prophesy an end to the tilling of the soil. + +To parents only, death brings an inconsolable sorrow. When the young die +and the old live, nature's machinery is working with the friction that +we name grief. + +Empty wine bottles have a bad opinion of women. + +Civilization is the child of human ignorance and conceit. If Man knew +his insignificance in the scheme of things he would not think it worth +while to rise from barbarity to enlightenment. But it is only through +enlightenment that he can know. + +Along the road of life are many pleasure resorts, but think not that by +tarrying in them you will take more days to the journey. The day of your +arrival is already recorded. + +The most offensive egotist is he that fears to say "I" and "me." "It +will probably rain"--that is dogmatic. "I think it will rain"--that is +natural and modest. Montaigne is the most delightful of essayists +because so great is his humility that he does not think it important +that we see not Montaigne. He so forgets himself that he employs no +artifice to make us forget him. + + On fair foundations Theocrats unwise + Rear superstructures that offend the skies. + "Behold," they cry, "this pile so fair and tall! + Come dwell within it and be happy all." + But they alone inhabit it, and find, + Poor fools, 'tis but a prison for the mind. + +If thou wilt not laugh at a rich man's wit thou art an anarchist, and if +thou take not his word thou shalt take nothing that he hath. Make haste, +therefore, to be civil to thy betters, and so prosper, for prosperity is +the foundation of the state. + +Death is not the end; there remains the litigation over the estate. + +When God makes a beautiful woman, the devil opens a new register. + +When Eve first saw her reflection in a pool, she sought Adam and accused +him of infidelity. + +"Why dost thou weep?" "For the death of my wife. Alas! I shall never +again see her!" "Thy wife will never again see thee, yet she does not +weep." + +What theology is to religion and jurisprudence to justice, etiquette is +to civility. + +"Who art thou that despite the piercing cold and thy robe's raggedness +seemest to enjoy thyself?" "Naught else is enjoyable--I am Contentment." +"Ha! thine must be a magic shirt. Off with it! I shiver in my fine +attire." "I have no shirt. Pass on, Success." + +Ignorance when inevitable is excusable. It may be harmless, even +beneficial; but it is charming only to the unwise. To affect a spurious +ignorance is to disclose a genuine. + +Because you will not take by theft what you can have by cheating, think +not yours is the only conscience in the world. Even he who permits you +to cheat his neighbor will shrink from permitting you to cheat himself. + +"God keep thee, stranger; what is thy name?" "Wisdom. And thine?" +"Knowledge. How does it happen that we meet?" "This is an intersection +of our paths." "Will it ever be decreed that we travel always the same +road?" "We were well named if we knew." + +Nothing is more logical than persecution. Religious tolerance is a kind +of infidelity. + +Convictions are variable; to be always consistent is to be sometimes +dishonest. + +The philosopher's profoundest conviction is that which he is most +reluctant to express, lest he mislead. + +When exchange of identities is possible, be careful; you may choose a +person who is willing. + +The most intolerant advocate is he who is trying to convince himself. + +In the Parliament of Otumwee the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed a +tax on fools. "The right honorable and generous gentleman," said a +member, "forgets that we already have it in the poll tax." + +"Whose dead body is that?" "Credulity's." "By whom was he slain?" +"Credulity." "Ah, suicide." "No, surfeit. He dined at the table of +Science, and swallowed all that was set before him." + +Don't board with the devil if you wish to be fat. + +Pray do not despise your delinquent debtor; his default is no proof of +poverty. + +Courage is the acceptance of the gambler's chance: a brave man bets +against the game of the gods. + +"Who art thou?" "A philanthropist. And thou?" "A pauper." "Away! you +have nothing to relieve my needs." + +Youth looks forward, for nothing is behind! Age backward, for nothing is +before. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Cynic Looks at Life, by Ambrose Bierce + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CYNIC LOOKS AT LIFE *** + +***** This file should be named 16340-8.txt or 16340-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/3/4/16340/ + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Dave Macfarlane and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: A Cynic Looks at Life + Little Blue Book #1099 + +Author: Ambrose Bierce + +Editor: E. Haldeman-Julius + +Release Date: July 21, 2005 [EBook #16340] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CYNIC LOOKS AT LIFE *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Dave Macfarlane and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<h3>LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 1099</h3> +<h3>Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius</h3> +<br /> + + +<h1>A Cynic Looks at Life</h1> + + +<h2>Ambrose Bierce</h2> + +<h3>HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY<br /> +GIRARD, KANSAS</h3> + +<div class="center">Copyright, 1912, by</div> +<div class="center">The Neale Publishing Company</div> + +<div class="center">Reprinted by Special Arrangement With</div> +<div class="center">Albert and Charles Boni, New York</div> + +<div class="center">PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h1>A CYNIC LOOKS AT LIFE</h1> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CIVILIZATION</h2> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>I</h2> + + +<p>The question "Does civilization civilize?" is a fine example of <i>petitio +principii</i>, and decides itself in the affirmative; for civilization must +needs do that from the doing of which it has its name. But it is not +necessary to suppose that he who propounds is either unconscious of his +lapse in logic or desirous of digging a pitfall for the feet of those +who discuss; I take it he simply wishes to put the matter in an +impressive way, and relies upon a certain degree of intelligence in the +interpretation.</p> + +<p>Concerning uncivilized peoples we know but little except what we are +told by travelers—who, speaking generally, can know very little but the +fact of uncivilization, as shown in externals and irrelevances, and are +moreover, greatly given to lying. From the savages we hear very little. +Judging them in all things by our own standards in default of a +knowledge of theirs, we necessarily condemn, disparage and belittle. One +thing that civilization certainly has not done is to make us intelligent +enough to understand that the contrary of a virtue is not necessarily a +vice. Because, as a rule, we have but one wife and several mistresses +each it is not certain that polygamy is everywhere—nor, for that +matter, anywhere—either wrong or inexpedient. Because the brutality of +the civilized slave owners and dealers created a conquering sentiment +against slavery it is not intelligent to assume that slavery is a +maleficent thing amongst Oriental peoples (for example) where the slave +is not oppressed. Some of these same Orientals whom we are pleased to +term half-civilized have no regard for truth. "Takest thou me for a +Christian dog," said one of them, "that I should be the slave of my +word?" So far as I can perceive, the "Christian dog" is no more the +slave of his word than the True Believer, and I think the +savage—allowing for the fact that his inveracity has dominion over +fewer things—as great a liar as either of them. For my part, I do not +know what, in all circumstances, is right or wrong; but I know that, if +right, it is at least stupid, to judge an uncivilized people by the +standards of morality and intelligence set up by civilized ones. Life in +civilized countries is so complex that men there have more ways to be +good than savages have, and more to be bad; more to be happy, and more +to be miserable. And in each way to be good or bad, their generally +superior knowledge—their knowledge of more things—enables them to +commit greater excesses than the savage can. The civilized +philanthropist wreaks upon his fellows a ranker philanthropy, the +civilized rascal a sturdier rascality. And—splendid triumph of +enlightenment!—the two characters are, in civilization, frequently +combined in one person.</p> + +<p>I know of no savage custom or habit of thought which has not its mate +in civilized countries. For every mischievous or absurd practice of the +natural man I can name you one of ours that is essentially the same. And +nearly every custom of our barbarian ancestors in historic times +persists in some form today. We make ourselves look formidable in +battle—for that matter, we fight. Our women paint their faces. We feel +it obligatory to dress more or less alike, inventing the most ingenious +reasons for doing so and actually despising and persecuting those who do +not care to conform. Almost within the memory of living persons bearded +men were stoned in the streets; and a clergyman in New York who wore his +beard as Christ wore his, was put into jail and variously persecuted +till he died.</p> + +<p>Civilization does not, I think, make the race any better. It makes men +know more: and if knowledge makes them happy it is useful and desirable. +The one purpose of every sane human being is to be happy. No one can +have any other motive than that. There is no such thing as +unselfishness. We perform the most "generous" and "self-sacrificing" +acts because we should be unhappy if we did not. We move on lines of +least reluctance. Whatever tends to increase the beggarly sum of human +happiness is worth having; nothing else has any value.</p> + +<p>The cant of civilization fatigues. Civilization, is a fine and beautiful +structure. It is as picturesque as a Gothic cathedral, but it is built +upon the bones and cemented with the blood of those whose part in all +its pomp is that and nothing more. It cannot be reared in the +ungenerous tropics, for there the people will not contribute their +blood and bones. The proposition that the average American workingman or +European peasant is "better off" than the South Sea islander, lolling +under a palm and drunk with over-eating, will not bear a moment's +examination. It is we scholars and gentlemen that are better off.</p> + +<p>It is admitted that the South Sea islander in a state of nature is +overmuch addicted to the practice of eating human flesh; but concerning +that I submit: first, that he likes it; second, that those who supply it +are mostly dead. It is upon his enemies that he feeds, and these he +would kill anyhow, as we do ours. In civilized, enlightened and +Christian countries, where cannibalism has not yet established itself, +wars are as frequent and destructive as among the maneaters. The +untitled savage knows at least why he goes killing, whereas our private +soldier is commonly in black ignorance of the apparent cause of +quarrel—of the actual cause, always. Their shares in the fruits of +victory are about equal, for the chief takes all the dead, the general +all the glory.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> + + +<p>Transplanted institutions grow slowly; civilization can not be put into +a ship and carried across an ocean. The history of this country is a +sequence of illustrations of these truths. It was settled by civilized +men and women from civilized countries, yet after two and a half +centuries, with unbroken communication with the mother systems, it is +still imperfectly civilized. In learning and letters, in art and the +science of government, America is but a faint and stammering echo of +Europe.</p> + +<p>For nearly all that is good in our American civilization we +are indebted to the Old World; the errors and mischiefs are of our own +creation. We have originated little, because there is little to +originate, but we have unconsciously reproduced many of the discredited +systems of former ages and other countries—receiving them at second +hand, but making them ours by the sheer strength and immobility of the +national belief in their novelty. Novelty! Why, it is not possible to +make an experiment in government, in art, in literature, in sociology, +or in morals, that has not been made over, and over, and over again.</p> + +<p>The glories of England are our glories. She can achieve nothing that our +fathers did not help to make possible to her. The learning, the power, +the refinement of a great nation, are not the growth of a century, but +of many centuries; each generation builds upon the work of the +preceding. For untold ages our ancestors wrought to rear that "reverend +pile," the civilization of England. And shall we now try to belittle the +mighty structure because other though kindred hands are laying the top +courses while we have elected to found a new tower in another land? The +American eulogist of civilization who is not proud of his heritage in +England's glory is unworthy to enjoy his lesser heritage in the lesser +glory of his own country.</p> + +<p>The English, are undoubtedly our intellectual superiors; and as the +virtues are solely the product of intelligence and cultivation—a rogue +being only a dunce considered from another point of view—they are our +moral superiors likewise. Why should they not be? Theirs is a land, not +of ugly schoolhouses grudgingly erected, containing schools supported by +such niggardly tax levies as a sparse and hard-handed population will +consent to pay, but of ancient institutions splendidly endowed by the +state and by centuries of private benefaction. As a means of dispensing +formulated ignorance our boasted public school system is not without +merit; it spreads out education sufficiently thin to give everyone +enough to make him a more competent fool than he would have been without +it; but to compare it with that which is not the creature of legislation +acting with malice aforethought, but the unnoted out-growth of ages, is +to be ridiculous. It is like comparing the laid-out town of a western +prairie, its right-angled streets, prim cottages, and wooden a-b-c +shops, with the grand old town of Oxford, topped with the clustered +domes and towers of its twenty-odd great colleges, the very names of +many of whose founders have perished from human record, as have the +chronicles of the times in which they lived.</p> + +<p>It is not only that we have had to "subdue the wilderness"; our +educational conditions are adverse otherwise. Our political system is +unfavorable. Our fortunes, accumulated in one generation, are dispersed +in the next. If it takes three generations to make a gentleman one will +not make a thinker. Instruction is acquired, but capacity for +instruction is transmitted. The brain that is to contain a trained +intellect is not the result of a haphazard marriage between a clown and +a wench, nor does it get its tractable tissues from a hard-headed farmer +and a soft-headed milliner. If you confess the importance of race and +pedigree in a horse and a dog how dare you deny it in a man?</p> + +<p>I do not hold that the political and social system that creates an +aristocracy of leisure is the best possible kind of human organization; +I perceive its disadvantages clearly enough. But I do hold that a system +under which most important public trusts, political and professional, +civil and military ecclesiastical and secular, are held by educated +men—that is, men of trained faculties and disciplined judgment—is +not an altogether faulty system.</p> + +<p>It is a universal human weakness to disparage the knowledge that we do +not ourselves possess, but it is only my own beloved country that can +justly boast herself the last refuge and asylum of the impotents and +incapables who deny the advantage of all knowledge whatsoever. It was an +American senator who declared that he had devoted a couple of weeks to +the study of finance, and found the accepted authorities all wrong. It +was another American senator who, confronted with certain hostile facts +in the history of another country, proposed "to brush away all facts, +and argue the question on consideration of plain common sense."</p> + +<p>Republican institutions have this disadvantage: by incessant changes in +the <i>personnel</i> of government—to say nothing of the manner of men that +ignorant constituencies elect; and all constituencies are ignorant—we +attain to no fixed principles and standards. There is no such thing here +as a science of politics, because it is not to any one's interest to +make politics the study of his life. Nothing is settled; no truth finds +general acceptance. What we do one year we undo the next, and do over +again the year following. Our energy is wasted in, and our prosperity +suffers from, experiments endlessly repeated.</p> + +<p>Every patriot believes his country better than any other country. Now, +they cannot all be the best; indeed, only one can be the best, and it +follows that the patriots of all the others have suffered themselves to +be misled by a mere sentiment into blind unreason. In its active +manifestation—it is fond of killing—patriotism would be well if it +were simply defensive; but it is also aggressive, and the same feeling +that prompts us to strike for our altars and our fires impels us over +the border to quench the fires and overturn the altars of our neighbors. +It is all very pretty and spirited, what the poets tell us about +Thermopylæ, but there was as much patriotism at one end of that pass as +there was at the other.</p> + +<p>Patriotism deliberately and with folly aforethought subordinates the +interests of a whole to the interests of a part. Worse still, the +fraction so favored is determined by an accident of birth or residence. +The Western hoodlum who cuts the tail from a Chinaman's nowl, and would +cut the nowl from the body, if he dared, is simply a patriot with a +logical mind, having the courage of his opinions. Patriotism is fierce +as a fever, pitiless as the grave and blind as a stone.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> + + +<p>There are two ways of clarifying liquids—ebullition and precipitation; +one forces the impurities to the surface as scum, the other sends them +to the bottom as dregs. The former is the more offensive, and that seems +to be our way; but neither is useful if the impurities are merely +separated but not removed. We are told with tiresome iteration that our +social and political systems are clarifying; but when is the skimmer to +appear? If the purpose of free institutions is good government where is +the good government?—when may it be expected to begin?—how is it to +come about? Systems of government have no sanctity; they are practical +means to a simple end—the public welfare; worthy of no respect if they +fail of its accomplishment. The tree is known by its fruit. Ours is +bearing crab-apples. If the body politic is constitutionally diseased, +as I verily believe; if the disorder inheres in the system; there is no +remedy. The fever must burn itself out, and then Nature will do the +rest. One does not prescribe what time alone can administer. We have put +our criminals and dunces into power; do we suppose they will efface +themselves? Will they restore to <i>us</i> the power of governing <i>them</i>? +They must have their way and go their length. The natural and immemorial +sequence is: tyranny, insurrection, combat. In combat everything that +wears a sword has a chance—even the right. History does not forbid us +to hope. But it forbids us to rely upon numbers; they will be against +us. If history teaches anything worth learning it teaches that the +majority of mankind is neither good nor wise. When government is founded +upon the public conscience and the public intelligence the stability of +states is a dream.</p> + +<p>In that moment of time that is covered by historical records we have +abundant evidence that each generation has believed itself wiser and +better than any of its predecessors; that each people has believed +itself to have the secret of national perpetuity. In support of this +universal delusion there is nothing to be said; the desolate places of +the earth cry out against it. Vestiges of obliterated civilizations +cover the earth; no savage but has camped upon the sites of proud and +populous cities; no desert but has heard the statesman's boast of +national stability. Our nation, our laws, our history—all shall go down +to everlasting oblivion with the others, and by the same road. But I +submit that we are traveling it with needless haste.</p> + +<p>It can be spared—this Jonah's gourd civilization of ours. We have +hardly the rudiments of a true one; compared with the splendors of which +we catch dim glimpses in the fading past, ours are as an illumination of +tallow candles. We know no more than the ancients; we only know other +things, but nothing in which is an assurance of perpetuity, and little +that is truly wisdom. Our vaunted <i>elixir vitae</i> is the art of +printing. What good will that do when posterity, struck by the +inevitable intellectual blight, shall have ceased to read what is +printed? Our libraries will become its stables, our books its fuel.</p> + +<p>Ours is a civilization that might be heard from afar in space as a +scolding and a riot; a civilization in which the race has so +differentiated as to have no longer a community of interest and feeling; +which shows as a ripe result of the principles underlying it a +reasonless and rascally feud between rich and poor; in which one is +offered a choice (if one have the means to take it) between American +plutocracy and European militocracy, with an imminent chance of +renouncing either for a stultocratic republic with a headsman in the +presidential chair and every laundress in exile.</p> + +<p>I have not a "solution" to the "labor problem." I have only a story. +Many and many years ago lived a man who was so good and wise that none +in all the world was so good and wise as he. He was one of those few +whose goodness and wisdom are such that after some time has passed their +foolish fellowmen begin to think them gods and treasure their words as +divine law; and by millions they are worshiped through centuries of +time. Amongst the utterances of this man was one command—not a new nor +perfect one—which has seemed to his adorers so preeminently wise that +they have given it a name by which it is known over half the world. One +of the sovereign virtues of this famous law is its simplicity, which is +such that all hearing must understand; and obedience is so easy that +any nation refusing is unfit to exist except in the turbulence and +adversity that will surely come to it. When a people would avert want +and strife, or, having them, would restore plenty and peace, this noble +commandment offers the only means—all other plans for safety or relief +are as vain as dreams, as empty as the crooning of hags. And behold, +here is it: "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, +do ye even so to them."</p> + +<p>What! you unappeasable rich, coining the sweat and blood of your workmen +into drachmas, understanding the law of supply and demand as mandatory +and justifying your cruel greed by the senseless dictum that "business +is business"; you lazy workmen, railing at the capitalist by whose +desertion, when you have frightened away his capital, you +starve—rioting and shedding blood and torturing and poisoning by way of +answer to exaction and by way of exaction; you foul anarchists, +applauding with untidy palms when one of your coward kind hurls a bomb +amongst powerless and helpless women and children; you imbecile +politicians with a plague of remedial legislation for the irremediable; +you writers and thinkers unread in history, with as many "solutions to +the labor problem" as there are among you those who can not coherently +define it—do you really think yourselves wiser than Jesus of Nazareth? +Do you seriously suppose yourselves competent to amend his plan for +dealing with evils besetting nations and souls? Have you the effrontery +to believe that those who spurn his Golden Rule you can bind to +obedience of an act entitled an act to amend an act? Bah! you fatigue +the spirit. Go get ye to your scoundrel lockouts, your villain strikes, +your blacklisting, your boycotting, your speeching, marching and +maundering; but if ye do not to others as ye would that they do to you +it shall occur, and that right soon, that ye be drowned in your own +blood and your pick-pocket civilization quenched as a star that falls +into the sea.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>THE GIFT O' GAB</h2> + +<p>A book entitled <i>Forensic Eloquence</i>, by Mr. John Goss, appears to have +for purpose to teach the young idea how to spout, and that purpose, I +dare say, it will accomplish if something is not done to prevent. I know +nothing of the matter myself, a strong distaste for forensic eloquence, +or eloquence of any kind implying a man mounted on his legs and doing +all the talking, having averted me from its study. The training of the +youth of this country to utterance of themselves after that fashion I +should regard as a disaster of magnitude. So far as I know it, forensic +eloquence is the art of saying things in such a way as to make them pass +for more than they are worth. Employed in matters of importance (and for +other employment it were hardly worth acquiring) it is mischievous +because dishonest and misleading. In the public service Truth toils best +when not clad in cloth-of-gold and bedaubed with fine lace. If eloquence +does not beget action it is valueless; but action which results from the +passions, sentiments and emotions is less likely to be wise than that +which comes of a persuaded judgment. For that reason I cannot help +thinking that the influence of Bismarck in German politics was more +wholesome than is that of Mr. John Temple Graves.</p> + +<p>For eloquence <i>per se</i>—considered merely as an art of pleasing—I +entertain something of the respect evoked by success; for it always +pleases at least the speaker. It is to speech what an ornate style is to +writing—good and pleasant enough in its time and place and, like +pie-crust and the evening girl, destitute of any basis in common sense. +Forensic eloquence, on the contrary, has an all too sufficient +foundation in reason and the order of things: it promotes the ambition +of tricksters and advances the fortunes of rogues. For I take it that +the Ciceros, the Mirabeaus, the Burkes, the O'Connells, the Patrick +Henrys and the rest of them—pets of the text-bookers and scourges of +youth—belong in either the one category or the other, or in both. +Anyhow I find it impossible to think of them as highminded men and +right-forth statesmen—with their actors' tricks, their devices of the +countenance, inventions of gesture and other cunning expedients having +nothing to do with the matter in hand. Extinction of the orator I hold +to be the most beneficent possibility of evolution. If Mr. Goss has done +anything to retard that blessed time when the Bourke Cockrans shall +cease from troubling and the weary be at rest he is an enemy of his race.</p> + +<p>"What!" exclaims the thoughtless reader—I have but one—"are not the +great forensic speeches by the world's famous orators good reading? +Considering them merely as literature do you not derive a high and +refining pleasure from them?" I do not: I find them turgid and tumid no +end. They are bad reading, though they may have been good hearing. In +order to enjoy them one must have in memory what, indeed, one is seldom +permitted to forget: that they were addressed to the ear; and in +imagination one must hold some shadowy simulacrum of the orator himself, +uttering his work. These conditions being fulfilled there remains for +application to the matter of the discourse too little attention to get +much good of it, and the total effect is confusion. Literature by which +the reader is compelled to bear in mind the producer and the +circumstances under which it was produced can be spared.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>NATURA BENIGNA</h2> + +<p>It is not always on remote islands peopled with pagans that great +disasters occur, as memory witnesseth. Nor are the forces of nature +inadequate to production of a fiercer throe than any that we have known. +The situation is this: we are tied by the feet to a fragile shell +imperfectly confining a force powerful enough under favoring conditions, +to burst it asunder and set the fragments wallowing and grinding +together in liquid flame, in the blind fury of a readjustment. Nay, it +needs no such stupendous cataclysm to depeople this uneasy orb. Let but +a square mile be blown out of the bottom of the sea, or a great rift +open there. Is it to be supposed that we would be unaffected in the +altered conditions generated by a contest between the ocean and the +earth's molten core? These fatalities are not only possible but in the +highest degree probable. It is probable, indeed, that they have occurred +over and over again, effacing all the more highly organized forms of +life, and compelling the slow march of evolution to begin anew. Slow? On +the stage of Eternity the passing of races—the entrances and exits of +Life—are incidents in a brisk and lively drama, following one another +with confusing rapidity.</p> + +<p>Mankind has not found it practicable to abandon and avoid those places +where the forces of nature have been most malign. The track, of the +Western tornado is speedily repeopled. San Francisco is still populous, +despite its earthquake, Galveston despite its storm, and even the courts +of Lisbon are not kept by the lion and the lizard. In the Peruvian +village straight downward into whose streets the crew of a United States +warship once looked from the crest of a wave that stranded her a half +mile inland are heard the tinkle of the guitar and the voices of +children at play. There are people living at Herculaneum and Pompeii. On +the slopes about Catania the goatherd endures with what courage he may +the trembling of the ground beneath his feet as old Enceladus again +turns over on his other side. As the Hoang-Ho goes back inside its banks +after fertilizing its contiguity with hydrate of China-man the living +agriculturist follows the receding wave, sets up his habitation beneath +the broken embankment, and again the Valley of the Gone Away blossoms +as the rose, its people diving with Death.</p> + +<p>This matter can not be amended: the race exposes itself to peril because +it can do no otherwise. In all the world there is no city of refuge—no +temple in which to take sanctuary, clinging to the horns of the +altar—no "place apart" where, like hunted deer, we can hope to elude +the baying pack of Nature's malevolences. The dead-line is drawn at the +gate of life: Man crosses it at birth. His advent is a challenge to the +entire pack—earthquake, storm, fire, flood, drought, heat, cold, wild +beasts, venomous reptiles, noxious insects, bacilli, spectacular plague +and velvet-footed household disease—all are fierce and tireless in +pursuit. Dodge, turn and double how he can, there's no eluding them; +soon or late some of them have him by the throat and his spirit returns +to the God who gave it—and gave them.</p> + +<p>We are told that this earth was made for our inhabiting. Our dearly +beloved brethren in the faith, our spiritual guides, philosophers and +friends of the pulpit, never tire of pointing out the goodness of God in +giving us so excellent a place to live in and commending the admirable +adaptation of all things to our needs.</p> + +<p>What a fine world it is, to be sure—a darling little world, "so suited +to the needs of man." A globe of liquid fire, straining within a shell +relatively no thicker than that of an egg—a shell constantly cracking +and in momentary danger of going all to pieces! Three-fourths of this +delectable field of human activity are covered with an element in which +we can not breathe, and which swallows us by myriads:</p> + + +<span style="margin-left: 15em;">With moldering bones the deep is white</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 15em;">From the frozen zones to the tropic bright.</span><br /> + + +<p>Of the other one-fourth more than one-half is uninhabitable by reason of +climate. On the remaining one-eighth we pass a comfortless and +precarious existence in disputed occupancy with countless ministers of +death and pain—pass it in fighting for it, tooth and nail, a hopeless +battle in which we are foredoomed to defeat. Everywhere death, terror, +lamentation and the laughter that is more terrible than tears—the fury +and despair of a race hanging on to life by the tips of its fingers. And +the prize for which we strive, "to have and to hold"—what is it? A +thing that is neither enjoyed while had, or missed when lost. So +worthless it is, so unsatisfying, so inadequate to purpose, so false to +hope and at its best so brief, that for consolation and compensation we +set up fantastic faiths of an aftertime in a better world from which no +confirming whisper has ever reached us across the void. Heaven is a +prophecy uttered by the lips of despair, but Hell is an inference from +analogy.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>THE DEATH PENALTY</h2> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>I</h2> + + +<p>"Down with the gallows!" is a cry not unfamiliar in America. There is +always a movement afoot to make odious the just principle; of "a life +for a life"—to represent it as "a relic of barbarism," "a usurpation of +the divine authority," and the rest of it. The law making murder +punishable by death is as purely a measure of self-defense as is the +display of a pistol to one diligently endeavoring to kill without +provocation. It is in precisely the same sense an admonition, a warning +to abstain from crime. Society says by that law: "If you kill one of us +you die," just as by display of the pistol the individual whose life is +attacked says: "Desist or be shot." To be effective the warning in +either case must be more than an idle threat. Even the most unearthly +reasoner among the anti-hanging unfortunates would hardly expect to +frighten away an assassin who knew the pistol to be unloaded. Of course +these queer illogicians can not be made to understand that their +position commits them to absolute non-resistance to any kind of +aggression; and that is fortunate for the rest of us, for if as +Christians they frankly and consistently took that ground we should be +under the miserable necessity of respecting them.</p> + +<p>We have good reason to hold that the horrible prevalence of murder in +this country is due to the fact that we do not execute our laws—that +the death penalty is threatened but not inflicted—that the pistol is +not loaded. In civilized countries where there is enough respect for the +laws to administer them, there is enough to obey them. While man still +has as much of the ancestral brute as his skin can hold without cracking +we shall have thieves and demagogues and anarchists and assassins and +persons with a private system of lexicography who define murder as +disease and hanging as murder, but in all this welter of crime and +stupidity are areas where human life is comparatively secure against the +human hand. It is at least a significant coincidence that in these the +death penalty for murder is fairly well enforced by judges who do not +derive any part of their authority from those for whose restraint and +punishment they hold it. Against the life of one guiltless person the +lives of ten thousand murderers count for nothing; their hanging is a +public good, without reference to the crimes that disclose their +deserts. If we could discover them by other signs than their bloody +deeds they should be hanged anyhow. Unfortunately we must have a death +as evidence. The scientist who will tell us how to recognize the +potential assassin, and persuade us to kill him, will be the greatest +benefactor of his century.</p> + +<p>What would these enemies of the gibbet have—these lineal descendants +of the drunken mobs that hooted the hangman at Tyburn Tree; this progeny +of criminals, which has so defiled with the mud of its animosity the +noble office of public executioner that even "in this enlightened age" +he shirks his high duty, entrusting it to a hidden or unnamed +subordinate? If murder is unjust of what importance is it whether its +punishment by death be just or not?—nobody needs to incur it. Men are +not drafted for the death penalty; they volunteer. "Then it is not +deterrent," mutters the gentleman whose rude forefather hooted the +hangman. Well, as to that, the law which is to accomplish more than a +part of its purpose must be awaited with great patience. Every murder +proves that hanging is not altogether deterrent; every hanging, that it +is somewhat deterrent—it deters the person hanged. A man's first murder +is his crime, his second is ours.</p> + +<p>The socialists, it seems, believe with Alphonse Karr, in the expediency +of abolishing the death penalty; but apparently they do not hold, with +him, that the assassins should begin. They want the state to begin, +believing that the magnanimous example will effect a change of heart in +those about to murder. This, I take it, is the meaning of their +assertion that death penalties have not the deterring influence that +imprisonment for life carries. In this they obviously err: death deters +at least the person who suffers it—he commits no more murder; whereas +the assassin who is imprisoned for life and immune from further +punishment may with impunity kill his keeper or whomsoever he may be +able to get at. Even as matters now are, incessant vigilance is required +to prevent convicts in prison from murdering their attendants and one +another. How would it be if the "life-termer" were assured against any +additional inconvenience for braining a guard occasionally, or +strangling a chaplain now and then? A penitentiary may be described as a +place of punishment and reward; and under the system proposed, the +difference in desirableness between a sentence and an appointment would +be virtually effaced. To overcome this objection a life sentence would +have to mean solitary confinement, and that means insanity. Is that what +these gentlemen propose to substitute for death?</p> + +<p>The death penalty, say these amiables and futilitarians, creates +blood-thirstiness in the unthinking masses and defeats its own ends—is +itself a cause of murder, not a check. These gentlemen are themselves of +"the unthinking masses"—they do not know how to think. Let them try to +trace and lucidly expound the chain of motives lying between the +knowledge that a murderer has been hanged and the wish to commit a +murder. How, precisely, does the one beget the other? By what unearthly +process of reasoning does a man turning away from the gallows persuade +himself that it is expedient to incur the danger of hanging? Let us have +pointed out to us the several steps in that remarkable mental progress. +Obviously, the thing is absurd; one might as reasonably say that +contemplation of a pitted face will make a man wish to go and catch +smallpox, or the spectacle of an amputated limb on the scrap-heap of a +hospital tempt him to cut off his arm or renounce his leg.</p> + +<p>"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," say the opponents of the +death penalty, "is not justice; it is revenge and unworthy of a +Christian civilization." It is exact justice: nobody can think of +anything more accurately just than such punishments would be, whatever +the motive in awarding them. Unfortunately such a system is not +practicable, but he who denies its justice must deny also the justice of +a bushel of corn for a bushel of corn, a dollar for a dollar, service +for service. We can not undertake by such clumsy means as laws and +courts to do to the criminal exactly what he has done to his victim, +but to demand a life for a life is simple, practicable, expedient and +(therefore) right.</p> + +<p>"Taking the life of a murderer does not restore the life he took, +therefore it is a most illogical punishment. Two wrongs do not make a +right."</p> + +<p>Here's richness! Hanging an assassin is illogical because it does not +restore the life of his victim; incarceration is logical; therefore, +incarceration does—<i>quod, erat demonstrandum.</i></p> + +<p>Two wrongs certainly do not make a right, but the veritable thing in +dispute is whether taking the life of a life-taker is a wrong. So naked +and unashamed an example of <i>petitio principii</i> would disgrace a debater +in a pinafore. And these wonder-mongers have the effrontery to babble of +"logic"! Why, if one of them were to meet a syllogism in a lonely road +he would run away in a hundred and fifty directions as hard as ever he +could hoof it. One is almost ashamed to dispute with such intellectual +cloutlings.</p> + +<p>Whatever an individual may rightly do to protect himself society may +rightly do to protect him, for he is a part of itself. If he may rightly +take life in defending himself society may rightly take life in +defending him. If society may rightly take life in defending him it may +rightly threaten to take it. Having rightly and mercifully threatened to +take it, it not only rightly may take it, but expediently must.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> + + +<p>The law of a life for a life does not altogether prevent murder. No law +can altogether prevent any form of crime, nor is it desirable that it +should. Doubtless God could so have created us that our sense of right +and justice could have existed without contemplation of injustice and +wrong; as doubtless he could so have created us that we could have felt +compassion without a knowledge of suffering; but he did not. Constituted +as we are, we can know good only by contrast with evil. Our sense of sin +is what our virtues feed upon; in the thin air of universal morality the +altar-fires of honor and the beacons of conscience could not be kept +alight. A community without crime would be a community without warm and +elevated sentiments—without the sense of justice, without generosity, +without courage, without mercy, without magnanimity—a community of +small, smug souls, uninteresting to God and uncoveted by the Devil. We +can have, and do have, too much crime, no doubt; what the wholesome +proportion is none can tell. Just now we are running a good deal to +murder, but he who can gravely attribute that phenomenon, or any part of +it, to infliction of the death penalty, instead of to virtual immunity +from any penalty at all, is justly entitled to the innocent satisfaction +that comes of being a simpleton.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> + + +<p>The New Woman is against the death penalty, naturally, for she is hot +and hardy in the conviction that whatever is is wrong. She has visited +this world in order to straighten things about a bit, and is in distress +lest the number of things be insufficient to her need. The matter is +important variously; not least so in its relation to the new heaven and +the new earth that are to be the outcome of woman suffrage. There can be +no doubt that the vast majority of women have sentimental objections to +the death penalty that quite outweigh such practical considerations in +its favor as they can be persuaded to comprehend. Aided by the minority +of men afflicted by the same mental malady, they will indubitably effect +its abolition in the first lustrum of their political "equality." The +New Woman will scarcely feel the seat of power warm beneath her before +giving to the assassin's "unhand me, villain!" the authority of law. So +we shall make again the old experiment, discredited by a thousand +failures, of preventing crime by tenderness to caught criminals. And the +criminal uncaught will treat us to a quantity and quality of crime +notably augmented by the Christian spirit of the new <i>regime</i>.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> + + +<p>As to painless execution, the simple and practical way to make them both +just and expedient is the adoption by murderers of a system of painless +assassinations. Until this is done there seems to be no call to +renounce the wholesome discomfort of the style of executions endeared to +us by memories and associations of the tenderest character. There is, I +fancy, a shaping notion in the observant mind that the penologists and +their allies have gone about as far as they can safely be permitted to +go in the direction of a softer suasion of the criminal nature toward +good behavior. The modern prison has become a rather more comfortable +habitation than the dangerous classes are accustomed to at home. Modern +prison life has in their eyes something of the charm and glamor of an +ideal existence, like that in the Happy Valley from which Rasselas had +the folly to escape. Whatever advantages to the public may be secured by +abating the rigors of imprisonment and inconveniences incident to +execution, there is this objection: it makes them less deterrent. Let +the penologers and philanthropers have their way and even hanging might +be made so pleasant and withal so interesting a social distinction that +it would deter nobody but the person hanged. Adopt the euthanasian +method of electricity, asphyxia by smothering in rose-leaves, or slow +poisoning with rich food, and the death penalty may come to be regarded +as the object of a noble ambition to the <i>bon vivant</i>, and the rising +young suicide may go and kill somebody else instead of himself, in order +to receive from the public executioner a happier dispatch than his own +'prentice hand can assure him.</p> + +<p>But the advocates of agreeable pains and penalties tell us that in the +darker ages, when cruel and degrading punishment was the rule, and was +freely inflicted for every light infraction of the law, crime was more +common than it is now; and in this they appear to be right. But one and +all, they overlook a fact equally obvious and vastly significant, that +the intellectual, moral and social condition of the masses was very low. +Crime was more common because ignorance was more common, poverty was +more common, sins of authority, and therefore hatred of authority, were +more common. The world of even a century ago was a different world from +the world of today, and a vastly more uncomfortable one. The popular +adage to the contrary notwithstanding, human nature was not by a long +cut the same then that it is now. In the very ancient time of that early +English king, George III, when women were burned at the stake in public +for various offenses and men were hanged for "coining" and children for +theft, and in the still remoter period (<i>circa</i> 1530), when prisoners +were boiled in several waters, divers sorts of criminals were +disemboweled and some are thought to have undergone the <i>peine forte et +dure</i> of cold-pressing (an infliction which the pen of Hugo has since +made popular—in literature)—in these wicked old days crime flourished, +not because of the law's severity, but in spite of it. It is possible +that our law-making ancestors understood the situation as it then was a +trifle better than we can understand it on the hither side of this gulf +of years, and that they were not the reasonless barbarians that we +think them to have been. And if they were, what must have been the +unreason and barbarity of the criminal element with which they had to +deal?</p> + +<p>I am far from thinking that severity of punishment can have the same +restraining effect as probability of some punishment being inflicted; +but if mildness of penalty is to be superadded to difficulty of +conviction, and both are to be mounted upon laxity in detection, the +pile will be complete indeed. There is a peculiar fitness, perhaps, in +the fact that all these pleas for comfortable punishment should be urged +at a time when there appears to be a general disposition to inflict no +punishment at all. There are, however, still a few old-fashioned persons +who hold it obvious that one who is ambitious to break the laws of his +country will not with so light a heart and so airy an indifference incur +the peril of a harsh penalty as he will the chance of one more nearly +resembling that which he would himself select.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2>V</h2> + + +<p>After lying for more than a century dead I was revived, dowered with a +new body, and restored to society. The first thing of interest that I +observed was an enormous building, covering a square mile of ground. It +was surrounded on all sides by a high, strong wall of hewn stone upon +which armed sentinels paced to and fro. In one face of the wall was a +single gate of massive iron, strongly guarded. While admiring the +Cyclopean architecture of the "reverend pile" I was accosted by a man in +uniform, evidently the warden, with a cheerful salutation.</p> + +<p>"Colonel," I said, "pray tell me what is this building."</p> + +<p>"This," said he, "is the new state penitentiary. It is one of twelve, +all alike."</p> + +<p>"You surprise me," I replied. "Surely the criminal element must have +increased enormously."</p> + +<p>"Yes, indeed," he assented; "under the Reform <i>régime</i>, which began in +your day, crime became so powerful, bold and fierce that arrests were no +longer possible and the prisons then in existence were soon overcrowded. +The state was compelled to erect others of greater capacity."</p> + +<p>"But, Colonel," I protested, "if the criminals were too bold and +powerful to be taken into custody, of what use are the prisons? And how +are they crowded?"</p> + +<p>He fixed upon me a look that I could not fail to interpret as expressing +a doubt of my sanity. "What!" he said, "is it possible that the modern +penology is unknown to you? Do you suppose we practice the antiquated +and ineffective method of shutting up the rascals? Sir, the growth of +the criminal element has, as I said, compelled the erection of more and +larger prisons. We have enough to hold comfortably all the honest men +and women of the state. Within these protecting walls they carry on all +the necessary vocations of life excepting commerce. That is necessarily +in the hands of the rogues, as before."</p> + +<p>"Venerated representative of Reform," I exclaimed, wringing his hand +with effusion, "you are Knowledge, you are History, you are the Higher +Education! We must talk further. Come, let us enter this benign edifice; +you shall show me your dominion and instruct me in the rules. You shall +propose me as an inmate."</p> + +<p>I walked rapidly to the gate. When challenged by the sentinel, I turned +to summon my instructor. He was nowhere visible. I turned again to look +at the prison. Nothing was there: desolate and forbidding, as about the +broken statue of Ozymandias,</p> + +<p>The lone and level sands stretched far away.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>IMMORTALITY</h2> + +<p>The desire for life everlasting has commonly been affirmed to be +universal—at least that is the view taken by those unacquainted with +Oriental faiths and with Oriental character. Those of us whose knowledge +is a trifle wider are not prepared to say that the desire is universal +nor even general.</p> + +<p>If the devout Buddhist, for example, wishes to "live always," he has not +succeeded in very clearly formulating the desire. The sort of thing that +he is pleased to hope for is not what we should call life, and not what +many of us would care for.</p> + +<p>When a man says that everybody has "a horror of annihilation," we may +be very sure that he has not many opportunities for observation, or that +he has not availed himself of all that he has. Most persons go to sleep +rather gladly, yet sleep is virtual annihilation while it lasts; and if +it should last forever the sleeper would be no worse off after a million +years of it than after an hour of it. There are minds sufficiently +logical to think of it that way, and to them annihilation is not a +disagreeable thing to contemplate and expect.</p> + +<p>In this matter of immortality, people's beliefs appear to go along with +their wishes. The man who is content with annihilation thinks he will +get it; those that want immortality are pretty sure they are immortal; +and that is a very comfortable allotment of faiths. The few of us that +are left unprovided for are those who do not bother themselves much +about the matter, one way or another.</p> + +<p>The question of human immortality is the most momentous that the mind is +capable of conceiving. If it is a fact that the dead live all other +facts are in comparison trivial and without interest. The prospect of +obtaining certain knowledge with regard to this stupendous matter is not +encouraging. In all countries but those in barbarism the powers of the +profoundest and most penetrating intelligences have been ceaselessly +addressed to the task of glimpsing a life beyond this life; yet today no +one can truly say that he knows. It is as much a matter of faith as ever +it was.</p> + +<p>Our modern Christian nations profess a passionate hope and belief in +another world, yet the most popular writer and speaker of his time, the +man whose lectures drew the largest audiences, the work of whose pen +brought him the highest rewards, was he who most strenuously strove to +destroy the ground of that hope and unsettle the foundations of that +belief.</p> + +<p>The famous and popular Frenchman, Professor of Spectacular Astronomy, +Camille Flammarion, affirms immortality because he has talked with +departed souls who said that it was true. Yes, monsieur, but surely you +know the rule about hearsay evidence. We Anglo-Saxons are very +particular about that.</p> + +<p>M. Flammarion says:</p> + +<p>"I don't repudiate the presumptive arguments of schoolmen. I merely +supplement them with something positive. For instance, if you assumed +the existence of God this argument of the scholastics is a good one. God +has implanted in all men the desire of perfect happiness. This desire +cannot be satisfied in our lives here. If there were not another life +wherein to satisfy it then God would be a deceiver. <i>Voila tout</i>."</p> + +<p>There is more: the desire of perfect happiness does not imply +immortality, even if there is a God, for</p> + +<p>(1) God may not have implanted it, but merely suffers it to exist, as he +suffers sin to exist, the desire of wealth, the desire to live longer +than we do in this world. It is not held that God implanted all the +desires of the human heart. Then why hold that he implanted that of +perfect happiness?</p> + +<p>(2) Even if he did—even if a divinely implanted desire entail its own +gratification—even if it cannot be gratified in this life—that does +not imply immortality. It implies <i>only</i> another life long enough for +its gratification just once. An eternity of gratification is not a +logical inference from it.</p> + +<p>(3) Perhaps God <i>is</i> "a deceiver;" who knows that he is not? Assumption +of the existence of a God is one thing; assumption of the existence of a +God who is honorable and candid according to our conception of honor and +candor is another.</p> + +<p>(4) There may be an honorable and candid God. He may have implanted in +us the desire of perfect happiness. It may be—it is—impossible to +gratify that desire in this life. Still, another life is not implied, +for God may not have intended us to draw the inference that he is going +to gratify it. If omniscient and omnipotent, God must be held to have +intended whatever occurs, but no such God is assumed in M. Flammarion's +illustration, and it may be that God's knowledge and power are limited, +or that one of them is limited.</p> + +<p>M. Flammarion is a learned, if somewhat theatrical, astronomer. He has a +tremendous imagination, which naturally is more at home in the marvelous +and catastrophic than in the orderly regions of familiar phenomena. To +him the heavens are an immense pyrotechnicon and he is the master of the +show and sets off the fireworks. But he knows nothing of logic, which is +the science of straight thinking, and his views of things have +therefore no value; they are nebulous.</p> + +<p>Nothing is clearer than that our pre-existence is a dream, having +absolutely no basis in anything that we know or can hope to know. Of +after-existence there is said to be evidence, or rather testimony, in +assurances of those who are in present enjoyment of it—if it is +enjoyable. Whether this testimony has actually been given—and it is the +only testimony worth a moment's consideration—is a disputed point. Many +persons living this life profess to have received it. But nobody +professes, or ever has professed, to have received a communication of +any kind from one in actual experience of the fore-life. "The souls as +yet ungarmented." if such there are, are dumb to question. The Land +beyond the Grave has been, if not observed, yet often and variously +described: if not explored and surveyed, yet carefully charted. From +among so many accounts of it that we have, he must be fastidious indeed +who cannot be suited. But of the Fatherland that spreads before the +cradle—the great Heretofore, wherein we all dwelt if we are to dwell in +the Hereafter, we have no account. Nobody professes knowledge of that. +No testimony reaches our ears of flesh concerning its topographical or +other features; no one has been so enterprising as to wrest from its +actual inhabitants any particulars of their character and appearance. +And among educated experts and professional proponents of worlds to be +there is a general denial of its existence.</p> + +<p>I am of their way of thinking about that. The fact that we have no +recollection of a former life is entirely conclusive of the matter. To +have lived an unrecollected life is impossible and unthinkable, for +there would be nothing to connect the new life with the old—no thread +of continuity—nothing that persisted from the one life to the other. +The later birth would be that of another person, an altogether different +being, unrelated to the first—a new John Smith succeeding to the late +Tom Jones.</p> + +<p>Let us not be misled here by a false analogy. Today I may get a thwack +o' the mazzard which will give me an intervening season of +unconsciousness between yesterday and to-morrow. Thereafter I may live to +a green old age with no recollection of anything that I knew, or did, or +was before the accident; yet I shall be the same person, for between the +old life and the new there will be a <i>nexus</i>, a thread of continuity, +something spanning the gulf from the one state to the other, and the +same in both—namely, my body with its habits, capacities and powers. +That is I; that identifies me to others as my former self—authenticates +and credentials me as the person that incurred the cranial mischance, +dislodging memory.</p> + +<p>But when death occurs <i>all</i> is dislodged if memory is; for between two +merely mental or spiritual existences memory is the only <i>nexus</i> +conceivable; consciousness of identity is the only identity. To live +again without memory of having lived before is to live another. +Re-existence without recollection is absurd. There is nothing to +re-exist.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>EMANCIPATED WOMAN</h2> + +<p>What I should like to know is, how "the enlargement of woman's sphere" +by her entrance into various activities of commercial, professional and +industrial life benefits the sex. It may please Helen Gougar and satisfy +her sense of logical accuracy to say, as she does: "We women must work +in order to fill the places left vacant by liquor-drinking men." But who +filled these places before? Did they remain vacant, or were there then +disappointed applicants, as now? If my memory serves, there has been no +time in the period that it covers when the supply of workers—abstemious +male workers—was not in excess of the demand. That it has always been +so is sufficiently attested by the universally inadequate wage rate.</p> + +<p>Employers seldom fail, and never for long, to get all the workmen they +need. The field into which women have put their sickles was already +overcrowded with reapers. Whatever employment women have obtained has +been got by displacing men—who would otherwise be supporting women. +Where is the general advantage? We may shout "high tariff," "combination +of capital," "demonetization of silver," and what not, but if searching +for the cause of augmented poverty and crime, "industrial discontent" +and the tramp evil, instead of dogmatically expounding it, we should +take some account of this enormous, sudden addition to the number of +workers seeking work. If any one thinks that within the brief period of +a generation the visible supply of labor can be enormously augmented +without profoundly affecting the stability of things and disastrously +touching the interests of wage-workers let no rude voice dispel his +dream of such maleficent agencies as his slumbrous understanding may joy +to affirm. And let our Widows of Ashur unlung themselves in advocacy of +quack remedies for evils of which themselves are cause; it remains true +that when the contention of two lions for one bone is exacerbated by the +accession of a lioness the squabble is not composable by stirring up +some bears in the cage adjacent.</p> + +<p>Indubitably a woman is under no obligation to sacrifice herself to the +good of her sex by foregoing needed employment in the hope that it may +fall to a man gifted with dependent women. Nevertheless our +congratulations are more intelligent when bestowed upon her individual +head than when sifted into the hair of all Eve's daughters. This is a +world of complexities, in which the lines of interest are so +intertangled as frequently to transgress that of sex; and one ambitious +to help but half the race may profitably know that every effort to that +end provokes a counterbalancing mischief. The "enlargement of woman's +opportunities" has benefited individual women. It has not benefited the +sex as a whole, and has distinctly damaged the race. The mind that can +not discern a score of great and irreparable general evils distinctly +traceable to "emancipation of woman" is as impregnable to the light as a +toad in a rock.</p> + +<p>A marked demerit of the new order of things—the <i>régime</i> of female +commercial service—is that its main advantage accrues, not to the race, +not to the sex, not to the class, not to the individual woman, but to +the person of least need and worth—the male employer. (Female employers +in any considerable number there will not be, but those that we have +could give the male ones profitable instruction in grinding the faces of +their employees.) This constant increase of the army of labor—always and +everywhere too large for the work in sight—by accession of a new +contingent of natural oppressibles makes the very teeth of old Munniglut +thrill with a poignant delight. It brings in that situation known as two +laborers seeking one job—and one of them a person whose bones he can +easily grind to make his bread; and Munniglut is a miller of skill and +experience, dusted all over with the evidence of his useful craft. When +Heaven has assisted the Daughters of Hope to open to women a new "avenue +of opportunities" the first to enter and walk therein, like God in the +Garden of Eden, is the good Mr. Munniglut, contentedly smoothing the +folds out of the superior slope of his paunch, exuding the peculiar +aroma of his oleaginous personality and larding the new roadway with +the overflow of a righteousness stimulated to action by relish of his +own identity. And ever thereafter the subtle suggestion of a fat +philistinism lingers along that path of progress like an assertion of a +possessory right.</p> + +<p>It is God's own crystal truth that in dealing with women unfortunate +enough to be compelled to earn their own living and fortunate enough to +have wrested from Fate an opportunity to do so, men of business and +affairs treat them with about the same delicate consideration that they +show to dogs and horses of the inferior breeds. It does not commonly +occur to the wealthy "professional man," or "prominent merchant," to be +ashamed to add to his yearly thousands a part of the salary justly due +to his female bookkeeper or typewriter, who sits before him all day with +an empty belly in order to have an habilimented back. He has a vague, +hazy notion that the law of supply and demand is mandatory, and that in +submitting himself to it by paying her a half of what he would have to +pay a man of inferior efficiency he is supplying the world with a noble +example of obedience. I must take the liberty to remind him that the law +of supply and demand is not imperative; it is not a statute but a +phenomenon. He may reply: "It is imperative; the penalty for +disobedience is failure. If I pay more in salaries and wages than I need +to, my competitor will not; and with that advantage he will drive me +from the field." If his margin of profit is so small that he must eke it +out by coining the sweat of his workwomen into nickels I've nothing to +say to him. Let him adopt in peace the motto, "I cheat to eat." I do not +know why he should eat, but Nature, who has provided sustenance for the +worming sparrow, the sparrowing owl and the owling eagle, approves the +needy man of prey and makes a place for him at table.</p> + +<p>Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is +a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch—as cunning is the wisdom +of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward. Nobody is +altogether bad; the scoundrel who has grown rich by underpaying workmen +in his factory will sometimes endow an asylum for indigent seamen. To +oppress one's own workmen, and provide for the workmen of a neighbor—to +skin those in charge of one's own interests while cottoning and oiling +the residuary product of another's skinnery—that is not very good +benevolence, nor very good sense, but it serves in place of both. The +man who eats <i>pâté de fois gras</i> in the sweat of his girl cashier's +face, or wears purple and fine linen in order that his typewriter may +have an eocene gown and a pliocene hat, seems a tolerably satisfactory +specimen of the genus thief; but let us not forget that in his own +home—a fairly good one—he may enjoy and merit that highest and most +honorable title on the scroll of woman's favor, "a good provider." One +having a claim to that glittering distinction should enjoy immunity from +the coarse and troublesome question, "From whose backs and bellies do +you provide?"</p> + +<p>So much for the material results to the sex. What are the moral results? +One does not like to speak of them, particularly to those who do not and +can not know—to good women in whose innocent minds female immorality is +inseparable from flashy gowning and the painted face; to foolish, +book-taught men who honestly believe in some protective sanctity that +hedges womanhood. If men of the world with years enough to have lived +out of the old <i>régime</i> into the new would testify in this matter there +would ensue a great rattling of dry bones in bodices of reform-ladies. +Nay, if the young man about town, knowing nothing of how things were in +the "dark backward and absym of time," but something of the moral +distance between even so free-running a creature as the society girl and +the average working girl of the factory, the shop and the office, would +speak out (under assurance of immunity from prosecution) his testimony +would be a surprise to the cartilaginous virgins, blowsy matrons, acrid +relicts and hairy males of Emancipation. It would pain, too, some very +worthy but unobservant persons not in sympathy with "the cause."</p> + +<p>Certain significant facts are within the purview of all but the very +young and the comfortably blind. To the woman of to-day the man of +to-day is imperfectly polite. In place of reverence he gives her +"deference"; to the language of compliment has succeeded the language of +raillery. Men have almost forgotten how to bow. Doubtless the advanced +female prefers the new manner, as may some of her less forward sisters, +thinking it more sincere. It is not; our giddy grandfather talked +high-flown nonsense because his heart had tangled his tongue. He treated +his woman more civilly than we ours because he loved her better. He +never had seen her on the "rostrum" and in the lobby, never had heard +her in advocacy of herself, never had read her confessions of his sins, +never had felt the stress of her competition, nor himself assisted by +daily personal contact in rubbing the bloom off her. He did not know +that her virtues were due to her secluded life, but thought, dear old +boy, that they were a gift of God.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>A MAD WORLD</h2> + +<p>Let us suppose that in tracing its cycloidal curves through the +unthinkable reaches of space traversed by the solar system our planet +should pass through a "belt" of attenuated matter having the property of +dementing us! It is a conception easily enough entertained. That space +is full of malign conditions incontinuously distributed; that we are at +one time traversing a zone comparatively innocuous and at another +spinning through a region of infection; that away behind us in the wake +of our swirling flight are fields of plague and pain still agitated by +our passage through them,—all this is as good as known. It is almost as +certain as it is that in our little annual circle round the sun are +points at which we are stoned and brick-batted like a pig in a +potato-patch—pelted with little nodules of meteoric metal flung like +gravel, and bombarded with gigantic masses hurled by God knows what? +What strange adventures await us in those yet untraveled regions toward +which we speed?—into what malign conditions may we not at any time +plunge?—to the strength and stress of what frightful environment may +we not at last succumb? The subject lends itself readily enough to a +jest, but I am not jesting: it is really altogether probable that our +solar system, racing through space with inconceivable velocity, will one +day enter a region charged with something deleterious to the human +brain, minding us all mad-wise.</p> + +<p>By the way, dear reader, did you ever happen to consider the possibility +that you are a lunatic, and perhaps confined in an asylum? It seems to +you that you are not—that you go with freedom where you will, and use a +sweet reasonableness in all your works and ways; but to many a lunatic +it seems that he is Rameses II, or the Holkar of Indore. Many a plunging +maniac, ironed to the floor of a cell, believes himself the Goddess of +Liberty careering gaily through the Ten Commandments in a chariot of +gold. Of your own sanity and identity you have no evidence that is any +better than he has of his. More accurately, I have none of mine; for +anything I know, you do not exist, nor any one of all the things with +which I think myself familiarly conscious. All may be fictions of my +disordered imagination. I really know of but one reason for doubting +that I am an inmate of an asylum for the insane—namely, the probability +that there is nowhere any such thing as an asylum for the insane.</p> + +<p>This kind of speculation has charms that get a good neck-hold upon +attention. For example, if I am really a lunatic, and the persons and +things that I seem to see about me have no objective existence, what an +ingenious though disordered imagination I must have! What a clever +<i>coup</i> it was to invent Mr. Rockefeller and clothe him with the +attribute of permanence! With what amusing qualities I have endowed my +laird of Skibo, philanthropist. What a masterpiece of creative humor is +my Fatty Taft, statesman, taking himself seriously, even solemnly, and +persuading others to do the same! And this city of Washington, with its +motley population of silurians, parvenoodles and scamps pranking +unashamed in the light of day, and its saving contingent of the forsaken +righteous, their seed begging bread,—did Rabelais' exuberant fancy ever +conceive so—but Rabelais is, perhaps, himself a conception.</p> + +<p>Surely he is no common maniac who has wrought out of nothing the +history, the philosophies, sciences, arts, laws, religions, politics and +morals of this imaginary world. Nay, the world itself, tumbling uneasily +through space like a beetle's ball, is no mean achievement, and I am +proud of it. But the mental feat in which I take most satisfaction, and +which I doubt not is most diverting to my keepers, is that of creating +Mr. W.R. Hearst, pointing his eyes toward the White House and endowing +him with a perilous Jacksonian ambition to defile it. The Hearst is +distinctly a treasure.</p> + +<p>On the whole, I have done, I think, tolerably well, and when I +contemplate the fertility and originality of my inventions, the queer +unearthliness and grotesque actions of the characters whom I have +evolved, isolated and am cultivating, I cannot help thinking that if +Heaven had not made me a lunatic my peculiar talent might have made me +an entertaining writer.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>EPIGRAMS OF A CYNIC</h2> + +<p>If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day the +country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike +hypocrites of Canada.</p> + +<p>To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil, +and to pictures of the latter it appends a tail to represent the note of +interrogation.</p> + +<p>"Immoral" is the judgment of the stalled ox on the gamboling lamb.</p> + +<p>In forgiving an injury be somewhat ceremonious, lest your magnanimity be +construed as indifference.</p> + +<p>True, man does not know woman. But neither does woman.</p> + +<p>Age is provident because the less future we have the more we fear it.</p> + +<p>Reason is fallible and virtue invincible; the winds vary and the needle +forsakes the pole, but stupidity never errs and never intermits. Since +it has been found that the axis of the earth wabbles, stupidity is +indispensable as a standard of constancy.</p> + +<p>In order that the list of able women may be memorized for use at +meetings of the oppressed sex, Heaven has considerately made it brief.</p> + +<p>Firmness is my persistency; obstinacy is yours.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i-4">A little heap of dust,<br /></span> +<span>A little streak of rust,<br /></span> +<span>A stone without a name—<br /></span> +<span>Lo! hero, sword and fame.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +</div></div> + +<p>Our vocabulary is defective; we give the same name to woman's lack of temptation and man's lack of opportunity.</p> + +<p>"You scoundrel, you have wronged me," hissed the philosopher. "May you +live forever!"</p> + +<p>The man who thinks that a garnet can be made a ruby by setting it in +brass is writing "dialect" for publication.</p> + +<p>"Who art thou, stranger, and what dost thou seek?" "I am Generosity, and +I seek a person named Gratitude." "Then thou dost not deserve to find +her." "True. I will go about my business and think of her no more. But +who art thou, to be so wise?" "I am Gratitude—farewell forever."</p> + +<p>There was never a genius who was not thought a fool until he disclosed +himself; whereas he is a fool then only.</p> + +<p>The boundaries that Napoleon drew have been effaced; the kingdoms that +he set up have disappeared. But all the armies and statecraft of Europe +cannot unsay what you have said.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i-4">Strive not for singularity in dress;<br /></span> +<span>Fools have the more and men of sense the less.<br /></span> +<span>To look original is not worth while,<br /></span> +<span>But be in mind a little out of style.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +</div></div> + +<p>A conqueror arose from the dead. "Yesterday," he said, "I ruled half the +world." "Please show me the half that you ruled," said an angel, +pointing out a wisp of glowing vapor floating in space. "That is the +world."</p> + +<p>"Who art thou, shivering in thy furs?" "My name is Avarice. What is +thine?" "Unselfishness." "Where is thy clothing, placid one?" "Thou art +wearing it."</p> + +<p>To be comic is merely to be playful, but wit is a serious matter. To +laugh at it is to confess that you do not understand.</p> + +<p>If you would be accounted great by your contemporaries, be not too much +greater than they.</p> + +<p>To have something that he will not desire, nor know that he has—such is +the hope of him who seeks the admiration of posterity. The character of +his work does not matter; he is a humorist.</p> + +<p>Women, and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact.</p> + +<p>To fatten pigs, confine and feed them; to fatten rogues, cultivate a +generous disposition.</p> + +<p>Every heart is the lair of a ferocious animal. The greatest wrong that +you can put upon a man is to provoke him to let out his beast.</p> + +<p>When two irreconcilable propositions are presented for assent the safest +way is to thank Heaven that we are not as the unreasoning brutes, and +believe both.</p> + +<p>Truth is more deceptive than falsehood, for it is more frequently +presented by those from whom we do not expect it, and so has against it +a numerical presumption.</p> + +<p>A bad marriage is like an electrical thrilling machine: it makes you +dance, but you can't let go.</p> + +<p>Meeting Merit on a street-crossing, Success stood still. Merit stepped +off into the mud and went around him, bowing his apologies, which +Success had the grace to accept.</p> + +<p>"I think," says the philosopher divine, "Therefore I am." Sir, here's a +surer sign: We know we live, for with our every breath we feel the fear +and imminence of death.</p> + +<p>The first man you meet is a fool. If you do not think so ask him and he +will prove it.</p> + +<p>He who would rather inflict injustice than suffer it will always have +his choice, for no injustice can be done to him.</p> + +<p>There are as many conceptions of a perfect happiness hereafter as there +are minds that have marred their happiness here.</p> + +<p>We yearn to be, not what we are, but what we are not. If we were +immortal we should not crave immortality.</p> + +<p>A rabbit's foot may bring good luck to you, but it brought none to the +rabbit.</p> + +<p>Before praising the wisdom of the man who knows how to hold his tongue +ascertain if he knows how to hold his pen.</p> + +<p>The most charming view in the world is obtained by introspection.</p> + +<p>Love is unlike chess, in that the pieces are moved secretly and the +player sees most of the game. But the looker-on has one incomparable +advantage: he is not the stake.</p> + +<p>It is not for nothing that tigers choose to hide in the jungle, for +commerce and trade are carried on, mostly, in the open.</p> + +<p>We say that we love, not whom we will, but whom we must. Our judgment +need not, therefore, go to confession.</p> + +<p>Of two kinds of temporary insanity, one ends in suicide, the other in +marriage.</p> + +<p>If you give alms from compassion, why require the beneficiary to be "a +deserving object?" No other adversity is so sharp as destitution of +merit.</p> + +<p>Bereavement is the name that selfishness gives to a particular +privation.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i-4">O proud philanthropist, your hope is vain<br /></span> +<span>To get by giving what you lost by gain.<br /></span> +<span>With every gift you do but swell the cloud<br /></span> +<span>Of witnesses against you, swift and loud—<br /></span> +<span>Accomplices who turn and swear you split<br /></span> +<span>Your life: half robber and half hypocrite.<br /></span> +<span>You're least unsafe when most intact you hold<br /></span> +<span>Your curst allotment of dishonest gold.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +</div></div> + +<p>The highest and rarest form of contentment is approval of the success of another.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i-4">If Inclination challenge, stand and fight—</span><br /> +<span>From Opportunity the wise take flight.</span> +</div></div> + +<p>What a woman most admires in a man is distinction among men. What a man +most admires in a woman is devotion to himself.</p> + +<p>Those who most loudly invite God's attention to themselves when in peril +of death are those who should most fervently wish to escape his +observation.</p> + +<p>When you have made a catalogue of your friend's faults it is only fair +to supply him with a duplicate, so that he may know yours.</p> + +<p>How fascinating is Antiquity!—in what a golden haze the ancients lived +their lives! We, too, are ancients. Of our enchanting time Posterity's +great poets will sing immortal songs, and its archaeologists will +reverently uncover the foundations of our palaces and temples. Meantime +we swap jack-knives.</p> + +<p>Observe, my son, with how austere a virtue the man without a cent puts +aside the temptation to manipulate the market or acquire a monopoly.</p> + +<p>For study of the good and the bad in woman two women are a needless +expense.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i-4">"There's no free will," says the philosopher;<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"To hang is most unjust."</span><br /> +<span>"There is no free will," assents the officer;<br /></span> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"We hang because we must."</span><br /> +</div></div> + +<p>Hope is an explorer who surveys the country ahead. That is why we know +so much about the Hereafter and so little about the Heretofore.</p> + +<p>Remembering that it was a woman who lost the world, we should accept the +act of cackling geese in saving Rome as partial reparation.</p> + +<p>There are two classes of women who may do as they please; those who are +rich and those who are poor. The former can count on assent, the latter +on inattention.</p> + +<p>When into the house of the heart Curiosity is admitted as the guest of +Love she turns her host out of doors.</p> + +<p>Happiness has not to all the same name: to Youth she is known as the +Future; Age knows her as the Dream.</p> + +<p>"Who art thou, there in the mire?" "Intuition. I leaped all the way +from where thou standest in fear on the brink of the bog." "A great +feat, madam; accept the admiration of Reason, sometimes known as +Dryfoot."</p> + +<p>In eradicating an evil, it makes a difference whether it is uprooted or +rooted up. The difference is in the reformer.</p> + +<p>The Audible Sisterhood rightly affirms the equality of the sexes: no man +is so base but some woman is base enough to love him.</p> + +<p>Having no eyes in the back of the head, we see ourselves on the verge of +the outlook. Only he who has accomplished the notable feat of turning +about knows himself the central figure in the universe.</p> + +<p>Truth is so good a thing that falsehood can not afford to be without it.</p> + +<p>If women did the writing of the world, instead of the talking, men would +be regarded as the superior sex in beauty, grace and goodness.</p> + +<p>Love is a delightful day's journey. At the farther end kiss your +companion and say farewell.</p> + +<p>Let him who would wish to duplicate his every experience prate of the +value of life.</p> + +<p>The game of discontent has its rules, and he who disregards them cheats. +It is not permitted to you to wish to add another's advantages or +possessions to your own; you are permitted only to wish to be another.</p> + +<p>The creator and arbiter of beauty is the heart; to the male rattlesnake +the female rattlesnake is the loveliest thing in nature.</p> + +<p>Thought and emotion dwell apart. When the heart goes into the head there +is no dissension; only an eviction.</p> + +<p>If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it.</p> + +<p>"Where goest thou, Ignorance?" "To fortify the mind of a maiden against +a peril." "I am going thy way. My name is Knowledge." "Scoundrel! Thou +art the peril."</p> + +<p>A prude is one who blushes modestly at the indelicacy of her thoughts +and virtuously flies from the temptation of her desires.</p> + +<p>The man who is always taking you by the hand is the same who if you were +hungry would take you by the cafe.</p> + +<p>When a certain sovereign wanted war he threw out a diplomatic +intimation; when ready, a diplomat.</p> + +<p>If public opinion were determined by a throw of the dice, it would in +the long run be half the time right.</p> + +<p>The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the +business known as gambling.</p> + +<p>A virtuous widow is the most loyal of mortals; she is faithful to that +which is neither pleased nor profited by her fidelity.</p> + +<p>Of one who was "foolish" the creators of our language said that he was +"fond." That we have not definitely reversed the meanings of the words +should be set down to the credit of our courtesy.</p> + +<p>Rioting gains its end by the power of numbers. To a believer in the +wisdom and goodness of majorities it is not permitted to denounce a +successful mob.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i-4">Artistically set to grace<br /></span> +<span>The wall of a dissecting-place,<br /></span> +<span>A human pericardium<br /></span> +<span>Was fastened with a bit of gum,<br /></span> +<span>While, simply underrunning it,<br /></span> +<span>The one word, "Charity," was writ<br /></span> +<span>To show the student band that hovered<br /></span> +<span>About it what it once had covered.<br /><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Virtue is not necessary to a good reputation, but a good reputation is helpful to virtue.</p> + +<p>When lost in a forest go always down hill. When lost in a philosophy or +doctrine go up-ward.</p> + +<p>We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled +to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.</p> + +<p>Pascal says that an inch added to the length of Cleopatra's nose would +have changed the fortunes of the world. But having said this, he has +said nothing, for all the forces of nature and all the power of +dynasties could not have added an inch to the length of Cleopatra's +nose.</p> + +<p>Our luxuries are always masquerading as necessaries. Woman is the only +necessary having the boldness and address to compel recognition as a +luxury.</p> + +<p>"I am the seat of the affections," said the heart. "Thank you," said the +judgment, "you save my face."</p> + +<p>"Who art thou that weepest?" "Man." "Nay, thou art Egotism. I am the +Scheme of the Universe. Study me and learn that nothing matters." "Then +how does it happen that I weep?"</p> + +<p>A slight is less easily forgiven than an injury, because it implies +something of contempt, indifference, an overlooking of our importance; +whereas an injury presupposes some degree of consideration. "The +blackguards!" said a traveler whom Sicilian brigands had released +without ransom; "did they think me a person of no consequence?"</p> + +<p>The people's plaudits are unheard in hell.</p> + +<p>Generosity to a fallen foe is a virtue that takes no chances.</p> + +<p>If there was a world before this we must all have died impenitent.</p> + +<p>We are what we laugh at. The stupid person is a poor joke, the clever, a +good one.</p> + +<p>If every man who resents being called a rogue resented being one this +would be a world of wrath.</p> + +<p>Force and charm are important elements of character, but it counts for +little to be stronger than honey and sweeter than a lion.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i-4">Grief and discomfiture are coals that cool:<br /></span> +<span>Why keep them glowing with thy sighs, poor fool?<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites +them to think something else.</p> + +<p>Asked to describe the Deity, a donkey would represent him with long ears +and a tail. Man's conception is higher and truer: he thinks of him as +somewhat resembling a man.</p> + +<p>Christians and camels receive their burdens kneeling.</p> + +<p>The sky is a concave mirror in which Man sees his own distorted image +and seeks to propitiate it.</p> + +<p>Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land, +but do not hope that the life insurance companies will offer thee +special rates.</p> + +<p>Persons who are horrified by what they believe to be Darwin's theory of +the descent of Man from the Ape may find comfort in the hope of his +return.</p> + +<p>A strong mind is more easily impressed than a weak; you shall not so +readily convince a fool that you are a philosopher as a philosopher that +you are a fool.</p> + +<p>A cheap and easy cynicism rails at everything. The master of the art +accomplishes the formidable task of discrimination.</p> + +<p>When publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a +codefendant.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i-4">O lady fine, fear not to lead</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To Hymen's shrine a clown:</span><br /> +<span>Love cannot level up, indeed,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But he can level down.</span><br /> +</div></div> + +<p>Men are polygamous by nature and monogamous for opportunity. It is a +faithful man who is willing to be watched by a half-dozen wives.</p> + +<p>The virtues chose Modesty to be their queen. "I did not know that I was +a virtue," she said. "Why did you not choose Innocence?" "Because of her +ignorance," they replied. "She knows nothing but that she is a virtue."</p> + +<p>It is a wise "man's man" who knows what it is that he despises in a +"ladies' man."</p> + +<p>If the vices of women worshiped their creators men would boast of the +adoration they inspire.</p> + +<p>The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of +conformity.</p> + +<p>Slang is the speech of him who robs the literary garbage carts on their +way to the dumps.</p> + +<p>A woman died who had passed her life in affirming the superiority of her +sex. "At last," she said, "I shall have rest and honors." "Enter," said +Saint Peter; "thou shalt wash the faces of the dear little cherubim."</p> + +<p>To woman a general truth has neither value nor interest unless she can +make a particular application of it. And we say that women are not +practical!</p> + +<p>The ignorant know not the depth of their ignorance, but the learned know +the shallowness of their learning.</p> + +<p>He who relates his success in charming woman's heart may be assured of +his failure to charm man's ear.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i-4">What poignant memories the shadows bring</span><br /> +<span>What songs of triumph in the dawning ring!</span><br /> +<span>By night a coward and by day a king.</span> +</div></div> + +<p>When among the graves of thy fellows, walk with circumspection; thine +own is open at thy feet.</p> + +<p>As the physiognomist takes his own face as the highest type and +standard, so the critic's theories are imposed by his own limitations.</p> + +<p>"Heaven lies about us in our infancy," and our neighbors take up the +tale as we mature.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i-4">"My laws," she said, "are of myself a part:</span><br /> +<span>I read them by examining my heart."</span><br /> +<span>"True," he replied; "like those to Moses known,</span><br /> +<span>Thine also are engraven upon stone."</span> +</div></div> + +<p>Love is a distracted attention: from contemplation of one's self one +turns to consider one's dream.</p> + +<p>"Halt!—who goes there?" "Death." "Advance, Death, and give the +countersign." "How needless! I care not to enter thy camp tonight. Thou +shalt enter mine." "What! I a deserter?" "Nay, a great soldier. Thou +shalt overcome all the enemies of mankind." "Who are they?" "Life and +the Fear of Death."</p> + +<p>The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they +signify character. The philosopher reads character by what the hand most +loves to close upon.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i-4">Ah, woe is his, with length of living cursed,</span><br /> +<span>Who, nearing second childhood, had no first.</span><br /> +<span>Behind, no glimmer, and before no ray—</span><br /> +<span>A night at either end of his dark day.</span> +</div></div> + +<p>A noble enthusiasm in praise of Woman is not incompatible with a +spirited zeal in defamation of women.</p> + +<p>The money-getter who pleads his love of work has a lame defense, for +love of work at money-getting is a lower taste than love of money.</p> + +<p>He who thinks that praise of mediocrity atones for disparagement of +genius is like one who should plead robbery in excuse of theft.</p> + +<p>The most disagreeable form of masculine hypocrisy is that which finds +expression in pretended remorse for impossible gallantries.</p> + +<p>Any one can say that which is new; any one that which is true. For that +which is both new and true we must go duly accredited to the gods and +await their pleasure.</p> + +<p>The test of truth is Reason, not Faith; for to the court of Reason must +be submitted even the claims of Faith.</p> + +<p>"Whither goest thou?" said the angel. "I know not." "And whence hast +thou come?" "I know not." "But who art thou?" "I know not." "Then thou +art Man. See that thou turn not back, but pass on to the place whence +thou hast come."</p> + +<p>If Expediency and Righteousness are not father and son they are the most +harmonious brothers that ever were seen.</p> + +<p>Train the head, and the heart will take care of itself; a rascal is one +who knows not how to think.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i-4">Do you to others as you would</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That others do to you;</span><br /> +<span>But see that you no service good</span><br /> +<span>Would have from others that they could</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Not rightly do.</span> +</div></div> + +<p>Taunts are allowable in the case of an obstinate husband: balky horses +may best be made to go by having their ears bitten.</p> + +<p>Adam probably regarded Eve as the woman of his choice, and exacted a +certain gratitude for the distinction of his preference.</p> + +<p>A man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a +dead ape and work downward through a million graves. He is like the +lower end of a suspended chain; you can sway him slightly to the right +or the left, but remove your hand and he falls into line with the other +links.</p> + +<p>He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity. A fool is a +natural proselyte, but he must be caught young, for his convictions, +unlike those of the wise, harden with age.</p> + +<p>These are the prerogatives of genius: To know without having learned; to +draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of +things.</p> + +<p>Although one love a dozen times, yet will the latest love seem the +first. He who says he has loved twice has not loved once.</p> + +<p>Men who expect universal peace through invention of destructive weapons +of war are no wiser than one who, noting the improvement of agricultural +implements, should prophesy an end to the tilling of the soil.</p> + +<p>To parents only, death brings an inconsolable sorrow. When the young die +and the old live, nature's machinery is working with the friction that +we name grief.</p> + +<p>Empty wine bottles have a bad opinion of women.</p> + +<p>Civilization is the child of human ignorance and conceit. If Man knew +his insignificance in the scheme of things he would not think it worth +while to rise from barbarity to enlightenment. But it is only through +enlightenment that he can know.</p> + +<p>Along the road of life are many pleasure resorts, but think not that by +tarrying in them you will take more days to the journey. The day of your +arrival is already recorded.</p> + +<p>The most offensive egotist is he that fears to say "I" and "me." "It +will probably rain"—that is dogmatic. "I think it will rain"—that is +natural and modest. Montaigne is the most delightful of essayists +because so great is his humility that he does not think it important +that we see not Montaigne. He so forgets himself that he employs no +artifice to make us forget him.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i-4">On fair foundations Theocrats unwise</span><br /> +<span>Rear superstructures that offend the skies.</span><br /> +<span>"Behold," they cry, "this pile so fair and tall!</span><br /> +<span>Come dwell within it and be happy all."</span><br /> +<span>But they alone inhabit it, and find,</span><br /> +<span>Poor fools, 'tis but a prison for the mind.</span> +</div></div> + +<p>If thou wilt not laugh at a rich man's wit thou art an anarchist, and if +thou take not his word thou shalt take nothing that he hath. Make haste, +therefore, to be civil to thy betters, and so prosper, for prosperity is +the foundation of the state.</p> + +<p>Death is not the end; there remains the litigation over the estate.</p> + +<p>When God makes a beautiful woman, the devil opens a new register.</p> + +<p>When Eve first saw her reflection in a pool, she sought Adam and accused +him of infidelity.</p> + +<p>"Why dost thou weep?" "For the death of my wife. Alas! I shall never +again see her!" "Thy wife will never again see thee, yet she does not +weep."</p> + +<p>What theology is to religion and jurisprudence to justice, etiquette is +to civility.</p> + +<p>"Who art thou that despite the piercing cold and thy robe's raggedness +seemest to enjoy thyself?" "Naught else is enjoyable—I am Contentment." +"Ha! thine must be a magic shirt. Off with it! I shiver in my fine +attire." "I have no shirt. Pass on, Success."</p> + +<p>Ignorance when inevitable is excusable. It may be harmless, even +beneficial; but it is charming only to the unwise. To affect a spurious +ignorance is to disclose a genuine.</p> + +<p>Because you will not take by theft what you can have by cheating, think +not yours is the only conscience in the world. Even he who permits you +to cheat his neighbor will shrink from permitting you to cheat himself.</p> + +<p>"God keep thee, stranger; what is thy name?" "Wisdom. And thine?" +"Knowledge. How does it happen that we meet?" "This is an intersection +of our paths." "Will it ever be decreed that we travel always the same +road?" "We were well named if we knew."</p> + +<p>Nothing is more logical than persecution. Religious tolerance is a kind +of infidelity.</p> + +<p>Convictions are variable; to be always consistent is to be sometimes +dishonest.</p> + +<p>The philosopher's profoundest conviction is that which he is most +reluctant to express, lest he mislead.</p> + +<p>When exchange of identities is possible, be careful; you may choose a +person who is willing.</p> + +<p>The most intolerant advocate is he who is trying to convince himself.</p> + +<p>In the Parliament of Otumwee the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed a +tax on fools. "The right honorable and generous gentleman," said a +member, "forgets that we already have it in the poll tax."</p> + +<p>"Whose dead body is that?" "Credulity's." "By whom was he slain?" +"Credulity." "Ah, suicide." "No, surfeit. He dined at the table of +Science, and swallowed all that was set before him."</p> + +<p>Don't board with the devil if you wish to be fat.</p> + +<p>Pray do not despise your delinquent debtor; his default is no proof of +poverty.</p> + +<p>Courage is the acceptance of the gambler's chance: a brave man bets +against the game of the gods.</p> + +<p>"Who art thou?" "A philanthropist. And thou?" "A pauper." "Away! you +have nothing to relieve my needs."</p> + +<p>Youth looks forward, for nothing is behind! Age backward, for nothing is +before.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Cynic Looks at Life, by Ambrose Bierce + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CYNIC LOOKS AT LIFE *** + +***** This file should be named 16340-h.htm or 16340-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/3/4/16340/ + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Dave Macfarlane and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: A Cynic Looks at Life + Little Blue Book #1099 + +Author: Ambrose Bierce + +Editor: E. Haldeman-Julius + +Release Date: July 21, 2005 [EBook #16340] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CYNIC LOOKS AT LIFE *** + + + + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Dave Macfarlane and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[Transcriber's note: _ is equivalent to italics markup.] + + +LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 1099 +Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius + + +A Cynic Looks at Life + +Ambrose Bierce + + +HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY +GIRARD, KANSAS + +Copyright, 1912, by +The Neale Publishing Company + +Reprinted by Special Arrangement With +Albert and Charles Boni, New York + +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + +A CYNIC LOOKS AT LIFE + + + + +CIVILIZATION + + +I + +The question "Does civilization civilize?" is a fine example of _petitio +principii_, and decides itself in the affirmative; for civilization must +needs do that from the doing of which it has its name. But it is not +necessary to suppose that he who propounds is either unconscious of his +lapse in logic or desirous of digging a pitfall for the feet of those +who discuss; I take it he simply wishes to put the matter in an +impressive way, and relies upon a certain degree of intelligence in the +interpretation. + +Concerning uncivilized peoples we know but little except what we are +told by travelers--who, speaking generally, can know very little but the +fact of uncivilization, as shown in externals and irrelevances, and are +moreover, greatly given to lying. From the savages we hear very little. +Judging them in all things by our own standards in default of a +knowledge of theirs, we necessarily condemn, disparage and belittle. One +thing that civilization certainly has not done is to make us intelligent +enough to understand that the contrary of a virtue is not necessarily a +vice. Because, as a rule, we have but one wife and several mistresses +each it is not certain that polygamy is everywhere--nor, for that +matter, anywhere--either wrong or inexpedient. Because the brutality of +the civilized slave owners and dealers created a conquering sentiment +against slavery it is not intelligent to assume that slavery is a +maleficent thing amongst Oriental peoples (for example) where the slave +is not oppressed. Some of these same Orientals whom we are pleased to +term half-civilized have no regard for truth. "Takest thou me for a +Christian dog," said one of them, "that I should be the slave of my +word?" So far as I can perceive, the "Christian dog" is no more the +slave of his word than the True Believer, and I think the +savage--allowing for the fact that his inveracity has dominion over +fewer things--as great a liar as either of them. For my part, I do not +know what, in all circumstances, is right or wrong; but I know that, if +right, it is at least stupid, to judge an uncivilized people by the +standards of morality and intelligence set up by civilized ones. Life in +civilized countries is so complex that men there have more ways to be +good than savages have, and more to be bad; more to be happy, and more +to be miserable. And in each way to be good or bad, their generally +superior knowledge--their knowledge of more things--enables them to +commit greater excesses than the savage can. The civilized +philanthropist wreaks upon his fellows a ranker philanthropy, the +civilized rascal a sturdier rascality. And--splendid triumph of +enlightenment!--the two characters are, in civilization, frequently +combined in one person. + +I know of no savage custom or habit of thought which has not its mate +in civilized countries. For every mischievous or absurd practice of the +natural man I can name you one of ours that is essentially the same. And +nearly every custom of our barbarian ancestors in historic times +persists in some form today. We make ourselves look formidable in +battle--for that matter, we fight. Our women paint their faces. We feel +it obligatory to dress more or less alike, inventing the most ingenious +reasons for doing so and actually despising and persecuting those who do +not care to conform. Almost within the memory of living persons bearded +men were stoned in the streets; and a clergyman in New York who wore his +beard as Christ wore his, was put into jail and variously persecuted +till he died. + +Civilization does not, I think, make the race any better. It makes men +know more: and if knowledge makes them happy it is useful and desirable. +The one purpose of every sane human being is to be happy. No one can +have any other motive than that. There is no such thing as +unselfishness. We perform the most "generous" and "self-sacrificing" +acts because we should be unhappy if we did not. We move on lines of +least reluctance. Whatever tends to increase the beggarly sum of human +happiness is worth having; nothing else has any value. + +The cant of civilization fatigues. Civilization, is a fine and beautiful +structure. It is as picturesque as a Gothic cathedral, but it is built +upon the bones and cemented with the blood of those whose part in all +its pomp is that and nothing more. It cannot be reared in the +ungenerous tropics, for there the people will not contribute their +blood and bones. The proposition that the average American workingman or +European peasant is "better off" than the South Sea islander, lolling +under a palm and drunk with over-eating, will not bear a moment's +examination. It is we scholars and gentlemen that are better off. + +It is admitted that the South Sea islander in a state of nature is +overmuch addicted to the practice of eating human flesh; but concerning +that I submit: first, that he likes it; second, that those who supply it +are mostly dead. It is upon his enemies that he feeds, and these he +would kill anyhow, as we do ours. In civilized, enlightened and +Christian countries, where cannibalism has not yet established itself, +wars are as frequent and destructive as among the maneaters. The +untitled savage knows at least why he goes killing, whereas our private +soldier is commonly in black ignorance of the apparent cause of +quarrel--of the actual cause, always. Their shares in the fruits of +victory are about equal, for the chief takes all the dead, the general +all the glory. + + +II + +Transplanted institutions grow slowly; civilization can not be put into +a ship and carried across an ocean. The history of this country is a +sequence of illustrations of these truths. It was settled by civilized +men and women from civilized countries, yet after two and a half +centuries, with unbroken communication with the mother systems, it is +still imperfectly civilized. In learning and letters, in art and the +science of government, America is but a faint and stammering echo of +Europe. + +For nearly all that is good in our American civilization we +are indebted to the Old World; the errors and mischiefs are of our own +creation. We have originated little, because there is little to +originate, but we have unconsciously reproduced many of the discredited +systems of former ages and other countries--receiving them at second +hand, but making them ours by the sheer strength and immobility of the +national belief in their novelty. Novelty! Why, it is not possible to +make an experiment in government, in art, in literature, in sociology, +or in morals, that has not been made over, and over, and over again. + +The glories of England are our glories. She can achieve nothing that our +fathers did not help to make possible to her. The learning, the power, +the refinement of a great nation, are not the growth of a century, but +of many centuries; each generation builds upon the work of the +preceding. For untold ages our ancestors wrought to rear that "reverend +pile," the civilization of England. And shall we now try to belittle the +mighty structure because other though kindred hands are laying the top +courses while we have elected to found a new tower in another land? The +American eulogist of civilization who is not proud of his heritage in +England's glory is unworthy to enjoy his lesser heritage in the lesser +glory of his own country. + +The English, are undoubtedly our intellectual superiors; and as the +virtues are solely the product of intelligence and cultivation--a rogue +being only a dunce considered from another point of view--they are our +moral superiors likewise. Why should they not be? Theirs is a land, not +of ugly schoolhouses grudgingly erected, containing schools supported by +such niggardly tax levies as a sparse and hard-handed population will +consent to pay, but of ancient institutions splendidly endowed by the +state and by centuries of private benefaction. As a means of dispensing +formulated ignorance our boasted public school system is not without +merit; it spreads out education sufficiently thin to give everyone +enough to make him a more competent fool than he would have been without +it; but to compare it with that which is not the creature of legislation +acting with malice aforethought, but the unnoted out-growth of ages, is +to be ridiculous. It is like comparing the laid-out town of a western +prairie, its right-angled streets, prim cottages, and wooden a-b-c +shops, with the grand old town of Oxford, topped with the clustered +domes and towers of its twenty-odd great colleges, the very names of +many of whose founders have perished from human record, as have the +chronicles of the times in which they lived. + +It is not only that we have had to "subdue the wilderness"; our +educational conditions are adverse otherwise. Our political system is +unfavorable. Our fortunes, accumulated in one generation, are dispersed +in the next. If it takes three generations to make a gentleman one will +not make a thinker. Instruction is acquired, but capacity for +instruction is transmitted. The brain that is to contain a trained +intellect is not the result of a haphazard marriage between a clown and +a wench, nor does it get its tractable tissues from a hard-headed farmer +and a soft-headed milliner. If you confess the importance of race and +pedigree in a horse and a dog how dare you deny it in a man? + +I do not hold that the political and social system that creates an +aristocracy of leisure is the best possible kind of human organization; +I perceive its disadvantages clearly enough. But I do hold that a system +under which most important public trusts, political and professional, +civil and military ecclesiastical and secular, are held by educated +men--that is, men of trained faculties and disciplined judgment--is +not an altogether faulty system. + +It is a universal human weakness to disparage the knowledge that we do +not ourselves possess, but it is only my own beloved country that can +justly boast herself the last refuge and asylum of the impotents and +incapables who deny the advantage of all knowledge whatsoever. It was an +American senator who declared that he had devoted a couple of weeks to +the study of finance, and found the accepted authorities all wrong. It +was another American senator who, confronted with certain hostile facts +in the history of another country, proposed "to brush away all facts, +and argue the question on consideration of plain common sense." + +Republican institutions have this disadvantage: by incessant changes in +the _personnel_ of government--to say nothing of the manner of men that +ignorant constituencies elect; and all constituencies are ignorant--we +attain to no fixed principles and standards. There is no such thing here +as a science of politics, because it is not to any one's interest to +make politics the study of his life. Nothing is settled; no truth finds +general acceptance. What we do one year we undo the next, and do over +again the year following. Our energy is wasted in, and our prosperity +suffers from, experiments endlessly repeated. + +Every patriot believes his country better than any other country. Now, +they cannot all be the best; indeed, only one can be the best, and it +follows that the patriots of all the others have suffered themselves to +be misled by a mere sentiment into blind unreason. In its active +manifestation--it is fond of killing--patriotism would be well if it +were simply defensive; but it is also aggressive, and the same feeling +that prompts us to strike for our altars and our fires impels us over +the border to quench the fires and overturn the altars of our neighbors. +It is all very pretty and spirited, what the poets tell us about +Thermopylae, but there was as much patriotism at one end of that pass as +there was at the other. + +Patriotism deliberately and with folly aforethought subordinates the +interests of a whole to the interests of a part. Worse still, the +fraction so favored is determined by an accident of birth or residence. +The Western hoodlum who cuts the tail from a Chinaman's nowl, and would +cut the nowl from the body, if he dared, is simply a patriot with a +logical mind, having the courage of his opinions. Patriotism is fierce +as a fever, pitiless as the grave and blind as a stone. + + +III + +There are two ways of clarifying liquids--ebullition and precipitation; +one forces the impurities to the surface as scum, the other sends them +to the bottom as dregs. The former is the more offensive, and that seems +to be our way; but neither is useful if the impurities are merely +separated but not removed. We are told with tiresome iteration that our +social and political systems are clarifying; but when is the skimmer to +appear? If the purpose of free institutions is good government where is +the good government?--when may it be expected to begin?--how is it to +come about? Systems of government have no sanctity; they are practical +means to a simple end--the public welfare; worthy of no respect if they +fail of its accomplishment. The tree is known by its fruit. Ours is +bearing crab-apples. If the body politic is constitutionally diseased, +as I verily believe; if the disorder inheres in the system; there is no +remedy. The fever must burn itself out, and then Nature will do the +rest. One does not prescribe what time alone can administer. We have put +our criminals and dunces into power; do we suppose they will efface +themselves? Will they restore to _us_ the power of governing _them_? +They must have their way and go their length. The natural and immemorial +sequence is: tyranny, insurrection, combat. In combat everything that +wears a sword has a chance--even the right. History does not forbid us +to hope. But it forbids us to rely upon numbers; they will be against +us. If history teaches anything worth learning it teaches that the +majority of mankind is neither good nor wise. When government is founded +upon the public conscience and the public intelligence the stability of +states is a dream. + +In that moment of time that is covered by historical records we have +abundant evidence that each generation has believed itself wiser and +better than any of its predecessors; that each people has believed +itself to have the secret of national perpetuity. In support of this +universal delusion there is nothing to be said; the desolate places of +the earth cry out against it. Vestiges of obliterated civilizations +cover the earth; no savage but has camped upon the sites of proud and +populous cities; no desert but has heard the statesman's boast of +national stability. Our nation, our laws, our history--all shall go down +to everlasting oblivion with the others, and by the same road. But I +submit that we are traveling it with needless haste. + +It can be spared--this Jonah's gourd civilization of ours. We have +hardly the rudiments of a true one; compared with the splendors of which +we catch dim glimpses in the fading past, ours are as an illumination of +tallow candles. We know no more than the ancients; we only know other +things, but nothing in which is an assurance of perpetuity, and little +that is truly wisdom. Our vaunted _elixir vitae_ is the art of +printing. What good will that do when posterity, struck by the +inevitable intellectual blight, shall have ceased to read what is +printed? Our libraries will become its stables, our books its fuel. + +Ours is a civilization that might be heard from afar in space as a +scolding and a riot; a civilization in which the race has so +differentiated as to have no longer a community of interest and feeling; +which shows as a ripe result of the principles underlying it a +reasonless and rascally feud between rich and poor; in which one is +offered a choice (if one have the means to take it) between American +plutocracy and European militocracy, with an imminent chance of +renouncing either for a stultocratic republic with a headsman in the +presidential chair and every laundress in exile. + +I have not a "solution" to the "labor problem." I have only a story. +Many and many years ago lived a man who was so good and wise that none +in all the world was so good and wise as he. He was one of those few +whose goodness and wisdom are such that after some time has passed their +foolish fellowmen begin to think them gods and treasure their words as +divine law; and by millions they are worshiped through centuries of +time. Amongst the utterances of this man was one command--not a new nor +perfect one--which has seemed to his adorers so preeminently wise that +they have given it a name by which it is known over half the world. One +of the sovereign virtues of this famous law is its simplicity, which is +such that all hearing must understand; and obedience is so easy that +any nation refusing is unfit to exist except in the turbulence and +adversity that will surely come to it. When a people would avert want +and strife, or, having them, would restore plenty and peace, this noble +commandment offers the only means--all other plans for safety or relief +are as vain as dreams, as empty as the crooning of hags. And behold, +here is it: "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, +do ye even so to them." + +What! you unappeasable rich, coining the sweat and blood of your workmen +into drachmas, understanding the law of supply and demand as mandatory +and justifying your cruel greed by the senseless dictum that "business +is business"; you lazy workmen, railing at the capitalist by whose +desertion, when you have frightened away his capital, you +starve--rioting and shedding blood and torturing and poisoning by way of +answer to exaction and by way of exaction; you foul anarchists, +applauding with untidy palms when one of your coward kind hurls a bomb +amongst powerless and helpless women and children; you imbecile +politicians with a plague of remedial legislation for the irremediable; +you writers and thinkers unread in history, with as many "solutions to +the labor problem" as there are among you those who can not coherently +define it--do you really think yourselves wiser than Jesus of Nazareth? +Do you seriously suppose yourselves competent to amend his plan for +dealing with evils besetting nations and souls? Have you the effrontery +to believe that those who spurn his Golden Rule you can bind to +obedience of an act entitled an act to amend an act? Bah! you fatigue +the spirit. Go get ye to your scoundrel lockouts, your villain strikes, +your blacklisting, your boycotting, your speeching, marching and +maundering; but if ye do not to others as ye would that they do to you +it shall occur, and that right soon, that ye be drowned in your own +blood and your pick-pocket civilization quenched as a star that falls +into the sea. + + + + +THE GIFT O' GAB + + +A book entitled _Forensic Eloquence_, by Mr. John Goss, appears to have +for purpose to teach the young idea how to spout, and that purpose, I +dare say, it will accomplish if something is not done to prevent. I know +nothing of the matter myself, a strong distaste for forensic eloquence, +or eloquence of any kind implying a man mounted on his legs and doing +all the talking, having averted me from its study. The training of the +youth of this country to utterance of themselves after that fashion I +should regard as a disaster of magnitude. So far as I know it, forensic +eloquence is the art of saying things in such a way as to make them pass +for more than they are worth. Employed in matters of importance (and for +other employment it were hardly worth acquiring) it is mischievous +because dishonest and misleading. In the public service Truth toils best +when not clad in cloth-of-gold and bedaubed with fine lace. If eloquence +does not beget action it is valueless; but action which results from the +passions, sentiments and emotions is less likely to be wise than that +which comes of a persuaded judgment. For that reason I cannot help +thinking that the influence of Bismarck in German politics was more +wholesome than is that of Mr. John Temple Graves. + +For eloquence _per se_--considered merely as an art of pleasing--I +entertain something of the respect evoked by success; for it always +pleases at least the speaker. It is to speech what an ornate style is to +writing--good and pleasant enough in its time and place and, like +pie-crust and the evening girl, destitute of any basis in common sense. +Forensic eloquence, on the contrary, has an all too sufficient +foundation in reason and the order of things: it promotes the ambition +of tricksters and advances the fortunes of rogues. For I take it that +the Ciceros, the Mirabeaus, the Burkes, the O'Connells, the Patrick +Henrys and the rest of them--pets of the text-bookers and scourges of +youth--belong in either the one category or the other, or in both. +Anyhow I find it impossible to think of them as highminded men and +right-forth statesmen--with their actors' tricks, their devices of the +countenance, inventions of gesture and other cunning expedients having +nothing to do with the matter in hand. Extinction of the orator I hold +to be the most beneficent possibility of evolution. If Mr. Goss has done +anything to retard that blessed time when the Bourke Cockrans shall +cease from troubling and the weary be at rest he is an enemy of his race. + +"What!" exclaims the thoughtless reader--I have but one--"are not the +great forensic speeches by the world's famous orators good reading? +Considering them merely as literature do you not derive a high and +refining pleasure from them?" I do not: I find them turgid and tumid no +end. They are bad reading, though they may have been good hearing. In +order to enjoy them one must have in memory what, indeed, one is seldom +permitted to forget: that they were addressed to the ear; and in +imagination one must hold some shadowy simulacrum of the orator himself, +uttering his work. These conditions being fulfilled there remains for +application to the matter of the discourse too little attention to get +much good of it, and the total effect is confusion. Literature by which +the reader is compelled to bear in mind the producer and the +circumstances under which it was produced can be spared. + + + + +NATURA BENIGNA + + +It is not always on remote islands peopled with pagans that great +disasters occur, as memory witnesseth. Nor are the forces of nature +inadequate to production of a fiercer throe than any that we have known. +The situation is this: we are tied by the feet to a fragile shell +imperfectly confining a force powerful enough under favoring conditions, +to burst it asunder and set the fragments wallowing and grinding +together in liquid flame, in the blind fury of a readjustment. Nay, it +needs no such stupendous cataclysm to depeople this uneasy orb. Let but +a square mile be blown out of the bottom of the sea, or a great rift +open there. Is it to be supposed that we would be unaffected in the +altered conditions generated by a contest between the ocean and the +earth's molten core? These fatalities are not only possible but in the +highest degree probable. It is probable, indeed, that they have occurred +over and over again, effacing all the more highly organized forms of +life, and compelling the slow march of evolution to begin anew. Slow? On +the stage of Eternity the passing of races--the entrances and exits of +Life--are incidents in a brisk and lively drama, following one another +with confusing rapidity. + +Mankind has not found it practicable to abandon and avoid those places +where the forces of nature have been most malign. The track, of the +Western tornado is speedily repeopled. San Francisco is still populous, +despite its earthquake, Galveston despite its storm, and even the courts +of Lisbon are not kept by the lion and the lizard. In the Peruvian +village straight downward into whose streets the crew of a United States +warship once looked from the crest of a wave that stranded her a half +mile inland are heard the tinkle of the guitar and the voices of +children at play. There are people living at Herculaneum and Pompeii. On +the slopes about Catania the goatherd endures with what courage he may +the trembling of the ground beneath his feet as old Enceladus again +turns over on his other side. As the Hoang-Ho goes back inside its banks +after fertilizing its contiguity with hydrate of China-man the living +agriculturist follows the receding wave, sets up his habitation beneath +the broken embankment, and again the Valley of the Gone Away blossoms +as the rose, its people diving with Death. + +This matter can not be amended: the race exposes itself to peril because +it can do no otherwise. In all the world there is no city of refuge--no +temple in which to take sanctuary, clinging to the horns of the +altar--no "place apart" where, like hunted deer, we can hope to elude +the baying pack of Nature's malevolences. The dead-line is drawn at the +gate of life: Man crosses it at birth. His advent is a challenge to the +entire pack--earthquake, storm, fire, flood, drought, heat, cold, wild +beasts, venomous reptiles, noxious insects, bacilli, spectacular plague +and velvet-footed household disease--all are fierce and tireless in +pursuit. Dodge, turn and double how he can, there's no eluding them; +soon or late some of them have him by the throat and his spirit returns +to the God who gave it--and gave them. + +We are told that this earth was made for our inhabiting. Our dearly +beloved brethren in the faith, our spiritual guides, philosophers and +friends of the pulpit, never tire of pointing out the goodness of God in +giving us so excellent a place to live in and commending the admirable +adaptation of all things to our needs. + +What a fine world it is, to be sure--a darling little world, "so suited +to the needs of man." A globe of liquid fire, straining within a shell +relatively no thicker than that of an egg--a shell constantly cracking +and in momentary danger of going all to pieces! Three-fourths of this +delectable field of human activity are covered with an element in which +we can not breathe, and which swallows us by myriads: + + With moldering bones the deep is white + From the frozen zones to the tropic bright. + +Of the other one-fourth more than one-half is uninhabitable by reason of +climate. On the remaining one-eighth we pass a comfortless and +precarious existence in disputed occupancy with countless ministers of +death and pain--pass it in fighting for it, tooth and nail, a hopeless +battle in which we are foredoomed to defeat. Everywhere death, terror, +lamentation and the laughter that is more terrible than tears--the fury +and despair of a race hanging on to life by the tips of its fingers. And +the prize for which we strive, "to have and to hold"--what is it? A +thing that is neither enjoyed while had, or missed when lost. So +worthless it is, so unsatisfying, so inadequate to purpose, so false to +hope and at its best so brief, that for consolation and compensation we +set up fantastic faiths of an aftertime in a better world from which no +confirming whisper has ever reached us across the void. Heaven is a +prophecy uttered by the lips of despair, but Hell is an inference from +analogy. + + + + +THE DEATH PENALTY + + +I + +"Down with the gallows!" is a cry not unfamiliar in America. There is +always a movement afoot to make odious the just principle; of "a life +for a life"--to represent it as "a relic of barbarism," "a usurpation of +the divine authority," and the rest of it. The law making murder +punishable by death is as purely a measure of self-defense as is the +display of a pistol to one diligently endeavoring to kill without +provocation. It is in precisely the same sense an admonition, a warning +to abstain from crime. Society says by that law: "If you kill one of us +you die," just as by display of the pistol the individual whose life is +attacked says: "Desist or be shot." To be effective the warning in +either case must be more than an idle threat. Even the most unearthly +reasoner among the anti-hanging unfortunates would hardly expect to +frighten away an assassin who knew the pistol to be unloaded. Of course +these queer illogicians can not be made to understand that their +position commits them to absolute non-resistance to any kind of +aggression; and that is fortunate for the rest of us, for if as +Christians they frankly and consistently took that ground we should be +under the miserable necessity of respecting them. + +We have good reason to hold that the horrible prevalence of murder in +this country is due to the fact that we do not execute our laws--that +the death penalty is threatened but not inflicted--that the pistol is +not loaded. In civilized countries where there is enough respect for the +laws to administer them, there is enough to obey them. While man still +has as much of the ancestral brute as his skin can hold without cracking +we shall have thieves and demagogues and anarchists and assassins and +persons with a private system of lexicography who define murder as +disease and hanging as murder, but in all this welter of crime and +stupidity are areas where human life is comparatively secure against the +human hand. It is at least a significant coincidence that in these the +death penalty for murder is fairly well enforced by judges who do not +derive any part of their authority from those for whose restraint and +punishment they hold it. Against the life of one guiltless person the +lives of ten thousand murderers count for nothing; their hanging is a +public good, without reference to the crimes that disclose their +deserts. If we could discover them by other signs than their bloody +deeds they should be hanged anyhow. Unfortunately we must have a death +as evidence. The scientist who will tell us how to recognize the +potential assassin, and persuade us to kill him, will be the greatest +benefactor of his century. + +What would these enemies of the gibbet have--these lineal descendants +of the drunken mobs that hooted the hangman at Tyburn Tree; this progeny +of criminals, which has so defiled with the mud of its animosity the +noble office of public executioner that even "in this enlightened age" +he shirks his high duty, entrusting it to a hidden or unnamed +subordinate? If murder is unjust of what importance is it whether its +punishment by death be just or not?--nobody needs to incur it. Men are +not drafted for the death penalty; they volunteer. "Then it is not +deterrent," mutters the gentleman whose rude forefather hooted the +hangman. Well, as to that, the law which is to accomplish more than a +part of its purpose must be awaited with great patience. Every murder +proves that hanging is not altogether deterrent; every hanging, that it +is somewhat deterrent--it deters the person hanged. A man's first murder +is his crime, his second is ours. + +The socialists, it seems, believe with Alphonse Karr, in the expediency +of abolishing the death penalty; but apparently they do not hold, with +him, that the assassins should begin. They want the state to begin, +believing that the magnanimous example will effect a change of heart in +those about to murder. This, I take it, is the meaning of their +assertion that death penalties have not the deterring influence that +imprisonment for life carries. In this they obviously err: death deters +at least the person who suffers it--he commits no more murder; whereas +the assassin who is imprisoned for life and immune from further +punishment may with impunity kill his keeper or whomsoever he may be +able to get at. Even as matters now are, incessant vigilance is required +to prevent convicts in prison from murdering their attendants and one +another. How would it be if the "life-termer" were assured against any +additional inconvenience for braining a guard occasionally, or +strangling a chaplain now and then? A penitentiary may be described as a +place of punishment and reward; and under the system proposed, the +difference in desirableness between a sentence and an appointment would +be virtually effaced. To overcome this objection a life sentence would +have to mean solitary confinement, and that means insanity. Is that what +these gentlemen propose to substitute for death? + +The death penalty, say these amiables and futilitarians, creates +blood-thirstiness in the unthinking masses and defeats its own ends--is +itself a cause of murder, not a check. These gentlemen are themselves of +"the unthinking masses"--they do not know how to think. Let them try to +trace and lucidly expound the chain of motives lying between the +knowledge that a murderer has been hanged and the wish to commit a +murder. How, precisely, does the one beget the other? By what unearthly +process of reasoning does a man turning away from the gallows persuade +himself that it is expedient to incur the danger of hanging? Let us have +pointed out to us the several steps in that remarkable mental progress. +Obviously, the thing is absurd; one might as reasonably say that +contemplation of a pitted face will make a man wish to go and catch +smallpox, or the spectacle of an amputated limb on the scrap-heap of a +hospital tempt him to cut off his arm or renounce his leg. + +"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," say the opponents of the +death penalty, "is not justice; it is revenge and unworthy of a +Christian civilization." It is exact justice: nobody can think of +anything more accurately just than such punishments would be, whatever +the motive in awarding them. Unfortunately such a system is not +practicable, but he who denies its justice must deny also the justice of +a bushel of corn for a bushel of corn, a dollar for a dollar, service +for service. We can not undertake by such clumsy means as laws and +courts to do to the criminal exactly what he has done to his victim, +but to demand a life for a life is simple, practicable, expedient and +(therefore) right. + +"Taking the life of a murderer does not restore the life he took, +therefore it is a most illogical punishment. Two wrongs do not make a +right." + +Here's richness! Hanging an assassin is illogical because it does not +restore the life of his victim; incarceration is logical; therefore, +incarceration does--_quod, erat demonstrandum._ + +Two wrongs certainly do not make a right, but the veritable thing in +dispute is whether taking the life of a life-taker is a wrong. So naked +and unashamed an example of _petitio principii_ would disgrace a debater +in a pinafore. And these wonder-mongers have the effrontery to babble of +"logic"! Why, if one of them were to meet a syllogism in a lonely road +he would run away in a hundred and fifty directions as hard as ever he +could hoof it. One is almost ashamed to dispute with such intellectual +cloutlings. + +Whatever an individual may rightly do to protect himself society may +rightly do to protect him, for he is a part of itself. If he may rightly +take life in defending himself society may rightly take life in +defending him. If society may rightly take life in defending him it may +rightly threaten to take it. Having rightly and mercifully threatened to +take it, it not only rightly may take it, but expediently must. + + +II + +The law of a life for a life does not altogether prevent murder. No law +can altogether prevent any form of crime, nor is it desirable that it +should. Doubtless God could so have created us that our sense of right +and justice could have existed without contemplation of injustice and +wrong; as doubtless he could so have created us that we could have felt +compassion without a knowledge of suffering; but he did not. Constituted +as we are, we can know good only by contrast with evil. Our sense of sin +is what our virtues feed upon; in the thin air of universal morality the +altar-fires of honor and the beacons of conscience could not be kept +alight. A community without crime would be a community without warm and +elevated sentiments--without the sense of justice, without generosity, +without courage, without mercy, without magnanimity--a community of +small, smug souls, uninteresting to God and uncoveted by the Devil. We +can have, and do have, too much crime, no doubt; what the wholesome +proportion is none can tell. Just now we are running a good deal to +murder, but he who can gravely attribute that phenomenon, or any part of +it, to infliction of the death penalty, instead of to virtual immunity +from any penalty at all, is justly entitled to the innocent satisfaction +that comes of being a simpleton. + + +III + +The New Woman is against the death penalty, naturally, for she is hot +and hardy in the conviction that whatever is is wrong. She has visited +this world in order to straighten things about a bit, and is in distress +lest the number of things be insufficient to her need. The matter is +important variously; not least so in its relation to the new heaven and +the new earth that are to be the outcome of woman suffrage. There can be +no doubt that the vast majority of women have sentimental objections to +the death penalty that quite outweigh such practical considerations in +its favor as they can be persuaded to comprehend. Aided by the minority +of men afflicted by the same mental malady, they will indubitably effect +its abolition in the first lustrum of their political "equality." The +New Woman will scarcely feel the seat of power warm beneath her before +giving to the assassin's "unhand me, villain!" the authority of law. So +we shall make again the old experiment, discredited by a thousand +failures, of preventing crime by tenderness to caught criminals. And the +criminal uncaught will treat us to a quantity and quality of crime +notably augmented by the Christian spirit of the new _regime_. + + +IV + +As to painless execution, the simple and practical way to make them both +just and expedient is the adoption by murderers of a system of painless +assassinations. Until this is done there seems to be no call to +renounce the wholesome discomfort of the style of executions endeared to +us by memories and associations of the tenderest character. There is, I +fancy, a shaping notion in the observant mind that the penologists and +their allies have gone about as far as they can safely be permitted to +go in the direction of a softer suasion of the criminal nature toward +good behavior. The modern prison has become a rather more comfortable +habitation than the dangerous classes are accustomed to at home. Modern +prison life has in their eyes something of the charm and glamor of an +ideal existence, like that in the Happy Valley from which Rasselas had +the folly to escape. Whatever advantages to the public may be secured by +abating the rigors of imprisonment and inconveniences incident to +execution, there is this objection: it makes them less deterrent. Let +the penologers and philanthropers have their way and even hanging might +be made so pleasant and withal so interesting a social distinction that +it would deter nobody but the person hanged. Adopt the euthanasian +method of electricity, asphyxia by smothering in rose-leaves, or slow +poisoning with rich food, and the death penalty may come to be regarded +as the object of a noble ambition to the _bon vivant_, and the rising +young suicide may go and kill somebody else instead of himself, in order +to receive from the public executioner a happier dispatch than his own +'prentice hand can assure him. + +But the advocates of agreeable pains and penalties tell us that in the +darker ages, when cruel and degrading punishment was the rule, and was +freely inflicted for every light infraction of the law, crime was more +common than it is now; and in this they appear to be right. But one and +all, they overlook a fact equally obvious and vastly significant, that +the intellectual, moral and social condition of the masses was very low. +Crime was more common because ignorance was more common, poverty was +more common, sins of authority, and therefore hatred of authority, were +more common. The world of even a century ago was a different world from +the world of today, and a vastly more uncomfortable one. The popular +adage to the contrary notwithstanding, human nature was not by a long +cut the same then that it is now. In the very ancient time of that early +English king, George III, when women were burned at the stake in public +for various offenses and men were hanged for "coining" and children for +theft, and in the still remoter period (_circa_ 1530), when prisoners +were boiled in several waters, divers sorts of criminals were +disemboweled and some are thought to have undergone the _peine forte et +dure_ of cold-pressing (an infliction which the pen of Hugo has since +made popular--in literature)--in these wicked old days crime flourished, +not because of the law's severity, but in spite of it. It is possible +that our law-making ancestors understood the situation as it then was a +trifle better than we can understand it on the hither side of this gulf +of years, and that they were not the reasonless barbarians that we +think them to have been. And if they were, what must have been the +unreason and barbarity of the criminal element with which they had to +deal? + +I am far from thinking that severity of punishment can have the same +restraining effect as probability of some punishment being inflicted; +but if mildness of penalty is to be superadded to difficulty of +conviction, and both are to be mounted upon laxity in detection, the +pile will be complete indeed. There is a peculiar fitness, perhaps, in +the fact that all these pleas for comfortable punishment should be urged +at a time when there appears to be a general disposition to inflict no +punishment at all. There are, however, still a few old-fashioned persons +who hold it obvious that one who is ambitious to break the laws of his +country will not with so light a heart and so airy an indifference incur +the peril of a harsh penalty as he will the chance of one more nearly +resembling that which he would himself select. + + +V + +After lying for more than a century dead I was revived, dowered with a +new body, and restored to society. The first thing of interest that I +observed was an enormous building, covering a square mile of ground. It +was surrounded on all sides by a high, strong wall of hewn stone upon +which armed sentinels paced to and fro. In one face of the wall was a +single gate of massive iron, strongly guarded. While admiring the +Cyclopean architecture of the "reverend pile" I was accosted by a man in +uniform, evidently the warden, with a cheerful salutation. + +"Colonel," I said, "pray tell me what is this building." + +"This," said he, "is the new state penitentiary. It is one of twelve, +all alike." + +"You surprise me," I replied. "Surely the criminal element must have +increased enormously." + +"Yes, indeed," he assented; "under the Reform _regime_, which began in +your day, crime became so powerful, bold and fierce that arrests were no +longer possible and the prisons then in existence were soon overcrowded. +The state was compelled to erect others of greater capacity." + +"But, Colonel," I protested, "if the criminals were too bold and +powerful to be taken into custody, of what use are the prisons? And how +are they crowded?" + +He fixed upon me a look that I could not fail to interpret as expressing +a doubt of my sanity. "What!" he said, "is it possible that the modern +penology is unknown to you? Do you suppose we practice the antiquated +and ineffective method of shutting up the rascals? Sir, the growth of +the criminal element has, as I said, compelled the erection of more and +larger prisons. We have enough to hold comfortably all the honest men +and women of the state. Within these protecting walls they carry on all +the necessary vocations of life excepting commerce. That is necessarily +in the hands of the rogues, as before." + +"Venerated representative of Reform," I exclaimed, wringing his hand +with effusion, "you are Knowledge, you are History, you are the Higher +Education! We must talk further. Come, let us enter this benign edifice; +you shall show me your dominion and instruct me in the rules. You shall +propose me as an inmate." + +I walked rapidly to the gate. When challenged by the sentinel, I turned +to summon my instructor. He was nowhere visible. I turned again to look +at the prison. Nothing was there: desolate and forbidding, as about the +broken statue of Ozymandias. + +The lone and level sands stretched far away. + + + + +IMMORTALITY + + +The desire for life everlasting has commonly been affirmed to be +universal--at least that is the view taken by those unacquainted with +Oriental faiths and with Oriental character. Those of us whose knowledge +is a trifle wider are not prepared to say that the desire is universal +nor even general. + +If the devout Buddhist, for example, wishes to "live always," he has not +succeeded in very clearly formulating the desire. The sort of thing that +he is pleased to hope for is not what we should call life, and not what +many of us would care for. + +When a man says that everybody has "a horror of annihilation," we may +be very sure that he has not many opportunities for observation, or that +he has not availed himself of all that he has. Most persons go to sleep +rather gladly, yet sleep is virtual annihilation while it lasts; and if +it should last forever the sleeper would be no worse off after a million +years of it than after an hour of it. There are minds sufficiently +logical to think of it that way, and to them annihilation is not a +disagreeable thing to contemplate and expect. + +In this matter of immortality, people's beliefs appear to go along with +their wishes. The man who is content with annihilation thinks he will +get it; those that want immortality are pretty sure they are immortal; +and that is a very comfortable allotment of faiths. The few of us that +are left unprovided for are those who do not bother themselves much +about the matter, one way or another. + +The question of human immortality is the most momentous that the mind is +capable of conceiving. If it is a fact that the dead live all other +facts are in comparison trivial and without interest. The prospect of +obtaining certain knowledge with regard to this stupendous matter is not +encouraging. In all countries but those in barbarism the powers of the +profoundest and most penetrating intelligences have been ceaselessly +addressed to the task of glimpsing a life beyond this life; yet today no +one can truly say that he knows. It is as much a matter of faith as ever +it was. + +Our modern Christian nations profess a passionate hope and belief in +another world, yet the most popular writer and speaker of his time, the +man whose lectures drew the largest audiences, the work of whose pen +brought him the highest rewards, was he who most strenuously strove to +destroy the ground of that hope and unsettle the foundations of that +belief. + +The famous and popular Frenchman, Professor of Spectacular Astronomy, +Camille Flammarion, affirms immortality because he has talked with +departed souls who said that it was true. Yes, monsieur, but surely you +know the rule about hearsay evidence. We Anglo-Saxons are very +particular about that. + +M. Flammarion says: + +"I don't repudiate the presumptive arguments of schoolmen. I merely +supplement them with something positive. For instance, if you assumed +the existence of God this argument of the scholastics is a good one. God +has implanted in all men the desire of perfect happiness. This desire +cannot be satisfied in our lives here. If there were not another life +wherein to satisfy it then God would be a deceiver. _Voila tout_." + +There is more: the desire of perfect happiness does not imply +immortality, even if there is a God, for + +(1) God may not have implanted it, but merely suffers it to exist, as he +suffers sin to exist, the desire of wealth, the desire to live longer +than we do in this world. It is not held that God implanted all the +desires of the human heart. Then why hold that he implanted that of +perfect happiness? + +(2) Even if he did--even if a divinely implanted desire entail its own +gratification--even if it cannot be gratified in this life--that does +not imply immortality. It implies _only_ another life long enough for +its gratification just once. An eternity of gratification is not a +logical inference from it. + +(3) Perhaps God _is_ "a deceiver;" who knows that he is not? Assumption +of the existence of a God is one thing; assumption of the existence of a +God who is honorable and candid according to our conception of honor and +candor is another. + +(4) There may be an honorable and candid God. He may have implanted in +us the desire of perfect happiness. It may be--it is--impossible to +gratify that desire in this life. Still, another life is not implied, +for God may not have intended us to draw the inference that he is going +to gratify it. If omniscient and omnipotent, God must be held to have +intended whatever occurs, but no such God is assumed in M. Flammarion's +illustration, and it may be that God's knowledge and power are limited, +or that one of them is limited. + +M. Flammarion is a learned, if somewhat theatrical, astronomer. He has a +tremendous imagination, which naturally is more at home in the marvelous +and catastrophic than in the orderly regions of familiar phenomena. To +him the heavens are an immense pyrotechnicon and he is the master of the +show and sets off the fireworks. But he knows nothing of logic, which is +the science of straight thinking, and his views of things have +therefore no value; they are nebulous. + +Nothing is clearer than that our pre-existence is a dream, having +absolutely no basis in anything that we know or can hope to know. Of +after-existence there is said to be evidence, or rather testimony, in +assurances of those who are in present enjoyment of it--if it is +enjoyable. Whether this testimony has actually been given--and it is the +only testimony worth a moment's consideration--is a disputed point. Many +persons living this life profess to have received it. But nobody +professes, or ever has professed, to have received a communication of +any kind from one in actual experience of the fore-life. "The souls as +yet ungarmented," if such there are, are dumb to question. The Land +beyond the Grave has been, if not observed, yet often and variously +described: if not explored and surveyed, yet carefully charted. From +among so many accounts of it that we have, he must be fastidious indeed +who cannot be suited. But of the Fatherland that spreads before the +cradle--the great Heretofore, wherein we all dwelt if we are to dwell in +the Hereafter, we have no account. Nobody professes knowledge of that. +No testimony reaches our ears of flesh concerning its topographical or +other features; no one has been so enterprising as to wrest from its +actual inhabitants any particulars of their character and appearance. +And among educated experts and professional proponents of worlds to be +there is a general denial of its existence. + +I am of their way of thinking about that. The fact that we have no +recollection of a former life is entirely conclusive of the matter. To +have lived an unrecollected life is impossible and unthinkable, for +there would be nothing to connect the new life with the old--no thread +of continuity--nothing that persisted from the one life to the other. +The later birth would be that of another person, an altogether different +being, unrelated to the first--a new John Smith succeeding to the late +Tom Jones. + +Let us not be misled here by a false analogy. Today I may get a thwack +o' the mazzard which will give me an intervening season of +unconsciousness between yesterday and to-morrow. Thereafter I may live to +a green old age with no recollection of anything that I knew, or did, or +was before the accident; yet I shall be the same person, for between the +old life and the new there will be a _nexus_, a thread of continuity, +something spanning the gulf from the one state to the other, and the +same in both--namely, my body with its habits, capacities and powers. +That is I; that identifies me to others as my former self--authenticates +and credentials me as the person that incurred the cranial mischance, +dislodging memory. + +But when death occurs _all_ is dislodged if memory is; for between two +merely mental or spiritual existences memory is the only _nexus_ +conceivable; consciousness of identity is the only identity. To live +again without memory of having lived before is to live another. +Re-existence without recollection is absurd. There is nothing to +re-exist. + + + + +EMANCIPATED WOMAN + + +What I should like to know is, how "the enlargement of woman's sphere" +by her entrance into various activities of commercial, professional and +industrial life benefits the sex. It may please Helen Gougar and satisfy +her sense of logical accuracy to say, as she does: "We women must work +in order to fill the places left vacant by liquor-drinking men." But who +filled these places before? Did they remain vacant, or were there then +disappointed applicants, as now? If my memory serves, there has been no +time in the period that it covers when the supply of workers--abstemious +male workers--was not in excess of the demand. That it has always been +so is sufficiently attested by the universally inadequate wage rate. + +Employers seldom fail, and never for long, to get all the workmen they +need. The field into which women have put their sickles was already +overcrowded with reapers. Whatever employment women have obtained has +been got by displacing men--who would otherwise be supporting women. +Where is the general advantage? We may shout "high tariff," "combination +of capital," "demonetization of silver," and what not, but if searching +for the cause of augmented poverty and crime, "industrial discontent" +and the tramp evil, instead of dogmatically expounding it, we should +take some account of this enormous, sudden addition to the number of +workers seeking work. If any one thinks that within the brief period of +a generation the visible supply of labor can be enormously augmented +without profoundly affecting the stability of things and disastrously +touching the interests of wage-workers let no rude voice dispel his +dream of such maleficent agencies as his slumbrous understanding may joy +to affirm. And let our Widows of Ashur unlung themselves in advocacy of +quack remedies for evils of which themselves are cause; it remains true +that when the contention of two lions for one bone is exacerbated by the +accession of a lioness the squabble is not composable by stirring up +some bears in the cage adjacent. + +Indubitably a woman is under no obligation to sacrifice herself to the +good of her sex by foregoing needed employment in the hope that it may +fall to a man gifted with dependent women. Nevertheless our +congratulations are more intelligent when bestowed upon her individual +head than when sifted into the hair of all Eve's daughters. This is a +world of complexities, in which the lines of interest are so +intertangled as frequently to transgress that of sex; and one ambitious +to help but half the race may profitably know that every effort to that +end provokes a counterbalancing mischief. The "enlargement of woman's +opportunities" has benefited individual women. It has not benefited the +sex as a whole, and has distinctly damaged the race. The mind that can +not discern a score of great and irreparable general evils distinctly +traceable to "emancipation of woman" is as impregnable to the light as a +toad in a rock. + +A marked demerit of the new order of things--the _regime_ of female +commercial service--is that its main advantage accrues, not to the race, +not to the sex, not to the class, not to the individual woman, but to +the person of least need and worth--the male employer. (Female employers +in any considerable number there will not be, but those that we have +could give the male ones profitable instruction in grinding the faces of +their employees.) This constant increase of the army of labor--always and +everywhere too large for the work in sight--by accession of a new +contingent of natural oppressibles makes the very teeth of old Munniglut +thrill with a poignant delight. It brings in that situation known as two +laborers seeking one job--and one of them a person whose bones he can +easily grind to make his bread; and Munniglut is a miller of skill and +experience, dusted all over with the evidence of his useful craft. When +Heaven has assisted the Daughters of Hope to open to women a new "avenue +of opportunities" the first to enter and walk therein, like God in the +Garden of Eden, is the good Mr. Munniglut, contentedly smoothing the +folds out of the superior slope of his paunch, exuding the peculiar +aroma of his oleaginous personality and larding the new roadway with +the overflow of a righteousness stimulated to action by relish of his +own identity. And ever thereafter the subtle suggestion of a fat +philistinism lingers along that path of progress like an assertion of a +possessory right. + +It is God's own crystal truth that in dealing with women unfortunate +enough to be compelled to earn their own living and fortunate enough to +have wrested from Fate an opportunity to do so, men of business and +affairs treat them with about the same delicate consideration that they +show to dogs and horses of the inferior breeds. It does not commonly +occur to the wealthy "professional man," or "prominent merchant," to be +ashamed to add to his yearly thousands a part of the salary justly due +to his female bookkeeper or typewriter, who sits before him all day with +an empty belly in order to have an habilimented back. He has a vague, +hazy notion that the law of supply and demand is mandatory, and that in +submitting himself to it by paying her a half of what he would have to +pay a man of inferior efficiency he is supplying the world with a noble +example of obedience. I must take the liberty to remind him that the law +of supply and demand is not imperative; it is not a statute but a +phenomenon. He may reply: "It is imperative; the penalty for +disobedience is failure. If I pay more in salaries and wages than I need +to, my competitor will not; and with that advantage he will drive me +from the field." If his margin of profit is so small that he must eke it +out by coining the sweat of his workwomen into nickels I've nothing to +say to him. Let him adopt in peace the motto, "I cheat to eat." I do not +know why he should eat, but Nature, who has provided sustenance for the +worming sparrow, the sparrowing owl and the owling eagle, approves the +needy man of prey and makes a place for him at table. + +Human nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is +a rough substitute that will serve at a pinch--as cunning is the wisdom +of the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward. Nobody is +altogether bad; the scoundrel who has grown rich by underpaying workmen +in his factory will sometimes endow an asylum for indigent seamen. To +oppress one's own workmen, and provide for the workmen of a neighbor--to +skin those in charge of one's own interests while cottoning and oiling +the residuary product of another's skinnery--that is not very good +benevolence, nor very good sense, but it serves in place of both. The +man who eats _pate de fois gras_ in the sweat of his girl cashier's +face, or wears purple and fine linen in order that his typewriter may +have an eocene gown and a pliocene hat, seems a tolerably satisfactory +specimen of the genus thief; but let us not forget that in his own +home--a fairly good one--he may enjoy and merit that highest and most +honorable title on the scroll of woman's favor, "a good provider." One +having a claim to that glittering distinction should enjoy immunity from +the coarse and troublesome question, "From whose backs and bellies do +you provide?" + +So much for the material results to the sex. What are the moral results? +One does not like to speak of them, particularly to those who do not and +can not know--to good women in whose innocent minds female immorality is +inseparable from flashy gowning and the painted face; to foolish, +book-taught men who honestly believe in some protective sanctity that +hedges womanhood. If men of the world with years enough to have lived +out of the old _regime_ into the new would testify in this matter there +would ensue a great rattling of dry bones in bodices of reform-ladies. +Nay, if the young man about town, knowing nothing of how things were in +the "dark backward and absym of time," but something of the moral +distance between even so free-running a creature as the society girl and +the average working girl of the factory, the shop and the office, would +speak out (under assurance of immunity from prosecution) his testimony +would be a surprise to the cartilaginous virgins, blowsy matrons, acrid +relicts and hairy males of Emancipation. It would pain, too, some very +worthy but unobservant persons not in sympathy with "the cause." + +Certain significant facts are within the purview of all but the very +young and the comfortably blind. To the woman of to-day the man of +to-day is imperfectly polite. In place of reverence he gives her +"deference"; to the language of compliment has succeeded the language of +raillery. Men have almost forgotten how to bow. Doubtless the advanced +female prefers the new manner, as may some of her less forward sisters, +thinking it more sincere. It is not; our giddy grandfather talked +high-flown nonsense because his heart had tangled his tongue. He treated +his woman more civilly than we ours because he loved her better. He +never had seen her on the "rostrum" and in the lobby, never had heard +her in advocacy of herself, never had read her confessions of his sins, +never had felt the stress of her competition, nor himself assisted by +daily personal contact in rubbing the bloom off her. He did not know +that her virtues were due to her secluded life, but thought, dear old +boy, that they were a gift of God. + + + + +A MAD WORLD + + +Let us suppose that in tracing its cycloidal curves through the +unthinkable reaches of space traversed by the solar system our planet +should pass through a "belt" of attenuated matter having the property of +dementing us! It is a conception easily enough entertained. That space +is full of malign conditions incontinuously distributed; that we are at +one time traversing a zone comparatively innocuous and at another +spinning through a region of infection; that away behind us in the wake +of our swirling flight are fields of plague and pain still agitated by +our passage through them,--all this is as good as known. It is almost as +certain as it is that in our little annual circle round the sun are +points at which we are stoned and brick-batted like a pig in a +potato-patch--pelted with little nodules of meteoric metal flung like +gravel, and bombarded with gigantic masses hurled by God knows what? +What strange adventures await us in those yet untraveled regions toward +which we speed?--into what malign conditions may we not at any time +plunge?--to the strength and stress of what frightful environment may +we not at last succumb? The subject lends itself readily enough to a +jest, but I am not jesting: it is really altogether probable that our +solar system, racing through space with inconceivable velocity, will one +day enter a region charged with something deleterious to the human +brain, minding us all mad-wise. + +By the way, dear reader, did you ever happen to consider the possibility +that you are a lunatic, and perhaps confined in an asylum? It seems to +you that you are not--that you go with freedom where you will, and use a +sweet reasonableness in all your works and ways; but to many a lunatic +it seems that he is Rameses II, or the Holkar of Indore. Many a plunging +maniac, ironed to the floor of a cell, believes himself the Goddess of +Liberty careering gaily through the Ten Commandments in a chariot of +gold. Of your own sanity and identity you have no evidence that is any +better than he has of his. More accurately, I have none of mine; for +anything I know, you do not exist, nor any one of all the things with +which I think myself familiarly conscious. All may be fictions of my +disordered imagination. I really know of but one reason for doubting +that I am an inmate of an asylum for the insane--namely, the probability +that there is nowhere any such thing as an asylum for the insane. + +This kind of speculation has charms that get a good neck-hold upon +attention. For example, if I am really a lunatic, and the persons and +things that I seem to see about me have no objective existence, what an +ingenious though disordered imagination I must have! What a clever +_coup_ it was to invent Mr. Rockefeller and clothe him with the +attribute of permanence! With what amusing qualities I have endowed my +laird of Skibo, philanthropist. What a masterpiece of creative humor is +my Fatty Taft, statesman, taking himself seriously, even solemnly, and +persuading others to do the same! And this city of Washington, with its +motley population of silurians, parvenoodles and scamps pranking +unashamed in the light of day, and its saving contingent of the forsaken +righteous, their seed begging bread,--did Rabelais' exuberant fancy ever +conceive so--but Rabelais is, perhaps, himself a conception. + +Surely he is no common maniac who has wrought out of nothing the +history, the philosophies, sciences, arts, laws, religions, politics and +morals of this imaginary world. Nay, the world itself, tumbling uneasily +through space like a beetle's ball, is no mean achievement, and I am +proud of it. But the mental feat in which I take most satisfaction, and +which I doubt not is most diverting to my keepers, is that of creating +Mr. W.R. Hearst, pointing his eyes toward the White House and endowing +him with a perilous Jacksonian ambition to defile it. The Hearst is +distinctly a treasure. + +On the whole, I have done, I think, tolerably well, and when I +contemplate the fertility and originality of my inventions, the queer +unearthliness and grotesque actions of the characters whom I have +evolved, isolated and am cultivating, I cannot help thinking that if +Heaven had not made me a lunatic my peculiar talent might have made me +an entertaining writer. + + + + +EPIGRAMS OF A CYNIC + + +If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day +the country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike +hypocrites of Canada. + +To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil, +and to pictures of the latter it appends a tail to represent the note of +interrogation. + +"Immoral" is the judgment of the stalled ox on the gamboling lamb. + +In forgiving an injury be somewhat ceremonious, lest your magnanimity be +construed as indifference. + +True, man does not know woman. But neither does woman. + +Age is provident because the less future we have the more we fear it. + +Reason is fallible and virtue invincible; the winds vary and the needle +forsakes the pole, but stupidity never errs and never intermits. Since +it has been found that the axis of the earth wabbles, stupidity is +indispensable as a standard of constancy. + +In order that the list of able women may be memorized for use at +meetings of the oppressed sex, Heaven has considerately made it brief. + +Firmness is my persistency; obstinacy is yours. + + A little heap of dust, + A little streak of rust, + A stone without a name-- + Lo! hero, sword and fame. + +Our vocabulary is defective; we give the same name to woman's lack of +temptation and man's lack of opportunity. + +"You scoundrel, you have wronged me," hissed the philosopher. "May you +live forever!" + +The man who thinks that a garnet can be made a ruby by setting it in +brass is writing "dialect" for publication. + +"Who art thou, stranger, and what dost thou seek?" "I am Generosity, and +I seek a person named Gratitude." "Then thou dost not deserve to find +her." "True. I will go about my business and think of her no more. But +who art thou, to be so wise?" "I am Gratitude--farewell forever." + +There was never a genius who was not thought a fool until he disclosed +himself; whereas he is a fool then only. + +The boundaries that Napoleon drew have been effaced; the kingdoms that +he set up have disappeared. But all the armies and statecraft of Europe +cannot unsay what you have said. + + Strive not for singularity in dress; + Fools have the more and men of sense the less. + To look original is not worth while, + But be in mind a little out of style. + +A conqueror arose from the dead. "Yesterday," he said, "I ruled half the +world." "Please show me the half that you ruled," said an angel, +pointing out a wisp of glowing vapor floating in space. "That is the +world." + +"Who art thou, shivering in thy furs?" "My name is Avarice. What is +thine?" "Unselfishness." "Where is thy clothing, placid one?" "Thou art +wearing it." + +To be comic is merely to be playful, but wit is a serious matter. To +laugh at it is to confess that you do not understand. + +If you would be accounted great by your contemporaries, be not too much +greater than they. + +To have something that he will not desire, nor know that he has--such is +the hope of him who seeks the admiration of posterity. The character of +his work does not matter; he is a humorist. + +Women, and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact. + +To fatten pigs, confine and feed them; to fatten rogues, cultivate a +generous disposition. + +Every heart is the lair of a ferocious animal. The greatest wrong that +you can put upon a man is to provoke him to let out his beast. + +When two irreconcilable propositions are presented for assent the safest +way is to thank Heaven that we are not as the unreasoning brutes, and +believe both. + +Truth is more deceptive than falsehood, for it is more frequently +presented by those from whom we do not expect it, and so has against it +a numerical presumption. + +A bad marriage is like an electrical thrilling machine: it makes you +dance, but you can't let go. + +Meeting Merit on a street-crossing, Success stood still. Merit stepped +off into the mud and went around him, bowing his apologies, which +Success had the grace to accept. + +"I think," says the philosopher divine, "Therefore I am." Sir, here's a +surer sign: We know we live, for with our every breath we feel the fear +and imminence of death. + +The first man you meet is a fool. If you do not think so ask him and he +will prove it. + +He who would rather inflict injustice than suffer it will always have +his choice, for no injustice can be done to him. + +There are as many conceptions of a perfect happiness hereafter as there +are minds that have marred their happiness here. + +We yearn to be, not what we are, but what we are not. If we were +immortal we should not crave immortality. + +A rabbit's foot may bring good luck to you, but it brought none to the +rabbit. + +Before praising the wisdom of the man who knows how to hold his tongue +ascertain if he knows how to hold his pen. + +The most charming view in the world is obtained by introspection. + +Love is unlike chess, in that the pieces are moved secretly and the +player sees most of the game. But the looker-on has one incomparable +advantage: he is not the stake. + +It is not for nothing that tigers choose to hide in the jungle, for +commerce and trade are carried on, mostly, in the open. + +We say that we love, not whom we will, but whom we must. Our judgment +need not, therefore, go to confession. + +Of two kinds of temporary insanity, one ends in suicide, the other in +marriage. + +If you give alms from compassion, why require the beneficiary to be "a +deserving object?" No other adversity is so sharp as destitution of +merit. + +Bereavement is the name that selfishness gives to a particular +privation. + + O proud philanthropist, your hope is vain + To get by giving what you lost by gain. + With every gift you do but swell the cloud + Of witnesses against you, swift and loud-- + Accomplices who turn and swear you split + Your life: half robber and half hypocrite. + You're least unsafe when most intact you hold + Your curst allotment of dishonest gold. + +The highest and rarest form of contentment is approval of the success of +another. + + If Inclination challenge, stand and fight-- + From Opportunity the wise take flight. + +What a woman most admires in a man is distinction among men. What a man +most admires in a woman is devotion to himself. + +Those who most loudly invite God's attention to themselves when in peril +of death are those who should most fervently wish to escape his +observation. + +When you have made a catalogue of your friend's faults it is only fair +to supply him with a duplicate, so that he may know yours. + +How fascinating is Antiquity!--in what a golden haze the ancients lived +their lives! We, too, are ancients. Of our enchanting time Posterity's +great poets will sing immortal songs, and its archaeologists will +reverently uncover the foundations of our palaces and temples. Meantime +we swap jack-knives. + +Observe, my son, with how austere a virtue the man without a cent puts +aside the temptation to manipulate the market or acquire a monopoly. + +For study of the good and the bad in woman two women are a needless +expense. + + "There's no free will," says the philosopher; + "To hang is most unjust." + "There is no free will," assents the officer; + "We hang because we must." + +Hope is an explorer who surveys the country ahead. That is why we know +so much about the Hereafter and so little about the Heretofore. + +Remembering that it was a woman who lost the world, we should accept the +act of cackling geese in saving Rome as partial reparation. + +There are two classes of women who may do as they please; those who are +rich and those who are poor. The former can count on assent, the latter +on inattention. + +When into the house of the heart Curiosity is admitted as the guest of +Love she turns her host out of doors. + +Happiness has not to all the same name: to Youth she is known as the +Future; Age knows her as the Dream. + +"Who art thou, there in the mire?" "Intuition. I leaped all the way +from where thou standest in fear on the brink of the bog." "A great +feat, madam; accept the admiration of Reason, sometimes known as +Dryfoot." + +In eradicating an evil, it makes a difference whether it is uprooted or +rooted up. The difference is in the reformer. + +The Audible Sisterhood rightly affirms the equality of the sexes: no man +is so base but some woman is base enough to love him. + +Having no eyes in the back of the head, we see ourselves on the verge of +the outlook. Only he who has accomplished the notable feat of turning +about knows himself the central figure in the universe. + +Truth is so good a thing that falsehood can not afford to be without it. + +If women did the writing of the world, instead of the talking, men would +be regarded as the superior sex in beauty, grace and goodness. + +Love is a delightful day's journey. At the farther end kiss your +companion and say farewell. + +Let him who would wish to duplicate his every experience prate of the +value of life. + +The game of discontent has its rules, and he who disregards them cheats. +It is not permitted to you to wish to add another's advantages or +possessions to your own; you are permitted only to wish to be another. + +The creator and arbiter of beauty is the heart; to the male rattlesnake +the female rattlesnake is the loveliest thing in nature. + +Thought and emotion dwell apart. When the heart goes into the head there +is no dissension; only an eviction. + +If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it. + +"Where goest thou, Ignorance?" "To fortify the mind of a maiden against +a peril." "I am going thy way. My name is Knowledge." "Scoundrel! Thou +art the peril." + +A prude is one who blushes modestly at the indelicacy of her thoughts +and virtuously flies from the temptation of her desires. + +The man who is always taking you by the hand is the same who if you were +hungry would take you by the cafe. + +When a certain sovereign wanted war he threw out a diplomatic +intimation; when ready, a diplomat. + +If public opinion were determined by a throw of the dice, it would in +the long run be half the time right. + +The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the +business known as gambling. + +A virtuous widow is the most loyal of mortals; she is faithful to that +which is neither pleased nor profited by her fidelity. + +Of one who was "foolish" the creators of our language said that he was +"fond." That we have not definitely reversed the meanings of the words +should be set down to the credit of our courtesy. + +Rioting gains its end by the power of numbers. To a believer in the +wisdom and goodness of majorities it is not permitted to denounce a +successful mob. + + Artistically set to grace + The wall of a dissecting-place, + A human pericardium + Was fastened with a bit of gum, + While, simply underrunning it, + The one word, "Charity," was writ + To show the student band that hovered + About it what it once had covered. + +Virtue is not necessary to a good reputation, but a good reputation is +helpful to virtue. + +When lost in a forest go always down hill. When lost in a philosophy or +doctrine go up-ward. + +We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled +to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect. + +Pascal says that an inch added to the length of Cleopatra's nose would +have changed the fortunes of the world. But having said this, he has +said nothing, for all the forces of nature and all the power of +dynasties could not have added an inch to the length of Cleopatra's +nose. + +Our luxuries are always masquerading as necessaries. Woman is the only +necessary having the boldness and address to compel recognition as a +luxury. + +"I am the seat of the affections," said the heart. "Thank you," said the +judgment, "you save my face." + +"Who art thou that weepest?" "Man." "Nay, thou art Egotism. I am the +Scheme of the Universe. Study me and learn that nothing matters." "Then +how does it happen that I weep?" + +A slight is less easily forgiven than an injury, because it implies +something of contempt, indifference, an overlooking of our importance; +whereas an injury presupposes some degree of consideration. "The +blackguards!" said a traveler whom Sicilian brigands had released +without ransom; "did they think me a person of no consequence?" + +The people's plaudits are unheard in hell. + +Generosity to a fallen foe is a virtue that takes no chances. + +If there was a world before this we must all have died impenitent. + +We are what we laugh at. The stupid person is a poor joke, the clever, a +good one. + +If every man who resents being called a rogue resented being one this +would be a world of wrath. + +Force and charm are important elements of character, but it counts for +little to be stronger than honey and sweeter than a lion. + + Grief and discomfiture are coals that cool: + Why keep them glowing with thy sighs, poor fool? + +A popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites +them to think something else. + +Asked to describe the Deity, a donkey would represent him with long ears +and a tail. Man's conception is higher and truer: he thinks of him as +somewhat resembling a man. + +Christians and camels receive their burdens kneeling. + +The sky is a concave mirror in which Man sees his own distorted image +and seeks to propitiate it. + +Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land, +but do not hope that the life insurance companies will offer thee +special rates. + +Persons who are horrified by what they believe to be Darwin's theory of +the descent of Man from the Ape may find comfort in the hope of his +return. + +A strong mind is more easily impressed than a weak; you shall not so +readily convince a fool that you are a philosopher as a philosopher that +you are a fool. + +A cheap and easy cynicism rails at everything. The master of the art +accomplishes the formidable task of discrimination. + +When publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a +codefendant. + + O lady fine, fear not to lead + To Hymen's shrine a clown: + Love cannot level up, indeed, + But he can level down. + +Men are polygamous by nature and monogamous for opportunity. It is a +faithful man who is willing to be watched by a half-dozen wives. + +The virtues chose Modesty to be their queen. "I did not know that I was +a virtue," she said. "Why did you not choose Innocence?" "Because of her +ignorance," they replied. "She knows nothing but that she is a virtue." + +It is a wise "man's man" who knows what it is that he despises in a +"ladies' man." + +If the vices of women worshiped their creators men would boast of the +adoration they inspire. + +The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of +conformity. + +Slang is the speech of him who robs the literary garbage carts on their +way to the dumps. + +A woman died who had passed her life in affirming the superiority of her +sex. "At last," she said, "I shall have rest and honors." "Enter," said +Saint Peter; "thou shalt wash the faces of the dear little cherubim." + +To woman a general truth has neither value nor interest unless she can +make a particular application of it. And we say that women are not +practical! + +The ignorant know not the depth of their ignorance, but the learned know +the shallowness of their learning. + +He who relates his success in charming woman's heart may be assured of +his failure to charm man's ear. + + What poignant memories the shadows bring + What songs of triumph in the dawning ring! + By night a coward and by day a king. + +When among the graves of thy fellows, walk with circumspection; thine +own is open at thy feet. + +As the physiognomist takes his own face as the highest type and +standard, so the critic's theories are imposed by his own limitations. + +"Heaven lies about us in our infancy," and our neighbors take up the +tale as we mature. + + "My laws," she said, "are of myself a part: + I read them by examining my heart." + "True," he replied; "like those to Moses known, + Thine also are engraven upon stone." + +Love is a distracted attention: from contemplation of one's self one +turns to consider one's dream. + +"Halt!--who goes there?" "Death." "Advance, Death, and give the +countersign." "How needless! I care not to enter thy camp tonight. Thou +shalt enter mine." "What! I a deserter?" "Nay, a great soldier. Thou +shalt overcome all the enemies of mankind." "Who are they?" "Life and +the Fear of Death." + +The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they +signify character. The philosopher reads character by what the hand most +loves to close upon. + + Ah, woe is his, with length of living cursed, + Who, nearing second childhood, had no first. + Behind, no glimmer, and before no ray-- + A night at either end of his dark day. + +A noble enthusiasm in praise of Woman is not incompatible with a +spirited zeal in defamation of women. + +The money-getter who pleads his love of work has a lame defense, for +love of work at money-getting is a lower taste than love of money. + +He who thinks that praise of mediocrity atones for disparagement of +genius is like one who should plead robbery in excuse of theft. + +The most disagreeable form of masculine hypocrisy is that which finds +expression in pretended remorse for impossible gallantries. + +Any one can say that which is new; any one that which is true. For that +which is both new and true we must go duly accredited to the gods and +await their pleasure. + +The test of truth is Reason, not Faith; for to the court of Reason must +be submitted even the claims of Faith. + +"Whither goest thou?" said the angel. "I know not." "And whence hast +thou come?" "I know not." "But who art thou?" "I know not." "Then thou +art Man. See that thou turn not back, but pass on to the place whence +thou hast come." + +If Expediency and Righteousness are not father and son they are the most +harmonious brothers that ever were seen. + +Train the head, and the heart will take care of itself; a rascal is one +who knows not how to think. + + Do you to others as you would + That others do to you; + But see that you no service good + Would have from others that they could + Not rightly do. + +Taunts are allowable in the case of an obstinate husband: balky horses +may best be made to go by having their ears bitten. + +Adam probably regarded Eve as the woman of his choice, and exacted a +certain gratitude for the distinction of his preference. + +A man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a +dead ape and work downward through a million graves. He is like the +lower end of a suspended chain; you can sway him slightly to the right +or the left, but remove your hand and he falls into line with the other +links. + +He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity. A fool is a +natural proselyte, but he must be caught young, for his convictions, +unlike those of the wise, harden with age. + +These are the prerogatives of genius: To know without having learned; to +draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of +things. + +Although one love a dozen times, yet will the latest love seem the +first. He who says he has loved twice has not loved once. + +Men who expect universal peace through invention of destructive weapons +of war are no wiser than one who, noting the improvement of agricultural +implements, should prophesy an end to the tilling of the soil. + +To parents only, death brings an inconsolable sorrow. When the young die +and the old live, nature's machinery is working with the friction that +we name grief. + +Empty wine bottles have a bad opinion of women. + +Civilization is the child of human ignorance and conceit. If Man knew +his insignificance in the scheme of things he would not think it worth +while to rise from barbarity to enlightenment. But it is only through +enlightenment that he can know. + +Along the road of life are many pleasure resorts, but think not that by +tarrying in them you will take more days to the journey. The day of your +arrival is already recorded. + +The most offensive egotist is he that fears to say "I" and "me." "It +will probably rain"--that is dogmatic. "I think it will rain"--that is +natural and modest. Montaigne is the most delightful of essayists +because so great is his humility that he does not think it important +that we see not Montaigne. He so forgets himself that he employs no +artifice to make us forget him. + + On fair foundations Theocrats unwise + Rear superstructures that offend the skies. + "Behold," they cry, "this pile so fair and tall! + Come dwell within it and be happy all." + But they alone inhabit it, and find, + Poor fools, 'tis but a prison for the mind. + +If thou wilt not laugh at a rich man's wit thou art an anarchist, and if +thou take not his word thou shalt take nothing that he hath. Make haste, +therefore, to be civil to thy betters, and so prosper, for prosperity is +the foundation of the state. + +Death is not the end; there remains the litigation over the estate. + +When God makes a beautiful woman, the devil opens a new register. + +When Eve first saw her reflection in a pool, she sought Adam and accused +him of infidelity. + +"Why dost thou weep?" "For the death of my wife. Alas! I shall never +again see her!" "Thy wife will never again see thee, yet she does not +weep." + +What theology is to religion and jurisprudence to justice, etiquette is +to civility. + +"Who art thou that despite the piercing cold and thy robe's raggedness +seemest to enjoy thyself?" "Naught else is enjoyable--I am Contentment." +"Ha! thine must be a magic shirt. Off with it! I shiver in my fine +attire." "I have no shirt. Pass on, Success." + +Ignorance when inevitable is excusable. It may be harmless, even +beneficial; but it is charming only to the unwise. To affect a spurious +ignorance is to disclose a genuine. + +Because you will not take by theft what you can have by cheating, think +not yours is the only conscience in the world. Even he who permits you +to cheat his neighbor will shrink from permitting you to cheat himself. + +"God keep thee, stranger; what is thy name?" "Wisdom. And thine?" +"Knowledge. How does it happen that we meet?" "This is an intersection +of our paths." "Will it ever be decreed that we travel always the same +road?" "We were well named if we knew." + +Nothing is more logical than persecution. Religious tolerance is a kind +of infidelity. + +Convictions are variable; to be always consistent is to be sometimes +dishonest. + +The philosopher's profoundest conviction is that which he is most +reluctant to express, lest he mislead. + +When exchange of identities is possible, be careful; you may choose a +person who is willing. + +The most intolerant advocate is he who is trying to convince himself. + +In the Parliament of Otumwee the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed a +tax on fools. "The right honorable and generous gentleman," said a +member, "forgets that we already have it in the poll tax." + +"Whose dead body is that?" "Credulity's." "By whom was he slain?" +"Credulity." "Ah, suicide." "No, surfeit. He dined at the table of +Science, and swallowed all that was set before him." + +Don't board with the devil if you wish to be fat. + +Pray do not despise your delinquent debtor; his default is no proof of +poverty. + +Courage is the acceptance of the gambler's chance: a brave man bets +against the game of the gods. + +"Who art thou?" "A philanthropist. And thou?" "A pauper." "Away! you +have nothing to relieve my needs." + +Youth looks forward, for nothing is behind! Age backward, for nothing is +before. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Cynic Looks at Life, by Ambrose Bierce + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CYNIC LOOKS AT LIFE *** + +***** This file should be named 16340.txt or 16340.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/3/4/16340/ + +Produced by Ted Garvin, Dave Macfarlane and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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