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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/18948-8.txt b/18948-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5cbc7f3 --- /dev/null +++ b/18948-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2527 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Damn!, by Henry Louis Mencken + +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: Damn! + A Book of Calumny + +Author: Henry Louis Mencken + +Release Date: July 31, 2006 [EBook #18948] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAMN! *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + + DAMN! + + A BOOK OF CALUMNY + + BY H. L. MENCKEN + + + + + _Third Printing_ + + PHILIP GOODMAN COMPANY + NEW YORK NINETEEN EIGHTEEN + + COPYRIGHT 1918 BY + PHILIP GOODMAN COMPANY + + + + + CONTENTS + + + I Pater Patriæ 7 + + II The Reward of the Artist 9 + + III The Heroic Considered 10 + + IV The Burden of Humor 11 + + V The Saving Grace 13 + + VI Moral Indignation 14 + + VII Stable-Names 17 + + VIII The Jews 19 + + IX The Comstockian Premiss 22 + + X The Labial Infamy 23 + + XI A True Ascetic 28 + + XII On Lying 30 + + XIII History 32 + + XIV The Curse of Civilization 34 + + XV Eugenics 35 + + XVI The Jocose Gods 37 + + XVII War 38 + + XVIII Moralist and Artist 39 + + XIX Actors 40 + + XX The Crowd 45 + + XXI An American Philosopher 48 + + XXII Clubs 49 + + XXIII Fidelis ad Urnum 50 + + XXIV A Theological Mystery 52 + + XXV The Test of Truth 53 + + XXVI Literary Indecencies 54 + + XXVII Virtuous Vandalism 55 + + XXVIII A Footnote on the Duel of Sex 60 + + XXIX Alcohol 64 + + XXX Thoughts on the Voluptuous 67 + + XXXI The Holy Estate 69 + + XXXII Dichtung und Wahrheit 70 + + XXXIII Wild Shots 71 + + XXXIV Beethoven 73 + + XXXV The Tone Art 75 + + XXXVI Zoos 80 + + XXXVII On Hearing Mozart 86 + + XXXVIII The Road to Doubt 87 + + XXXIX A New Use for Churches 88 + + XL The Root of Religion 90 + + XLI Free Will 91 + + XLII Quid est Veritas? 95 + + XLIII The Doubter's Reward 96 + + XLIV Before the Altar 97 + + XLV The Mask 98 + + XLVI Pia Veneziani, poi Cristiani 99 + + XLVII Off Again, On Again 101 + + XLVIII Theology 102 + + XLIX Exemplia Gratia 103 + + + + +DAMN! A BOOK OF CALUMNY + + + + +I. + +PATER PATRIÆ + + +If George Washington were alive today, what a shining mark he would be +for the whole camorra of uplifters, forward-lookers and professional +patriots! He was the Rockefeller of his time, the richest man in the +United States, a promoter of stock companies, a land-grabber, an +exploiter of mines and timber. He was a bitter opponent of foreign +alliances, and denounced their evils in harsh, specific terms. He had a +liking for all forthright and pugnacious men, and a contempt for +lawyers, schoolmasters and all other such obscurantists. He was not +pious. He drank whisky whenever he felt chilly, and kept a jug of it +handy. He knew far more profanity than Scripture, and used and enjoyed +it more. He had no belief in the infallible wisdom of the common people, +but regarded them as inflammatory dolts, and tried to save the republic +from them. He advocated no sure cure for all the sorrows of the world, +and doubted that such a panacea existed. He took no interest in the +private morals of his neighbors. + +Inhabiting These States today, George would be ineligible for any office +of honor or profit. The Senate would never dare confirm him; the +President would not think of nominating him. He would be on trial in +all the yellow journals for belonging to the Invisible Government, the +Hell Hounds of Plutocracy, the Money Power, the Interests. The Sherman +Act would have him in its toils; he would be under indictment by every +grand jury south of the Potomac; the triumphant prohibitionists of his +native state would be denouncing him (he had a still at Mount Vernon) as +a debaucher of youth, a recruiting officer for insane asylums, a +poisoner of the home. The suffragettes would be on his trail, with +sentinels posted all along the Accotink road. The initiators and +referendors would be bawling for his blood. The young college men of the +_Nation_ and the _New Republic_ would be lecturing him weekly. He would +be used to scare children in Kansas and Arkansas. The chautauquas would +shiver whenever his name was mentioned.... + +And what a chance there would be for that ambitious young district +attorney who thought to shadow him on his peregrinations--and grab him +under the Mann Act! + + + + +II + +THE REWARD OF THE ARTIST + + +A man labors and fumes for a whole year to write a symphony in G minor. +He puts enormous diligence into it, and much talent, and maybe no little +downright genius. It draws his blood and wrings his soul. He dies in it +that he may live again.... Nevertheless, its final value, in the open +market of the world, is a great deal less than that of a fur overcoat, +half a Rolls-Royce automobile, or a handful of authentic hair from the +whiskers of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. + + + + +III + +THE HEROIC CONSIDERED + + +For humility and poverty, in themselves, the world has little liking and +less respect. In the folk-lore of all races, despite the +sentimentalization of abasement for dramatic effect, it is always power +and grandeur that count in the end. The whole point of the story of +Cinderella, the most widely and constantly charming of all stories, is +that the Fairy Prince lifts Cinderella above her cruel sisters and +stepmother, and so enables her to lord it over them. The same idea +underlies practically all other folk-stories: the essence of each of +them is to be found in the ultimate triumph and exaltation of its +protagonist. And of the real men and women of history, the most +venerated and envied are those whose early humiliations were but +preludes to terminal glories; for example, Lincoln, Whittington, +Franklin, Columbus, Demosthenes, Frederick the Great, Catherine, Mary of +Magdala, Moses. Even the Man of Sorrows, cradled in a manger and done to +death between two thieves, is seen, as we part from Him at last, in a +situation of stupendous magnificence, with infinite power in His hands. +Even the Beatitudes, in the midst of their eloquent counselling of +renunciation, give it unimaginable splendor as its reward. The meek +shall inherit--what? The whole earth! And the poor in spirit? They shall +sit upon the right hand of God!... + + + + +IV + +THE BURDEN OF HUMOR + + +What is the origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so +dangerous, if you would keep the public confidence, to make the public +laugh? Is it because humor and sound sense are essentially antagonistic? +Has humanity found by experience that the man who sees the fun of life +is unfitted to deal sanely with its problems? I think not. No man had +more of the comic spirit in him than William Shakespeare, and yet his +serious reflections, by the sheer force of their sublime obviousness, +have pushed their way into the race's arsenal of immortal platitudes. +So, too, with Aesop, and with Balzac, and with Dickens, to come down the +scale. All of these men were fundamentally humorists, and yet all of +them achieved what the race has come to accept as a penetrating +sagacity. Contrariwise, many a haloed pundit has had his occasional +guffaw. Lincoln, had there been no Civil War, might have survived in +history chiefly as the father of the American smutty story--the only +original art-form that America has yet contributed to literature. +Huxley, had he not been the greatest intellectual duellist of his age, +might have been its greatest satirist. Bismarck, pursuing the gruesome +trade of politics, concealed the devastating wit of a Molière; his +surviving epigrams are truly stupendous. And Beethoven, after soaring to +the heights of tragedy in the first movement of the Fifth Symphony, +turned to the sardonic bull-fiddling of the _scherzo_. + +No, there is not the slightest disharmony between sense and nonsense, +humor and respectability, despite the skittish tendency to assume that +there is. But, why, then, that widespread error? What actual fact of +life lies behind it, giving it a specious appearance of reasonableness? +None other, I am convinced, than the fact that the average man is far +too stupid to make a joke. He may _see_ a joke and _love_ a joke, +particularly when it floors and flabbergasts some person he dislikes, +but the only way he can himself take part in the priming and pointing of +a new one is by acting as its target. In brief, his personal contact +with humor tends to fill him with an accumulated sense of disadvantage, +of pricked complacency, of sudden and crushing defeat; and so, by an +easy psychological process, he is led into the idea that the thing +itself is incompatible with true dignity of character and intellect. +Hence his deep suspicion of jokers, however adept their thrusts. "What a +damned fool!"--this same half-pitying tribute he pays to wit and butt +alike. He cannot separate the virtuoso of comedy from his general +concept of comedy itself, and that concept is inextricably mingled with +memories of foul ambuscades and mortifying hurts. And so it is not often +that he is willing to admit any wisdom in a humorist, or to condone +frivolity in a sage. + + + + +V + +THE SAVING GRACE + + +Let us not burn the universities--yet. After all, the damage they do +might be worse.... Suppose Oxford had snared and disemboweled +Shakespeare! Suppose Harvard had set its stamp upon Mark Twain! + + + + +VI + +MORAL INDIGNATION + + +The loud, preposterous moral crusades that so endlessly rock the +republic--against the rum demon, against Sunday baseball, against Sunday +moving-pictures, against dancing, against fornication, against the +cigarette, against all things sinful and charming--these astounding +Methodist jehads offer fat clinical material to the student of +mobocracy. In the long run, nearly all of them must succeed, for the mob +is eternally virtuous, and the only thing necessary to get it in favor +of some new and super-oppressive law is to convince it that that law +will be distasteful to the minority that it envies and hates. The poor +numskull who is so horribly harrowed by Puritan pulpit-thumpers that he +can't go to a ball game on Sunday afternoon without dreaming of hell and +the devil all Sunday night is naturally envious of the fellow who can, +and being envious of him, he hates him and is eager to destroy his +offensive happiness. The farmer who works 18 hours a day and never gets +a day off is envious of his farmhand who goes to the crossroads and +barrels up on Saturday afternoon; hence the virulence of prohibition +among the peasantry. The hard-working householder who, on some bitter +evening, glances over the _Saturday Evening Post_ for a square and +honest look at his wife is envious of those gaudy drummers who go +gallivanting about the country with scarlet girls; hence the Mann act. +If these deviltries were equally open to all men, and all men were +equally capable of appreciating them, their unpopularity would tend to +wither. + +I often think, indeed, that the prohibitionist tub-thumpers make a +tactical mistake in dwelling too much upon the evils and horrors of +alcohol, and not enough upon its delights. A few enlarged photographs of +first-class bar-rooms, showing the rows of well-fed, well-dressed +_bibuli_ happily moored to the brass rails, their noses in fragrant mint +and hops and their hands reaching out for free rations of olives, +pretzels, cloves, pumpernickle, Bismarck herring, anchovies, +_schwartenmagen_, wieners, Smithfield ham and dill pickles--such a +gallery of contentment would probably do far more execution among the +dismal _shudra_ than all the current portraits of drunkards' livers. To +vote for prohibition in the face of the liver portraits means to vote +for the good of the other fellow, for even the oldest bibulomaniac +always thinks that he himself will escape. This is an act of altruism +almost impossible to the mob-man, whose selfishness is but little +corrupted by the imagination that shows itself in his betters. His most +austere renunciations represent no more than a matching of the joys of +indulgence against the pains of hell; religion, to him, is little more +than synthesized fear.... I venture that many a vote for prohibition +comes from gentlemen who look longingly through swinging doors--and pass +on in propitiation of Satan and their alert consorts, the lake of +brimstone and the corrective broomstick.... + + + + +VII + +STABLE-NAMES + + +Why doesn't some patient drudge of a _privat dozent_ compile a +dictionary of the stable-names of the great? All show dogs and race +horses, as everyone knows, have stable-names. On the list of entries a +fast mare may appear as Czarina Ogla Fedorovna, but in the stable she is +not that at all, nor even Czarina or Olga, but maybe Lil or Jennie. And +a prize bulldog, Champion Zoroaster or Charlemagne XI. on the bench, may +be plain Jack or Ponto _en famille_. So with celebrities of the _genus +homo_. Huxley's official style and appellation was "The Right Hon. +Thomas Henry Huxley, P. C., M. D., Ph. D., LL. D., D. C. L., D. Sc., F. +R. S.," and his biographer tells us that he delighted in its rolling +grandeur--but to his wife he was always Hal. Shakespeare, to his fellows +of his Bankside, was Will, and perhaps Willie to Ann Hathaway. The +Kaiser is another Willie: the late Czar so addressed him in their famous +exchange of telegrams. The Czar himself was Nicky in those days, and no +doubt remains Nicky to his intimates today. Edgar Allan Poe was always +Eddie to his wife, and Mark Twain was always Youth to his. P. T. +Barnum's stable-name was Taylor, his middle name; Charles Lamb's was +Guy; Nietzsche's was Fritz; Whistler's was Jimmie; the late King +Edward's was Bertie; Grover Cleveland's was Steve; J. Pierpont Morgan's +was Jack; Dr. Wilson's is Tom. + +Some given names are surrounded by a whole flotilla of stable-names. +Henry, for example, is softened variously into Harry, Hen, Hank, Hal, +Henny, Enery, On'ry and Heinie. Which did Ann Boleyn use when she cooed +into the suspicious ear of Henry VIII.? To which did Henrik Ibsen answer +at the domestic hearth? It is difficult to imagine his wife calling him +Henrik: the name is harsh, clumsy, razor-edged. But did she make it Hen +or Rik, or neither? What was Bismarck to the Fürstin, and to the mother +he so vastly feared? Ottchen? Somehow it seems impossible. What was +Grant to his wife? Surely not Ulysses! And Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? And +Rutherford B. Hayes? Was Robert Browning ever Bob? Was John Wesley ever +Jack? Was Emmanuel Swendenborg ever Manny? Was Tadeusz Kosciusko ever +Teddy? + +A fair field of inquiry invites. Let some laborious assistant professor +explore and chart it. There will be more of human nature in his report +than in all the novels ever written. + + + + +VIII + +THE JEWS + + +The Jews, like the Americans, labor under a philosophical dualism, and +in both cases it is a theological heritage. On the one hand there is the +idealism that is lovely and uplifting and will get a man into heaven, +and on the other hand there is the realism that works. The fact that the +Jews cling to both, thus running, as it were, upon two tracks, is what +makes them so puzzling, now and then, to the _goyim_. In one aspect they +stand for the most savage practicality; in another aspect they are +dreamers of an almost fabulous other-worldiness. My own belief is that +the essential Jew is the idealist--that his occasional flashing of hyena +teeth is no more than a necessary concession to the harsh demands of the +struggle for existence. Perhaps, in many cases, it is due to an actual +corruption of blood. The Jews come from the Levant, and their women were +exposed for many centuries to the admiration of Greek, Arab and +Armenian. The shark that a Jew can be at his worst is simply a Greek or +Armenian at his best. + +As a statement of post-mortem and super-terrestrial fact, the religion +that the Jews have foisted upon the world seems to me to be as vast a +curse as the influenza that we inherit from the Tatars or the democratic +fallacies set afloat by the French Revolution. The one thing that can +be said in favor of it is that it is not true, and yet we suffer from it +almost as much as if it were true. But with it, encasing it and +preserving it, there has come something that is positively +valuable--something, indeed, that is beyond all price--and that is +Jewish poetry. To compare it to the poetry of any other race is wholly +impossible; it stands completely above all the rest; it is as far beyond +the next best as German music is beyond French music, or French painting +beyond English painting, or the English drama beyond the Italian drama. +There are single chapters in the Old Testament that are worth all the +poetry ever written in the New World and nine-tenths of that written in +the Old. The Jews of those ancient days had imagination, they had +dignity, they had ears for sweet sound, they had, above all, the faculty +of grandeur. The stupendous music that issued from them has swept their +barbaric demonology along with it, setting at naught the collective +intelligence of the human species; they embalmed their idiotic taboos +and fetishes in undying strains, and so gave them some measure of the +same immortality. A race of lawgivers? Bosh! Leviticus is as archaic as +the Code of Manu, and the Decalogue is a fossil. A race of seers? Bosh +again! The God they saw survives only as a bogey-man, a theory, an +uneasy and vexatious ghost. A race of traders and sharpers? Bosh a third +time! The Jews are as poor as the Spaniards. But a race of poets, my +lords, a race of poets! It is a vision of beauty that has ever haunted +them. And it has been their destiny to transmit that vision, enfeebled, +perhaps, but still distinct, to other and lesser peoples, that life +might be made softer for the sons of men, and the goodness of the Lord +God--whoever He may be--might not be forgotten. + + + + +IX + +THE COMSTOCKIAN PREMISS + + +It is argued against certain books, by virtuosi of moral alarm, that +they depict vice as attractive. This recalls the king who hanged a judge +for deciding that an archbishop was a mammal. + + + + +X + +THE LABIAL INFAMY + + +After five years of search I have been able to discover but one book in +English upon the art of kissing, and that is a very feeble treatise by a +savant of York, Pa., Dr. R. McCormick Sturgeon. There may be others, but +I have been quite unable to find them. Kissing, for all one hears of it, +has not attracted the scientists and literati; one compares its meagre +literature with the endless books upon the other phenomena of love, +especially divorce and obstetrics. Even Dr. Sturgeon, pioneering +bravely, is unable to get beyond a sentimental and trivial view of the +thing he vivisects, and so his book is no more than a compendium of +mush. His very description of the act of kissing is made up of sonorous +gabble about heaving bosoms, red lips, electric sparks and such-like +imaginings. What reason have we for believing, as he says, that the +lungs are "strongly expanded" during the act? My own casual observation +inclines me to hold that the opposite is true, that the lungs are +actually collapsed in a pseudo-asthmatic spasm. Again, what is the +ground for arguing that the lips are "full, ripe and red?" The real +effect of the emotions that accompany kissing is to empty the +superficial capillaries and so produce a leaden pallor. As for such +salient symptoms as the temperature, the pulse and the rate of +respiration, the learned pundit passes them over without a word. Mrs. +Elsie Clews Parsons would be a good one to write a sober and accurate +treatise upon kissing. Her books upon "The Family" and "Fear and +Conventionality" indicate her possession of the right sort of learning. +Even better would be a work by Havelock Ellis, say, in three or four +volumes. Ellis has devoted his whole life to illuminating the mysteries +of sex, and his collection of materials is unsurpassed in the world. +Surely there must be an enormous mass of instructive stuff about kissing +in his card indexes, letter files, book presses and archives. + +Just why the kiss as we know it should have attained to its present +popularity in Christendom is probably one of the things past finding +out. The Japanese, a very affectionate and sentimental people, do not +practise kissing in any form; they regard the act, in fact, with an +aversion matching our own aversion to the rubbing of noses. Nor is it in +vogue among the Moslems, nor among the Chinese, who countenance it only +as between mother and child. Even in parts of Christendom it is girt +about by rigid taboos, so that its practise tends to be restricted to a +few occasions. Two Frenchmen or Italians, when they meet, kiss each +other on both cheeks. One used to see, indeed, many pictures of General +Joffre thus bussing the heroes of Verdun; there even appeared in print a +story to the effect that one of them objected to the scratching of his +moustache. But imagine two Englishmen kissing! Or two Germans! As well +imagined the former kissing the latter! Such a display of affection is +simply impossible to men of Northern blood; they would die with shame if +caught at it. The Englishman, like the American, never kisses if he can +help it. He even regards it as bad form to kiss his wife in a railway +station, or, in fact, anywhere in sight of a third party. The Latin has +no such compunctions. He leaps to the business regardless of place or +time; his sole concern is with the lady. Once, in driving from Nice to +Monte Carlo along the lower Corniche road, I passed a hundred or so open +taxicabs containing man and woman, and fully 75 per cent. of the men had +their arms around their companions, and were kissing them. These were +not peasants, remember, but well-to-do persons. In England such a scene +would have caused a great scandal; in most American States the police +would have charged the offenders with drawn revolvers. + +The charm of kissing is one of the things I have always wondered at. I +do not pretend, of course, that I have never done it; mere politeness +forces one to it; there are women who sulk and grow bellicose unless one +at least makes the motions of kissing them. But what I mean is that I +have never found the act a tenth part as agreeable as poets, the authors +of musical comedy librettos, and (on the contrary side) chaperones and +the _gendarmerie_ make it out. The physical sensation, far from being +pleasant, is intensely uncomfortable--the suspension of respiration, +indeed, quickly resolves itself into a feeling of suffocation--and the +posture necessitated by the approximation of lips and lips is +unfailingly a constrained and ungraceful one. Theoretically, a man +kisses a woman perpendicularly, with their eyes, those "windows of the +soul," synchronizing exactly. But actually, on account of the +incompressibility of the nasal cartilages, he has to incline either his +or her head to an angle of at least 60 degrees, and the result is that +his right eye gazes insanely at the space between her eyebrows, while +his left eye is fixed upon some vague spot behind her. An instantaneous +photograph of such a maneuvre, taken at the moment of incidence, would +probably turn the stomach of even the most romantic man, and force him, +in sheer self-respect, to renounce kissing as he has renounced leap-frog +and walking on stilts. Only a woman (for women are quite devoid of +aesthetic feeling) could survive so damning a picture. + +But the most embarrassing moment, in kissing, does not come during the +actual kiss (for at that time the sensation of suffocation drives out +all purely psychical feelings), but immediately afterward. What is one +to say to the woman then? The occasion obviously demands some sort of +remark. One has just received (in theory) a great boon; the silence +begins to make itself felt; there stands the fair one, obviously +waiting. Is one to thank her? Certainly that would be too transparent a +piece of hypocrisy, too flaccid a banality. Is one to tell her that one +loves her? Obviously, there is danger in such assurances, and beside, +one usually doesn't, and a lie is a lie. Or is one to descend to chatty +commonplaces--about the weather, literature, politics, the war? The +practical impossibility of solving the problem leads almost inevitably +to a blunder far worse than any merely verbal one: one kisses her again, +and then again, and so on, and so on. The ultimate result is satiety, +repugnance, disgust; even the girl herself gets enough. + + + + +XI + +A TRUE ASCETIC + + +Herbert Spencer's objection to swearing, of which so much has been made +by moralists, was not an objection to its sinfulness but an objection to +its charm. In brief, he feared comfort, satisfaction, joy. The boarding +houses in which he dragged out his gray years were as bare and cheerless +as so many piano boxes. He avoided all the little vices and dissipations +which make human existence bearable: good eating, good drinking, +dancing, tobacco, poker, poetry, the theatre, personal adornment, +philandering, adultery. He was insanely suspicious of everything that +threatened to interfere with his work. Even when that work halted him by +the sheer agony of its monotony, and it became necessary for him to find +recreation, he sought out some recreation that was as unattractive as +possible, in the hope that it would quickly drive him back to work +again. Having to choose between methods of locomotion on his holidays, +he chose going afoot, the most laborious and least satisfying available. +Brought to bay by his human need for a woman, he directed his fancy +toward George Eliot, probably the most unappetizing woman of his race +and time. Drawn irresistibly to music, he avoided the Fifth Symphony and +"Tristan und Isolde," and joined a crowd of old maids singing part songs +around a cottage piano. John Tyndall saw clearly the effect of all this +and protested against it, saying, "He'd be a much nicer fellow if he had +a good swear now and then"--_i. e._, if he let go now and then, if he +yielded to his healthy human instincts now and then, if he went on some +sort of debauch now and then. But what Tyndall overlooked was the fact +that the meagreness of his recreations was the very element that +attracted Spencer to them. Obsessed by the fear--and it turned out to be +well-grounded--that he would not live long enough to complete his work, +he regarded all joy as a temptation, a corruption, a sin of scarlet. He +was a true ascetic. He could sacrifice all things of the present for one +thing of the future, all things real for one thing ideal. + + + + +XII + +ON LYING + + +Lying stands on a different plane from all other moral offenses, not +because it is intrinsically more heinous or less heinous, but simply +because it is the only one that may be accurately measured. Forgetting +unwitting error, which has nothing to do with morals, a statement is +either true or not true. This is a simple distinction and relatively +easy to establish. But when one comes to other derelictions the thing +grows more complicated. The line between stealing and not stealing is +beautifully vague; whether or not one has crossed it is not determined +by the objective act, but by such delicate things as motive and purpose. +So again, with assault, sex offenses, and even murder; there may be +surrounding circumstances which greatly condition the moral quality of +the actual act. But lying is specific, exact, scientific. Its capacity +for precise determination, indeed, makes its presence or non-presence +the only accurate gauge of other immoral acts. Murder, for example, is +nowhere regarded as immoral save it involve some repudiation of a social +compact, of a tacit promise to refrain from it--in brief, some deceit, +some perfidy, some lie. One may kill freely when the pact is formally +broken, as in war. One may kill equally freely when it is broken by the +victim, as in an assault by a highwayman. But one may not kill so long +as it is not broken, and one may not break it to clear the way. Some +form of lie is at the bottom of all other recognized crimes, from +seduction to embezzlement. Curiously enough, this master immorality of +them all is not prohibited by the Ten Commandments, nor is it penalized, +in its pure form, by the code of any civilized nation. Only savages have +laws against lying _per se_. + + + + +XIII + +HISTORY + + +It is the misfortune of humanity that its history is chiefly written by +third-rate men. The first-rate man seldom has any impulse to record and +philosophise; his impulse is to act; life, to him, is an adventure, not +a syllogism or an autopsy. Thus the writing of history is left to +college professors, moralists, theorists, dunder-heads. Few historians, +great or small, have shown any capacity for the affairs they presume to +describe and interpret. Gibbon was an inglorious failure as a member of +Parliament. Thycydides made such a mess of his military (or, rather, +naval) command that he was exiled from Athens for twenty years and +finally assassinated. Flavius Josephus, serving as governor of Galilee, +lost the whole province to the Romans, and had to flee for his life. +Momssen, elected to the Prussian Landtag, flirted with the Socialists. +How much better we would understand the habits and nature of man if +there were more historians like Julius Caesar, or even like Niccolo +Machiavelli! Remembering the sharp and devastating character of their +rough notes, think what marvelous histories Bismarck, Washington and +Frederick the Great might have written! Such men are privy to the facts; +the usual historians have to depend on deductions, rumors, guesses. +Again, such men know how to tell the truth, however unpleasant; they +are wholly free of that puerile moral obsession which marks the +professor.... But they so seldom tell it! Well, perhaps some of them +have--and their penalty is that they are damned and forgotten. + + + + +XIV + +THE CURSE OF CIVILIZATION + + +A civilized man's worst curse is social obligation. The most unpleasant +act imaginable is to go to a dinner party. One could get far better +food, taking one day with another, at Childs', or even in a Pennsylvania +Railroad dining-car; one could find far more amusing society in a +bar-room or a bordello, or even at the Y. M. C. A. No hostess in +Christendom ever arranged a dinner party of any pretensions without +including at least one intensely disagreeable person--a vain and vapid +girl, a hideous woman, a follower of baseball, a stock-broker, a veteran +of some war or other, a gabbler of politics. And one is enough to do the +business. + + + + +XV + +EUGENICS + + +The error of the eugenists lies in the assumption that a physically +healthy man is the best fitted to survive. This is true of rats and the +_pediculae_, but not of the higher animals, _e. g._, horses, dogs and +men. In these higher animals one looks for more subtle qualities, +chiefly of the spirit. Imagine estimating philosophers by their chest +expansions, their blood pressures, their Wassermann reactions! + +The so-called social diseases, over which eugenists raise such a pother, +are surely not the worst curses that mankind has to bear. Some of the +greatest men in history have had them; whole nations have had them and +survived. The truth about them is that, save in relatively rare cases, +they do very little damage. The horror in which they are held is chiefly +a moral horror, and its roots lie in the assumption that they cannot be +contracted without sin. Nothing could be more false. Many great +moralists have suffered from them: the gods are always up to such +sardonic waggeries. + +Moreover, only one of them is actually inheritable, and that one is +transmitted relatively seldom. But among psychic characters one finds +that practically all are inheritable. For example, stupidity, credulity, +avarice, pecksniffery, lack of imagination, hatred of beauty, meanness, +poltroonry, petty brutality, smallness of soul.... I here present, of +course, the Puritan complex; there flashes up the image of the "good +man," that libel on God and the devil. Consider him well. If you had to +choose a sire for a first-rate son, would you choose a consumptive Jew +with the fires of eternity in his eyes, or an Iowa right-thinker with +his hold full of Bibles and breakfast food? + + + + +XVI + +THE JOCOSE GODS + + +What humor could be wilder than that of life itself? Franz Schubert, on +his deathbed, read the complete works of J. Fenimore Cooper. John +Millington Synge wrote "Riders to the Sea" on a second-hand $40 +typewriter, and wore a celluloid collar. Richard Wagner made a living, +during four lean years, arranging Italian opera arias for the cornet. +Herbert Spencer sang bass in a barber-shop quartette and was in love +with George Eliot. William Shakespeare was a social pusher and bought +him a bogus coat-of-arms. Martin Luther suffered from the jim-jams. One +of the greatest soldiers in Hungarian history was named Hunjadi +Janos.... + + + + +XVII + +WAR + + +Superficially, war seems inordinately cruel and wasteful, and yet it +must be plain on reflection that the natural evolutionary process is +quite as cruel and even more wasteful. Man's chief efforts in times of +peace are devoted to making that process less violent and sanguinary. +Civilization, indeed, may be defined as a constructive criticism of +nature, and Huxley even called it a conspiracy against nature. Man tries +to remedy what must inevitably seem the mistakes and to check what must +inevitably seem the wanton cruelty of the Creator. In war man abandons +these efforts, and so becomes more jovian. The Greeks never represented +the inhabitants of Olympus as succoring and protecting one another, but +always as fighting and attempting to destroy one another. + +No form of death inflicted by war is one-half so cruel as certain forms +of death that are seen in hospitals every day. Besides, these forms of +death have the further disadvantage of being inglorious. The average +man, dying in bed, not only has to stand the pains and terrors of death; +he must also, if he can bring himself to think of it at all, stand the +notion that he is ridiculous.... The soldier is at least not laughed at. +Even his enemies treat his agonies with respect. + + + + +XVIII + +MORALIST AND ARTIST + + +I dredge up the following from an essay on George Bernard Shaw by Robert +Blatchford, the English Socialist: "Shaw is something much better than a +wit, much better than an artist, much better than a politician or a +dramatist; he is a moralist, a teacher of ethics, austere, relentless, +fiercely earnest." + +What could be more idiotic? Then Cotton Mather was a greater man than +Johann Sebastian Bach. Then the average college critic of the arts, with +his balderdash about inspiration and moral purpose, is greater than +Georg Brandes or Saint-Beuve. Then Éugene Brieux, with his Y. M. C. A. +platitudinizing, is greater than Molière, with his ethical agnosticism, +his ironical determinism. + +This childish respect for moralizing runs through the whole of +contemporary criticism--at least in England and America. Blatchford +differs from the professorial critics only in the detail that he can +actually write. What he says about Shaw has been said, in heavy and +suffocating words, by almost all of them. And yet nothing could be more +untrue. The moralist, at his best, can never be anything save a sort of +journalist. Moral values change too often to have any serious validity +or interest; what is a virtue today is a sin tomorrow. But the man who +creates a thing of beauty creates something that lasts. + + + + +XIX + +ACTORS + + +"In France they call an actor a _m'as-tu-vu_, which, anglicised, means a +have-you-seen-me?... The average actor holds the mirror up to nature and +sees in it only the reflection of himself." I take the words from a late +book on the so-called art of the mime by the editor of a magazine +devoted to the stage. The learned author evades plumbing the +psychological springs of this astounding and almost invariable vanity, +this endless bumptiousness of the _cabotin_ in all climes and all ages. +His one attempt is banal: "a foolish public makes much of him." With all +due respect, Nonsense! The larval actor is full of hot and rancid gases +long before a foolish public has had a fair chance to make anything of +him at all, and he continues to emit them long after it has tried him, +condemned him and bidden him be damned. There is, indeed, little choice +in the virulence of their self-respect between a Broadway star who is +slobbered over by press agents and fat women, and the poor ham who plays +thinking parts in a No. 7 road company. The two are alike charged to the +limit; one more ohm, or molecule, and they would burst. Actors begin +where militia colonels, Fifth avenue rectors and Chautauqua orators +leave off. The most modest of them (barring, perhaps, a few unearthly +traitors to the craft) matches the conceit of the solitary pretty girl +on a slow ship. In their lofty eminence of pomposity they are challenged +only by Anglican bishops and grand opera tenors. I have spoken of the +danger they run of bursting. In the case of tenors it must sometimes +actually happen; even the least of them swells visibly as he sings, and +permanently as he grows older.... + +But why are actors, in general, such blatant and obnoxious asses, such +arrant posturers and wind-bags? Why is it as surprising to find an +unassuming and likable fellow among them as to find a Greek without +fleas? The answer is quite simple. To reach it one needs but consider +the type of young man who normally gets stage-struck. Is he, taking +averages, the intelligent, alert, ingenious, ambitious young fellow? Is +he the young fellow with ideas in him, and a yearning for hard and +difficult work? Is he the diligent reader, the hard student, the eager +inquirer? No. He is, in the overwhelming main, the neighborhood fop and +beau, the human clothes-horse, the nimble squire of dames. The youths of +more active mind, emerging from adolescence, turn to business and the +professions; the men that they admire and seek to follow are men of +genuine distinction, men who have actually done difficult and valuable +things, men who have fought good (if often dishonest) fights and are +respected and envied by other men. The stage-struck youth is of a softer +and more shallow sort. He seeks, not a chance to test his mettle by hard +and useful work, but an easy chance to shine. He craves the regard, not +of men, but of women. He is, in brief, a hollow and incompetent +creature, a strutter and poseur, a popinjay, a pretty one.... + +I thus beg the question, but explain the actor. He is this silly +youngster grown older, but otherwise unchanged. An initiate of a +profession requiring little more information, culture or capacity for +ratiocination than that of the lady of joy, and surrounded in his +work-shop by men who are as stupid, as vain and as empty as he himself +will be in the years to come, he suffers an arrest of development, and +the little intelligence that may happen to be in him gets no chance to +show itself. The result, in its usual manifestation, is the average bad +actor--a man with the cerebrum of a floor-walker and the vanity of a +fashionable clergyman. The result, in its highest and holiest form is +the actor-manager, with his retinue of press-agents, parasites and +worshipping wenches--perhaps the most preposterous and awe-inspiring +donkey that civilization has yet produced. To look for sense in a fellow +of such equipment and such a history would be like looking for +serviettes in a sailors' boarding-house. + +By the same token, the relatively greater intelligence of actresses is +explained. They are, at their worst, quite as bad as the generality of +actors. There are she-stars who are all temperament and +balderdash--intellectually speaking, beggars on horseback, servant girls +well washed. But no one who knows anything about the stage need be told +that it can show a great many more quick-minded and self-respecting +women than intelligent men. And why? Simply because its women are +recruited, in the main, from a class much above that which furnishes its +men. It is, after all, not unnatural for a woman of considerable +intelligence to aspire to the stage. It offers her, indeed, one of the +most tempting careers that is open to her. She cannot hope to succeed in +business, and in the other professions she is an unwelcome and +much-scoffed-at intruder, but on the boards she can meet men on an equal +footing. It is, therefore, no wonder that women of a relatively superior +class often take to the business.... Once they embrace it, their +superiority to their male colleagues is quickly manifest. All movements +against puerility and imbecility in the drama have originated, not with +actors, but with actresses--that is, in so far as they have originated +among stage folks at all. The Ibsen pioneers were such women as Helena +Modjeska, Agnes Sorma and Janet Achurch; the men all hung back. Ibsen, +it would appear, was aware of this superior alertness and took shrewd +advantage of it. At all events, his most tempting acting parts are +feminine ones. + +The girls of the stage demonstrate this tendency against great +difficulties. They have to carry a heavy handicap in the enormous number +of women who seek the footlights merely to advertise their real +profession, but despite all this, anyone who has the slightest +acquaintance with stagefolk will testify that, taking one with another, +the women have vastly more brains than the men and are appreciably less +vain and idiotic. Relatively few actresses of any rank marry actors. +They find close communion with the strutting brethren psychologically +impossible. Stock-brokers, dramatists and even theatrical managers are +greatly to be preferred. + + + + +XX + +THE CROWD + + +Gustave Le Bon and his school, in their discussions of the psychology of +crowds, have put forward the doctrine that the individual man, cheek by +jowl with the multitude, drops down an intellectual peg or two, and so +tends to show the mental and emotional reactions of his inferiors. It is +thus that they explain the well-known violence and imbecility of crowds. +The crowd, as a crowd, performs acts that many of its members, as +individuals, would never be guilty of. Its average intelligence is very +low; it is inflammatory, vicious, idiotic, almost simian. Crowds, +properly worked up by skilful demagogues, are ready to believe anything, +and to do anything. + +Le Bon, I daresay, is partly right, but also partly wrong. His theory is +probably too flattering to the average numskull. He accounts for the +extravagance of crowds on the assumption that the numskull, along with +the superior man, is knocked out of his wits by suggestion--that he, +too, does things in association that he would never think of doing +singly. The fact may be accepted, but the reasoning raises a doubt. The +numskull runs amuck in a crowd, not because he has been inoculated with +new rascality by the mysterious crowd influence, but because his +habitual rascality now has its only chance to function safely. In other +words, the numskull is vicious, but a poltroon. He refrains from all +attempts at lynching _a cappella_, not because it takes suggestion to +make him desire to lynch, but because it takes the protection of a crowd +to make him brave enough to try it. + +What happens when a crowd cuts loose is not quite what Le Bon and his +followers describe. The few superior men in it are not straightway +reduced to the level of the underlying stoneheads. On the contrary, they +usually keep their heads, and often make efforts to combat the crowd +action. But the stoneheads are too many for them; the fence is torn down +or the blackamoor is lynched. And why? Not because the stoneheads, +normally virtuous, are suddenly criminally insane. Nay, but because they +are suddenly conscious of the power lying in their numbers--because they +suddenly realize that their natural viciousness and insanity may be +safely permitted to function. + +In other words, the particular swinishness of a crowd is permanently +resident in the majority of its members--in all those members, that is, +who are naturally ignorant and vicious--perhaps 95 per cent. All studies +of mob psychology are defective in that they underestimate this +viciousness. They are poisoned by the prevailing delusion that the lower +orders of men are angels. This is nonsense. The lower orders of men are +incurable rascals, either individually or collectively. Decency, +self-restraint, the sense of justice, courage--these virtues belong +only to a small minority of men. This minority never runs amuck. Its +most distinguishing character, in truth, is its resistance to all +running amuck. The third-rate man, though he may wear the false whiskers +of a first-rate man, may always be detected by his inability to keep his +head in the face of an appeal to his emotions. A whoop strips off his +disguise. + + + + +XXI + +AN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER + + +As for William Jennings Bryan, of whom so much piffle, pro and con, has +been written, the whole of his political philosophy may be reduced to +two propositions, neither of which is true. The first is the proposition +that the common people are wise and honest, and the second is the +proposition that all persons who refuse to believe it are scoundrels. +Take away the two, and all that would remain of Jennings would be a +somewhat greasy bald-headed man with his mouth open. + + + + +XXII + +CLUBS + + +Men's clubs have but one intelligible purpose: to afford asylum to +fellows who haven't any girls. Hence their general gloom, their air of +lost causes, their prevailing acrimony. No man would ever enter a club +if he had an agreeable woman to talk to. This is particularly true of +married men. Those of them that one finds in clubs answer to a general +description: they have wives too unattractive to entertain them, and yet +too watchful to allow them to seek entertainment elsewhere. The +bachelors, in the main, belong to two classes: (a) those who have been +unfortunate in amour, and are still too sore to show any new enterprise, +and (b) those so lacking in charm that no woman will pay any attention +to them. Is it any wonder that the men one thus encounters in clubs are +stupid and miserable creatures, and that they find their pleasure in +such banal sports as playing cards, drinking highballs, shooting pool, +and reading the barber-shop weeklies?... The day a man's mistress is +married one always finds him at his club. + + + + +XXIII + +FIDELIS AD URNUM + + +Despite the common belief of women to the contrary, fully 95 per cent. +of all married men, at least in America, are faithful to their wives. +This, however, is not due to virtue, but chiefly to lack of courage. It +takes more initiative and daring to start up an extra-legal affair than +most men are capable of. They look and they make plans, but that is as +far as they get. Another salient cause of connubial rectitude is lack of +means. A mistress costs a great deal more than a wife; in the open +market of the world she can get more. It is only the rare man who can +conceal enough of his income from his wife to pay for a morganatic +affair. And most of the men clever enough to do this are too clever to +be intrigued. + +I have said that 95 per cent. of married men are faithful. I believe the +real proportion is nearer 99 per cent. What women mistake for infidelity +is usually no more than vanity. Every man likes to be regarded as a +devil of a fellow, and particularly by his wife. On the one hand, it +diverts her attention from his more genuine shortcomings, and on the +other hand it increases her respect for him. Moreover, it gives her a +chance to win the sympathy of other women, and so satisfies that craving +for martyrdom which is perhaps woman's strongest characteristic. A +woman who never has any chance to suspect her husband feels cheated and +humiliated. She is in the position of those patriots who are induced to +enlist for a war by pictures of cavalry charges, and then find +themselves told off to wash the general's underwear. + + + + +XXIV + +A THEOLOGICAL MYSTERY + + +The moral order of the world runs aground on hay fever. Of what use is +it? Why was it invented? Cancer and hydrophobia, at least, may be +defended on the ground that they kill. Killing may have some benign +purpose, some esoteric significance, some cosmic use. But hay fever +never kills; it merely tortures. No man ever died of it. Is the torture, +then, an end in itself? Does it break the pride of strutting, snorting +man, and turn his heart to the things of the spirit? Nonsense! A man +with hay fever is a natural criminal. He curses the gods, and defies +them to kill him. He even curses the devil. Is its use, then, to prepare +him for happiness to come--for the vast ease and comfort of +convalescence? Nonsense again! The one thing he is sure of, the one +thing he never forgets for a moment, is that it will come back again +next year. + + + + +XXV + +THE TEST OF TRUTH + + +The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few religious dogmas have ever +faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene +swine. Dowie's whiskers broke the back of Dowieism. Not the laws of the +United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to +compromise and surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it +killed the doctrine of infant damnation.... But the razor edge of +ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the +barber-surgeons laughed at Harvey--and how vainly! What clown ever +brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Jenner? Or Lincoln? +Or Darwin?... They are laughing at Nietzsche yet.... + + + + +XXVI + +LITERARY INDECENCIES + + +The low, graceless humor of names! On my shelf of poetry, arranged by +the alphabet, Coleridge and J. Gordon Cooglar are next-door neighbors! +Mrs. Hemans is beside Laurence Hope! Walt Whitman rubs elbows with Ella +Wheeler Wilcox; Robert Browning with Richard Burton; Rossetti with Cale +Young Rice; Shelly with Clinton Scollard; Wordsworth with George E. +Woodberry; John Keats with Herbert Kaufman! + +Ibsen, on the shelf of dramatists, is between Victor Hugo and Jerome K. +Jerome. Sudermann follows Harriet Beecher Stowe. Maeterlinck shoulders +Percy Mackaye. Shakespeare is between Sardou and Shaw. Euripides and +Clyde Fitch! Upton Sinclair and Sophocles! Aeschylus and F. Anstey! +D'Annunzio and Richard Harding Davis! Augustus Thomas and Tolstoi! + +More alphabetical humor. Gerhart Hauptmann and Robert Hichens; Voltaire +and Henry Van Dyke; Flaubert and John Fox, Jr.; Balzac and John Kendrick +Bangs; Ostrovsky and E. Phillips Oppenheim; Elinor Glyn and Théophile +Gautier; Joseph Conrad and Robert W. Chambers; Zola and Zangwill!... + +Midway on my scant shelf of novels, between George Moore and Frank +Norris, there is just room enough for the two volumes of "Derringforth," +by Frank A. Munsey. + + + + +XXVII + +VIRTUOUS VANDALISM + + +A hearing of Schumann's B flat symphony of late, otherwise a very +caressing experience, was corrupted by the thought that music would be +much the gainer if musicians could get over their superstitious +reverence for the mere text of the musical classics. That reverence, +indeed, is already subject to certain limitations; hands have been laid, +at one time or another, upon most of the immortal oratorios, and even +the awful name of Bach has not dissuaded certain German editors. But it +still swathes the standard symphonies like some vast armor of rubber and +angel food, and so imagination has to come to the aid of the flutes and +fiddles when the band plays Schumann, Mozart, and even parts of +Beethoven. One discerns, often quite clearly, what the reverend Master +was aiming at, but just as often one fails to hear it in precise tones. + +This is particularly true of Schumann, whose deficiency in instrumental +cunning has passed into proverb. And in the B flat symphony, his first +venture into the epic form, his failures are most numerous. More than +once, obviously attempting to roll up tone into a moving climax, he +succeeds only in muddling his colors. I remember one place--at the +moment I can't recall where it is--where the strings and the brass storm +at one another in furious figures. The blast of the brass, as the +vaudevillains say, gets across--but the fiddles merely scream absurdly. +The whole passage suggests the bleating of sheep in the midst of a vast +bellowing of bulls. Schumann overestimated the horsepower of fiddle +music so far up the E string--or underestimated the full kick of the +trumpets.... Other such soft spots are well known. + +Why, then, go on parroting _gaucheries_ that Schumann himself, were he +alive today, would have long since corrected? Why not call an ecumenical +council, appoint a commission to see to such things, and then forget the +sacrilege? As a self-elected delegate from heathendom, I nominate Dr. +Richard Strauss as chairman. When all is said and done, Strauss probably +knows more about writing for orchestra than any other two men that ever +lived, not excluding Wagner. Surely no living rival, as Dr. Sunday would +say, has anything on him. If, after hearing a new composition by +Strauss, one turns to the music, one is invariably surprised to find how +simple it is. The performance reveals so many purple moments, so +staggering an array of lusciousness, that the ear is bemused into +detecting scales and chords that never were on land or sea. What the +exploratory eye subsequently discovers, perhaps, is no more than our +stout and comfortable old friend, the highly well-born _hausfrau_, Mme. +C Dur--with a vine leaf or two of C sharp minor or F major in her hair. +The trick lies in the tone-color--in the flabbergasting magic of the +orchestration. There are some moments in "Elektra" when sounds come out +of the orchestra that tug at the very roots of the hair, sounds so +unearthly that they suggest a caroling of dragons or _bierfisch_--and +yet they are made by the same old fiddles that play the Kaiser Quartet, +and by the same old trombones that the Valkyrie ride like witch's +broomsticks, and by the same old flutes that sob and snuffle in Tit'l's +Serenade. And in parts of "Feuersnot"--but Roget must be rewritten by +Strauss before "Feuersnot" is described. There is one place where the +harps, taking a running start from the scrolls of the violins, leap +slambang through (or is it into?) the firmament of Heaven. Once, when I +heard this passage played at a concert, a woman sitting beside me rolled +over like a log, and had to be hauled out by the ushers. + +Yes; Strauss is the man to reorchestrate the symphonies of Schumann, +particularly the B flat, the Rhenish and the Fourth. I doubt that he +could do much with Schubert, for Schubert, though he is dead nearly a +hundred years, yet remains curiously modern. The Unfinished symphony is +full of exquisite color effects--consider, for example, the rustling +figure for the strings in the first movement--and as for the C major, it +is so stupendous a debauch of melodic and harmonic beauty that one +scarcely notices the colors at all. In its slow movement mere +loveliness in music probably says all that will ever be said.... But +what of old Ludwig? Har, har; here we begin pulling the whiskers of Baal +Himself. Nevertheless, I am vandal enough to wonder, on sad Sunday +mornings, what Strauss could do with the first movement of the C minor. +More, if Strauss ever does it and lets me hear the result just once, +I'll be glad to serve six months in jail with him.... But in Munich, of +course! And with a daily visitor's pass for Cousin Pschorr!... + +The conservatism which shrinks at such barbarities is the same +conservatism which demands that the very typographical errors in the +Bible be swallowed without salt, and that has thus made a puerile +dream-book of parts of Holy Writ. If you want to see how far this last +madness has led Christendom astray, take a look at an article by Abraham +Mitrie Rihbany, an intelligent Syrian, in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of a +couple of years ago. The title of the article is "The Oriental Manner of +Speech," and in it Rihbany shows how much of mere Oriental extravagance +of metaphor is to be found in many celebrated passages, and how little +of literal significance. This Oriental extravagance, of course, makes +for beauty, but as interpreted by pundits of no imagination it surely +doesn't make for understanding. What the Western World needs is a Bible +in which the idioms of the Aramaic of thousands of years ago are +translated into the idioms of today. The man who undertook such a +translation, to be sure, would be uproariously denounced, just as Luther +and Wycliffe were denounced, but he could well afford to face the storm. +The various Revised Versions, including the Modern Speech New Testament +of Richard Francis Weymouth, leave much to be desired. They rectify many +naif blunders and so make the whole narrative more intelligible, but +they still render most of the tropes of the original literally. + +These tropes are not the substance of Holy Writ; they are simply its +color. In the same way mere tone-color is not the substance of a musical +composition. Beethoven's Eighth Symphony is just as great a work, in all +its essentials, in a four-hand piano arrangement as in the original +score. Every harmonic and melodic idea of the composer is there; one can +trace just as clearly the subtle processes of his mind; every step in +the working out of the materials is just as plain. True enough, there +are orchestral compositions of which this cannot be reasonably said; +their color is so much more important than their form that when one +takes away the former the latter almost ceases to exist. But I doubt +that many competent critics would argue that they belong to the first +rank. Form, after all, is the important thing. It is design that counts, +not decoration--design and organization. The pillars of a musical +masterpiece are like the pillars of the Parthenon; they are almost as +beautiful bleached white as they were in all their original hues. + + + + +XXVIII + +A FOOTNOTE ON THE DUEL OF SEX + + +If I were a woman I should want to be a blonde, with golden, silky hair, +pink cheeks and sky-blue eyes. It would not bother me to think that this +color scheme was mistaken by the world for a flaunting badge of +stupidity; I would have a better arm in my arsenal than mere +intelligence; I would get a husband by easy surrender while the +brunettes attempted it vainly by frontal assault. + +Men are not easily taken by frontal assault; it is only strategem that +can quickly knock them down. To be a blonde, pink, soft and delicate, is +to be a strategem. It is to be a ruse, a feint, an ambush. It is to +fight under the Red Cross flag. A man sees nothing alert and designing +in those pale, crystalline eyes; he sees only something helpless, +childish, weak; something that calls to his compassion; something that +appeals powerfully to his conceit in his own strength. And so he is +taken before he knows that there is a war. He lifts his portcullis in +Christian charity--and the enemy is in his citadel. + +The brunette can make no such stealthy and sure attack. No matter how +subtle her art, she can never hope to quite conceal her intent. Her eyes +give her away. They flash and glitter. They have depths. They draw the +male gaze into mysterious and sinister recesses. And so the male behind +the gaze flies to arms. He may be taken in the end--indeed, he usually +is--but he is not taken by surprise; he is not taken without a fight. A +brunette has to battle for every inch of her advance. She is confronted +by an endless succession of Dead Man's Hills, each equipped with +telescopes, semaphores, alarm gongs, wireless. The male sees her clearly +through her densest smoke-clouds.... But the blonde captures him under a +flag of truce. He regards her tenderly, kindly, almost pityingly, until +the moment the gyves are upon his wrists. + +It is all an optical matter, a question of color. The pastel shades +deceive him; the louder hues send him to his artillery. God help, I say, +the red-haired girl! She goes into action with warning pennants flying. +The dullest, blindest man can see her a mile away; he can catch the +alarming flash of her hair long before he can see the whites, or even +the terrible red-browns, of her eyes. She has a long field to cross, +heavily under defensive fire, before she can get into rifle range. Her +quarry has a chance to throw up redoubts, to dig himself in, to call for +reinforcements, to elude her by ignominious flight. She must win, if she +is to win at all, by an unparalleled combination of craft and +resolution. She must be swift, daring, merciless. Even the brunette of +black and penetrating eye has great advantages over her. No wonder she +never lets go, once her arms are around her antagonist's neck! No +wonder she is, of all women, the hardest to shake off! + +All nature works in circles. Causes become effects; effects develop into +causes. The red-haired girl's dire need of courage and cunning has +augmented her store of those qualities by the law of natural selection. +She is, by long odds, the most intelligent and bemusing of women. She +shows cunning, foresight, technique, variety. She always fails a dozen +times before she succeeds; but she brings to the final business the +abominable expertness of a Ludendorff; she has learnt painfully by the +process of trial and error. Red-haired girls are intellectual +stimulants. They know all the tricks. They are so clever that they have +even cast a false glamour of beauty about their worst defect--their +harsh and gaudy hair. They give it euphemistic and deceitful +names--auburn, bronze, Titian. They overcome by their hellish arts that +deep-seated dread of red which is inborn in all of God's creatures. They +charm men with what would even alarm bulls. + +And the blondes, by following the law of least resistance, have gone in +the other direction. The great majority of them--I speak, of course, of +natural blondes; not of the immoral wenches who work their atrocities +under cover of a synthetic blondeness--are quite as shallow and stupid +as they look. One seldom hears a blonde say anything worth hearing; the +most they commonly achieve is a specious, baby-like prattling, an +infantile artlessness. But let us not blame them for nature's work. Why, +after all, be intelligent? It is, at best, no more than a capacity for +unhappiness. The blonde not only doesn't miss it; she is even better off +without it. What imaginable intelligence could compensate her for the +flat blueness of her eyes, the xanthous pallor of her hair, the +doll-like pink of her cheeks? What conceivable cunning could do such +execution as her stupendous appeal to masculine vanity, sentimentality, +egoism? + +If I were a woman I should want to be a blonde. My blondeness might be +hideous, but it would get me a husband, and it would make him cherish me +and love me. + + + + +XXIX + +ALCOHOL + + +Envy, as I have said, is at the heart of the messianic delusion, the +mania to convert the happy sinner into a "good" man, and so make him +miserable. And at the heart of that envy is fear--the fear to sin, to +take a chance, to monkey with the buzzsaw. This ineradicable fear is the +outstanding mark of the fifth-rate man, at all times and everywhere. It +dominates his politics, his theology, his whole thinking. He is a moral +fellow because he is afraid to venture over the fence--and he hates the +man who is not. + +The solemn proofs, so laboriously deduced from life insurance +statistics, that the man who uses alcohol, even moderately, dies +slightly sooner than the teetotaler--these proofs merely show that this +man is one who leads an active and vigorous life, and so faces hazards +and uses himself up--in brief, one who lives at high tempo and with full +joy, what Nietzsche used to call the _ja-sager_, or yes-sayer. He may, +in fact, die slightly sooner than the teetotaler, but he lives +infinitely longer. Moreover, his life, humanly speaking, is much more +worth while, to himself and to the race. He does the hard and dangerous +work of the world, he takes the chances, he makes the experiments. He is +the soldier, the artist, the innovator, the lover. All the great works +of man have been done by men who thus lived joyously, strenuously, and +perhaps a bit dangerously. They have never been concerned about +stretching life for two or three more years; they have been concerned +about making life engrossing and stimulating and a high adventure while +it lasts. Teetotalism is as impossible to such men as any other +manifestation of cowardice, and, if it were possible, it would destroy +their utility and significance just as certainly. + +A man who shrinks from a cocktail before dinner on the ground that it +may flabbergast his hormones, and so make him die at 69 years, ten +months and five days instead of at 69 years, eleven months and seven +days--such a man is as absurd a poltroon as the fellow who shrinks from +kissing a woman on the ground that she may floor him with a chair leg. +Each flees from a purely theoretical risk. Each is a useless encumberer +of the earth, and the sooner dead the better. Each is a discredit to the +human race, already discreditable enough, God knows. + +Teetotalism does not make for human happiness; it makes for the dull, +idiotic happiness of the barnyard. The men who do things in the world, +the men worthy of admiration and imitation, are men constitutionally +incapable of any such pecksniffian stupidity. Their ideal is not a safe +life, but a full life; they do not try to follow the canary bird in a +cage, but the eagle in the air. And in particular they do not flee from +shadows and bugaboos. The alcohol myth is such a bugaboo. The sort of +man it scares is the sort of man whose chief mark is that he is always +scared. + +No wonder the Rockefellers and their like are hot for saving the +workingman from John Barleycorn! Imagine the advantage to them of +operating upon a flabby horde of timorous and joyless slaves, afraid of +all fun and kicking up, horribly moral, eager only to live as long as +possible! What mule-like fidelity and efficiency could be got out of +such a rabble! But how many Lincolns would you get out of it, and how +many Jacksons, and how many Grants? + + + + +XXX + +THOUGHTS ON THE VOLUPTUOUS + + +Why has no publisher ever thought of perfuming his novels? The final +refinement of publishing, already bedizened by every other art! Barabbas +turned Petronius! For instance, consider the bucolic romances of the +hyphenated Mrs. Porter. They have a subtle flavor of new-mown hay and +daffodils already; why not add the actual essence, or at all events some +safe coal-tar substitute, and so help imagination to spread its wings? +For Hall Caine, musk and synthetic bergamot. For Mrs. Glyn and her +neighbors on the tiger-skin, the fragrant blood of the red, red rose. +For the ruffianish pages of Jack London, the pungent, hospitable smell +of a first-class bar-room--that indescribable mingling of Maryland rye, +cigar smoke, stale malt liquor, radishes, potato salad and _blutwurst_. +For the Dartmoor sagas of the interminable Phillpotts, the warm +ammoniacal bouquet of cows, poultry and yokels. For the "Dodo" school, +violets and Russian cigarettes. For the venerable Howells, lavender and +mignonette. For Zola, Rochefort and wet leather. For Mrs. Humphrey Ward, +lilies of the valley. For Marie Corelli, tuberoses and embalming fluid. +For Chambers, sachet and lip paint. For---- + +But I leave you to make your own choices. All I offer is the general +idea. It has been tried in the theatre. Well do I remember the first +weeks of "Florodora" at the old Casino, with a mannikin in the lobby +squirting "La Flor de Florodora" upon all us Florodorans.... I was put +on trial for my life when I got home! + + + + +XXXI + +THE HOLY ESTATE + + +Marriage is always a man's second choice. It is entered upon, more often +than not, as the safest form of intrigue. The caitiff yields quickest; +the man who loves danger and adventure holds out longest. Behind it one +frequently finds, not that lofty romantic passion which poets hymn, but +a mere yearning for peace and security. The abominable hazards of the +high seas, the rough humors and pestilences of the forecastle--these +drive the timid mariner ashore.... The authentic Cupid, at least in +Christendom, was discovered by the late Albert Ludwig Siegmund Neisser +in 1879. + + + + +XXXII + +DICHTUNG UND WAHRHEIT + + +Deponent, being duly sworn, saith: My taste in poetry is for delicate +and fragile things--to be honest, for artificial things. I like a frail +but perfectly articulated stanza, a sonnet wrought like ivory, a song +full of glowing nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, +conjunctions, prepositions and participles, but without too much hard +sense to it. Poetry, to me, has but two meanings. On the one hand, it is +a magical escape from the sordidness of metabolism and the class war, +and on the other hand it is a subtle, very difficult and hence very +charming art, like writing fugues or mixing mayonnaise. I do not go to +poets to be taught anything, or to be heated up to indignation, or to +have my conscience blasted out of its torpor, but to be soothed and +caressed, to be lulled with sweet sounds, to be wooed into +forgetfulness, to be tickled under the metaphysical chin. My favorite +poem is Lizette Woodworth Reese's "Tears," which, as a statement of +fact, seems to me to be as idiotic as the Book of Revelation. The poetry +I regard least is such stuff as that of Robert Browning and Matthew +Arnold, which argues and illuminates. I dislike poetry of intellectual +content as much as I dislike women of intellectual content--and for the +same reason. + + + + +XXXIII + +WILD SHOTS + + +If I had the time, and there were no sweeter follies offering, I should +like to write an essay on the books that have quite failed of achieving +their original purposes, and are yet of respectable use and potency for +other purposes. For example, the Book of Revelation. The obvious aim of +the learned author of this work was to bring the early Christians into +accord by telling them authoritatively what to expect and hope for; its +actual effect during eighteen hundred years has been to split them into +a multitude of camps, and so set them to denouncing, damning, jailing +and murdering one another. Again, consider the autobiography of +Benvenuto Cellini. Ben wrote it to prove that he was an honest man, a +mirror of all the virtues, an injured innocent; the world, reading it, +hails him respectfully as the noblest, the boldest, the gaudiest liar +that ever lived. Again, turn to "Gulliver's Travels." The thing was +planned by its rev. author as a devastating satire, a terrible piece of +cynicism; it survives as a story-book for sucklings. Yet again, there is +"Hamlet." Shakespeare wrote it frankly to make money for a theatrical +manager; it has lost money for theatrical managers ever since. Yet +again, there is Caesar's "De Bello Gallico." Julius composed it to +thrill and arouse the Romans; its sole use today is to stupefy and +sicken schoolboys. Finally, there is the celebrated book of General F. +von Bernhardi. He wrote it to inflame Germany; its effect was to inflame +England.... + +The list might be lengthened almost _ad infinitum_. When a man writes a +book he fires a machine gun into a wood. The game he brings down often +astonishes him, and sometimes horrifies him. Consider the case of +Ibsen.... After my book on Nietzsche I was actually invited to lecture +at Princeton. + + + + +XXXIV + +BEETHOVEN + + +Romain Rolland's "Beethoven," one of the cornerstones of his celebrity +as a critic, is based upon a thesis that is of almost inconceivable +inaccuracy, to wit, the thesis that old Ludwig was an apostle of joy, +and that his music reveals his determination to experience and utter it +in spite of all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Nothing +could be more absurd. Joy, in truth, was precisely the emotion that +Beethoven could never conjure up; it simply was not in him. Turn to the +_scherzo_ of any of his trios, quartets, sonatas or symphonies. A +sardonic waggishness is there, and sometimes even a wistful sort of +merriment, but joy in the real sense--a kicking up of legs, a +light-heartedness, a complete freedom from care--is not to be found. It +is in Haydn, it is in Schubert and it is often in Mozart, but it is no +more in Beethoven than it is in Tschaikovsky. Even the hymn to joy at +the end of the Ninth symphony narrowly escapes being a gruesome parody +on the thing itself; a conscious effort is in every note of it; it is +almost as lacking in spontaneity as (if it were imaginable at all) a +piece of _vers libre_ by Augustus Montague Toplady. + +Nay; Ludwig was no leaping buck. Nor was it his deafness, nor poverty, +nor the crimes of his rascally nephew that pumped joy out of him. The +truth is that he lacked it from birth; he was born a Puritan--and +though a Puritan may also become a great man (as witness Herbert Spencer +and Beelzebub), he can never throw off being a Puritan. Beethoven +stemmed from the Low Countries, and the Low Countries, in those days, +were full of Puritan refugees; the very name, in its first incarnation, +may have been Barebones. If you want to comprehend the authentic man, +don't linger over Rolland's fancies but go to his own philosophizings, +as garnered in "Beethoven, the Man and the Artist," by Friedrich Kerst, +Englished by Krehbiel. Here you will find a collection of moral +banalities that would have delighted Jonathan Edwards--a collection that +might well be emblazoned on gilt cards and hung in Sunday schools. He +begins with a naif anthropomorphism that is now almost perished from the +world; he ends with a solemn repudiation of adultery.... But a great +man, my masters, a great man! We have enough biographies of him, and +talmuds upon his works. Who will do a full-length psychological study of +him? + + + + +XXXV + +THE TONE ART + + +The notion that the aim of art is to fix the shifting aspects of nature, +that all art is primarily representative--this notion is as unsound as +the theory that Friday is an unlucky day, and is dying as hard. One even +finds some trace of it in Anatole France, surely a man who should know +better. The true function of art is to criticise, embellish and edit +nature--particularly to edit it, and so make it coherent and lovely. The +artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue-pencilling the +_lapsus calami_ of God. The sounds in a Beethoven symphony, even the +Pastoral, are infinitely more orderly, varied and beautiful than those +of the woods. The worst flute is never as bad as the worst soprano. The +best violoncello is immeasurably better than the best tenor. + +All first-rate music suffers by the fact that it has to be performed by +human beings--that is, that nature must be permitted to corrupt it. The +performance one hears in a concert hall or opera house is no more than a +baroque parody upon the thing the composer imagined. In an orchestra of +eighty men there is inevitably at least one man with a sore thumb, or +bad kidneys, or a brutal wife, or _katzenjammer_--and one is enough. +Some day the natural clumsiness and imperfection of fingers, lips and +larynxes will be overcome by mechanical devices, and we shall have +Beethoven and Mozart and Schubert in such wonderful and perfect beauty +that it will be almost unbearable. If half as much ingenuity had been +lavished upon music machines as has been lavished upon the telephone and +the steam engine, we would have had mechanical orchestras long ago. +Mechanical pianos are already here. Piano-players, bound to put some +value on the tortures of Czerny, affect to laugh at all such +contrivances, but that is no more than a pale phosphorescence of an +outraged _wille zur macht_. Setting aside half a dozen--perhaps a +dozen--great masters of a moribund craft, who will say that the average +mechanical piano is not as competent as the average pianist? + +When the human performer of music goes the way of the galley-slave, the +charm of personality, of course, will be pumped out of the performance +of music. But the charm of personality does not help music; it hinders +it. It is not a reinforcement to music; it is a rival. When a beautiful +singer comes upon the stage, two shows, as it were, go on at once: first +the music show, and then the arms, shoulders, neck, nose, ankles, eyes, +hips, calves and ruby lips--in brief, the sex-show. The second of these +shows, to the majority of persons present, is more interesting than the +first--to the men because of the sex interest, and to the women because +of the professional or technical interest--and so music is forced into +the background. What it becomes, indeed, is no more than a half-heard +accompaniment to an imagined anecdote, just as color, line and mass +become mere accomplishments to an anecdote in a picture by an English +academician, or by a sentimental German of the Boecklin school. + +The purified and dephlogisticated music of the future, to be sure, will +never appeal to the mob, which will keep on demanding its chance to +gloat over gaudy, voluptuous women, and fat, scandalous tenors. The mob, +even disregarding its insatiable appetite for the improper, is a natural +hero worshiper. It loves, not the beautiful, but the strange, the +unprecedented, the astounding; it suffers from an incurable +_héliogabalisme_. A soprano who can gargle her way up to G sharp in +altissimo interests it almost as much as a contralto who has slept +publicly with a grand duke. If it cannot get the tenor who receives +$3,000 a night, it will take the tenor who fought the manager with +bung-starters last Tuesday. But this is merely saying that the tastes +and desires of the mob have nothing to do with music as an art. For its +ears, as for its eyes, it demands anecdotes--on the one hand the Suicide +symphony, "The Forge in the Forest," and the general run of Italian +opera, and on the other hand such things as "The Angelus," "Playing +Grandpa" and the so-called "Mona Lisa." It cannot imagine art as devoid +of moral content, as beauty pure and simple. It always demands +something to edify it, or, failing that, to shock it. + +These concepts, of the edifying and the shocking, are closer together in +the psyche than most persons imagine. The one, in fact, depends upon the +other: without some definite notion of the improving it is almost +impossible to conjure up an active notion of the improper. All salacious +art is addressed, not to the damned, but to the consciously saved; it is +Sunday-school superintendents, not bartenders, who chiefly patronize +peep-shows, and know the dirty books, and have a high artistic +admiration for sopranos of superior gluteal development. The man who has +risen above the petty ethical superstitions of Christendom gets little +pleasure out of impropriety, for very few ordinary phenomena seem to him +to be improper. Thus a Frenchman, viewing the undraped statues which +bedizen his native galleries of art, either enjoys them in a purely +aesthetic fashion--which is seldom possible save when he is in +liquor--or confesses frankly that he doesn't like them at all; whereas +the visiting Americano is so powerfully shocked and fascinated by them +that one finds him, the same evening, in places where no respectable man +ought to go. All art, to this fellow, must have a certain bawdiness, or +he cannot abide it. His favorite soprano, in the opera house, is not the +fat and middle-aged lady who can actually sing, but the girl with the +bare back and translucent drawers. Condescending to the concert hall, +he is bored by the posse of enemy aliens in funereal black, and so +demands a vocal soloist--that is, a gaudy creature of such advanced +corsetting that she can make him forget Bach for a while, and turn his +thoughts pleasantly to amorous intrigue. + +In all this, of course, there is nothing new. Other and better men have +noted the damage that the personal equation does to music, and some of +them have even sought ways out. For example, Richard Strauss. His +so-called ballet, "Josefs Legend," produced in Paris just before the +war, is an attempt to write an opera without singers. All of the music +is in the orchestra; the folks on the stage merely go through a +pointless pantomime; their main function is to entertain the eye with +shifting colors. Thus, the romantic sentiments of Joseph are announced, +not by some eye-rolling tenor, but by the first, second, third, fourth, +fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth violins (it is a Strauss score!), with +the incidental aid of the wood-wind, the brass, the percussion and the +rest of the strings. And the heroine's reply is made, not by a soprano +with a cold, but by an honest man playing a flute. The next step will be +the substitution of marionettes for actors. The removal of the orchestra +to a sort of trench, out of sight of the audience, is already an +accomplished fact at Munich. The end, perhaps, will be music purged of +its current ptomaines. In brief, music. + + + + +XXXVI + +ZOOS + + +I often wonder how much sound and nourishing food is fed to the animals +in the zoological gardens of America every week, and try to figure out +what the public gets in return for the cost thereof. The annual bill +must surely run into millions; one is constantly hearing how much beef a +lion downs at a meal, and how many tons of hay an elephant dispatches in +a month. And to what end? To the end, principally, that a horde of +superintendents and keepers may be kept in easy jobs. To the end, +secondarily, that the least intelligent minority of the population may +have an idiotic show to gape at on Sunday afternoons, and that the young +of the species may be instructed in the methods of amour prevailing +among chimpanzees and become privy to the technic employed by jaguars, +hyenas and polar bears in ridding themselves of lice. + +So far as I can make out, after laborious visits to all the chief zoos +of the nation, no other imaginable purpose is served by their existence. +One hears constantly, true enough (mainly from the gentlemen they +support) that they are educational. But how? Just what sort of +instruction do they radiate, and what is its value? I have never been +able to find out. The sober truth is that they are no more educational +than so many firemen's parades or displays of sky-rockets, and that all +they actually offer to the public in return for the taxes wasted upon +them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit +to a penitentiary, or even to Congress or a state legislature in +session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling. + +Education your grandmother! Show me a schoolboy who has ever learned +anything valuable or important by watching a mangy old lion snoring away +in its cage or a family of monkeys fighting for peanuts. To get any +useful instruction out of such a spectacle is palpably impossible; not +even a college professor is improved by it. The most it can imaginably +impart is that the stripes of a certain sort of tiger run one way and +the stripes of another sort some other way, that hyenas and polecats +smell worse than Greek 'bus boys, that the Latin name of the raccoon +(who was unheard of by the Romans) is _Procyon lotor_. For the +dissemination of such banal knowledge, absurdly emitted and defectively +taken in, the taxpayers of the United States are mulcted in hundreds of +thousands of dollars a year. As well make them pay for teaching +policemen the theory of least squares, or for instructing roosters in +the laying of eggs. + +But zoos, it is argued, are of scientific value. They enable learned men +to study this or that. Again the facts blast the theory. No scientific +discovery of any value whatsoever, even to the animals themselves, has +ever come out of a zoo. The zoo scientist is the old woman of zoology, +and his alleged wisdom is usually exhibited, not in the groves of actual +learning, but in the yellow journals. He is to biology what the late +Camille Flammarion was to astronomy, which is to say, its court jester +and reductio ad absurdum. When he leaps into public notice with some new +pearl of knowledge, it commonly turns out to be no more than the news +that Marie Bashkirtseff, the Russian lady walrus, has had her teeth +plugged with zinc and is expecting twins. Or that Pishposh, the +man-eating alligator, is down with locomotor ataxia. Or that Damon, the +grizzly, has just finished his brother Pythias in the tenth round, +chewing off his tail, nose and remaining ear. + +Science, of course, has its uses for the lower animals. A diligent study +of their livers and lights helps to an understanding of the anatomy and +physiology, and particularly of the pathology, of man. They are +necessary aids in devising and manufacturing many remedial agents, and +in testing the virtues of those already devised; out of the mute agonies +of a rabbit or a calf may come relief for a baby with diphtheria, or +means for an archdeacon to escape the consequences of his youthful +follies. Moreover, something valuable is to be got out of a mere study +of their habits, instincts and ways of mind--knowledge that, by analogy, +may illuminate the parallel doings of the _genus homo_, and so enable us +to comprehend the primitive mental processes of Congressmen, morons and +the rev. clergy. + +But it must be obvious that none of these studies can be made in a zoo. +The zoo animals, to begin with, provide no material for the biologist; +he can find out no more about their insides than what he discerns from a +safe distance and through the bars. He is not allowed to try his germs +and specifics upon them; he is not allowed to vivisect them. If he would +find out what goes on in the animal body under this condition or that, +he must turn from the inhabitants of the zoo to the customary guinea +pigs and street dogs, and buy or steal them for himself. Nor does he get +any chance for profitable inquiry when zoo animals die (usually of lack +of exercise or ignorant doctoring), for their carcasses are not handed +to him for autopsy, but at once stuffed with gypsum and excelsior and +placed in some museum. + +Least of all do zoos produce any new knowledge about animal behavior. +Such knowledge must be got, not from animals penned up and tortured, but +from animals in a state of nature. A college professor studying the +habits of the giraffe, for example, and confining his observations to +specimens in zoos, would inevitably come to the conclusion that the +giraffe is a sedentary and melancholy beast, standing immovable for +hours at a time and employing an Italian to feed him hay and cabbages. +As well proceed to a study of the psychology of a juris-consult by +first immersing him in Sing Sing, or of a juggler by first cutting off +his hands. Knowledge so gained is inaccurate and imbecile knowledge. Not +even a college professor, if sober, would give it any faith and credit. + +There remains, then, the only true utility of a zoo: it is a childish +and pointless show for the unintelligent, in brief, for children, +nursemaids, visiting yokels and the generality of the defective. Should +the taxpayers be forced to sweat millions for such a purpose? I think +not. The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of +monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch +flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be +combatted at the public expense, and not fostered. He is a public +liability and a public menace, and society should seek to improve him. +Instead of that, we spend a lot of money to feed his degrading appetite +and further paralyze his mind. It is precisely as if the community +provided free champagne for dipsomaniacs, or hired lecturers to convert +the army to the doctrines of the Bolsheviki. + +Of the abominable cruelties practised in zoos it is unnecessary to make +mention. Even assuming that all the keepers are men of delicate natures +and ardent zoophiles (which is about as safe as assuming that the +keepers of a prison are all sentimentalists, and weep for the sorrows of +their charges), it must be plain that the work they do involves an +endless war upon the native instincts of the animals, and that they +must thus inflict the most abominable tortures every day. What could be +a sadder sight than a tiger in a cage, save it be a forest monkey +climbing dispairingly up a barked stump, or an eagle chained to its +roost? How can man be benefitted and made better by robbing the seal of +its arctic ice, the hippopotamus of its soft wallow, the buffalo of its +open range, the lion of its kingship, the birds of their air? + +I am no sentimentalist, God knows. I am in favor of vivisection +unrestrained, so long as the vivisectionist knows what he is about. I +advocate clubbing a dog that barks unnecessarily, which all dogs do. I +enjoy hangings, particularly of converts to the evangelical faiths. The +crunch of a cockroach is music to my ears. But when the day comes to +turn the prisoners of the zoo out of their cages, if it is only to lead +them to the swifter, kinder knife of the _schochet_, I shall be present +and rejoicing, and if any one present thinks to suggest that it would be +a good plan to celebrate the day by shooting the whole zoo faculty, I +shall have a revolver in my pocket and a sound eye in my head. + + + + +XXXVII + +ON HEARING MOZART + + +The only permanent values in the world are truth and beauty, and of +these it is probable that truth is lasting only in so far as it is a +function and manifestation of beauty--a projection of feeling in terms +of idea. The world is a charnel house of dead religions. Where are all +the faiths of the middle ages, so complex and yet so precise? But all +that was essential in the beauty of the middle ages still lives.... + +This is the heritage of man, but not of men. The great majority of men +are not even aware of it. Their participation in the progress of the +world, and even in the history of the world, is infinitely remote and +trivial. They live and die, at bottom, as animals live and die. The +human race, as a race, is scarcely cognizant of their existence; they +haven't even definite number, but stand grouped together as _x_, the +quantity unknown ... and not worth knowing. + + + + +XXXVIII + +THE ROAD TO DOUBT + + +The first effect of what used to be called natural philosophy is to fill +its devotee with wonder at the marvels of God. This explains why the +pursuit of science, so long as it remains superficial, is not +incompatible with the most naif sort of religious faith. But the moment +the student of the sciences passes this stage of childlike amazement and +begins to investigate the inner workings of natural phenomena, he begins +to see how ineptly many of them are managed, and so he tends to pass +from awe of the Creator to criticism of the Creator, and once he has +crossed that bridge he has ceased to be a believer. One finds plenty of +neighborhood physicians, amateur botanists, high-school physics teachers +and other such quasi-scientists in the pews on Sunday, but one never +sees a Huxley there, or a Darwin, or an Ehrlich. + + + + +XXXIX + +A NEW USE FOR CHURCHES + + +The argument by design, it may be granted, establishes a reasonable +ground for accepting the existence of God. It makes belief, at all +events, quite as intelligible as unbelief. But when the theologians take +their step from the existence of God to the goodness of God they tread +upon much less firm earth. How can one see any proof of that goodness in +the senseless and intolerable sufferings of man--his helplessness, the +brief and troubled span of his life, the inexplicable disproportion +between his deserts and his rewards, the tragedy of his soaring +aspiration, the worse tragedy of his dumb questioning? Granting the +existence of God, a house dedicated to Him naturally follows. He is +all-important; it is fit that man should take some notice of Him. But +why praise and flatter Him for His unspeakable cruelties? Why forget so +supinely His failures to remedy the easily remediable? Why, indeed, +devote the churches exclusively to worship? Why not give them over, now +and then, to justifiable indignation meetings? + +Perhaps men will incline to this idea later on. It is not inconceivable, +indeed, that religion will one day cease to be a poltroonish +acquiescence and become a vigorous and insistent criticism. If God can +hear a petition, what ground is there for holding that He would not hear +a complaint? It might, indeed, please Him to find His creatures grown +so self-reliant and reflective. More, it might even help Him to get +through His infinitely complex and difficult work. Theology has already +moved toward such notions. It has abandoned the primitive doctrine of +God's arbitrariness and indifference, and substituted the doctrine that +He is willing, and even eager, to hear the desires of His creatures--_i. +e._, their private notions, born of experience, as to what would be best +for them. Why assume that those notions would be any the less worth +hearing and heeding if they were cast in the form of criticism, and even +of denunciation? Why hold that the God who can understand and forgive +even treason could not understand and forgive remonstrance? + + + + +XL + +THE ROOT OF RELIGION + + +The idea of literal truth crept into religion relatively late: it is the +invention of lawyers, priests and cheese-mongers. The idea of mystery +long preceded it, and at the heart of that idea of mystery was an idea +of beauty--that is, an idea that this or that view of the celestial and +infernal process presented a satisfying picture of form, rhythm and +organization. Once this view was adopted as satisfying, its professional +interpreters and their dupes sought to reinforce it by declaring it +true. The same flow of reasoning is familiar on lower planes. The +average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is +true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it. + + + + +XLI + +FREE WILL + + +Free will, it appears, is still a Christian dogma. Without it the +cruelties of God would strain faith to the breaking-point. But outside +the fold it is gradually falling into decay. Such men of science as +George W. Crile and Jacques Loeb have dealt it staggering blows, and +among laymen of inquiring mind it seems to be giving way to an +apologetic sort of determinism--a determinism, one may say, tempered by +defective observation. The late Mark Twain, in his secret heart, was +such a determinist. In his "What Is Man?" you will find him at his +farewells to libertarianism. The vast majority of our acts, he argues, +are determined, but there remains a residuum of free choices. Here we +stand free of compulsion and face a pair or more of alternatives, and +are free to go this way or that. + +A pillow for free will to fall upon--but one loaded with disconcerting +brickbats. Where the occupants of this last trench of libertarianism err +is in their assumption that the pulls of their antagonistic impulses are +exactly equal--that the individual is absolutely free to choose which +one he will yield to. Such freedom, in practise, is never encountered. +When an individual confronts alternatives, it is not alone his volition +that chooses between them, but also his environment, his inherited +prejudices, his race, his color, his condition of servitude. I may kiss +a girl or I may not kiss her, but surely it would be absurd to say that +I am, in any true sense, a free agent in the matter. The world has even +put my helplessness into a proverb. It says that my decision and act +depend upon the time, the place--and even to some extent, upon the girl. + +Examples might be multiplied _ad infinitum_. I can scarcely remember +performing a wholly voluntary act. My whole life, as I look back upon +it, seems to be a long series of inexplicable accidents, not only quite +unavoidable, but even quite unintelligible. Its history is the history +of the reactions of my personality to my environment, of my behavior +before external stimuli. I have been no more responsible for that +personality than I have been for that environment. To say that I can +change the former by a voluntary effort is as ridiculous as to say that +I can modify the curvature of the lenses of my eyes. I know, because I +have often tried to change it, and always failed. Nevertheless, it has +changed. I am not the same man I was in the last century. But the +gratifying improvements so plainly visible are surely not to be credited +to me. All of them came from without--or from unplumbable and +uncontrollable depths within. + +The more the matter is examined the more the residuum of free will +shrinks and shrinks, until in the end it is almost impossible to find +it. A great many men, of course, looking at themselves, see it as +something very large; they slap their chests and call themselves free +agents, and demand that God reward them for their virtue. But these +fellows are simply idiotic egoists, devoid of a critical sense. They +mistake the acts of God for their own acts. Of such sort are the +coxcombs who boast about wooing and winning their wives. They are +brothers to the fox who boasted that he had made the hounds run.... + +The throwing overboard of free will is commonly denounced on the ground +that it subverts morality and makes of religion a mocking. Such pious +objections, of course, are foreign to logic, but nevertheless it may be +well to give a glance to this one. It is based upon the fallacious +hypothesis that the determinist escapes, or hopes to escape, the +consequences of his acts. Nothing could be more untrue. Consequences +follow acts just as relentlessly if the latter be involuntary as if they +be voluntary. If I rob a bank of my free choice or in response to some +unfathomable inner necessity, it is all one; I will go to the same jail. +Conscripts in war are killed just as often as volunteers. Men who are +tracked down and shanghaied by their wives have just as hard a time of +it as men who walk fatuously into the trap by formally proposing. + +Even on the ghostly side, determinism does not do much damage to +theology. It is no harder to believe that a man will be damned for his +involuntary acts than it is to believe that he will be damned for his +voluntary acts, for even the supposition that he is wholly free does not +dispose of the massive fact that God made him as he is, and that God +could have made him a saint if He had so desired. To deny this is to +flout omnipotence--a crime at which, as I have often said, I balk. But +here I begin to fear that I wade too far into the hot waters of the +sacred sciences, and that I had better retire before I lose my hide. +This prudent retirement is purely deterministic. I do not ascribe it to +my own sagacity; I ascribe it wholly to that singular kindness which +fate always shows me. If I were free I'd probably keep on, and then +regret it afterward. + + + + +XLII + +QUID EST VERITAS? + + +All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a +dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African +bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and +intent of God exactly and completely. "For who hath known the mind of +the Lord?" asked Paul of the Romans. "How unsearchable are his +judgments, and his ways past finding out!" "It is the glory of God," +said Solomon, "to conceal a thing." "Clouds and darkness," said David, +"are around him." "No man," said the Preacher, "can find out the work of +God." ... The difference between religions is a difference in their +relative content of agnosticism. The most satisfying and ecstatic faith +is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to +know at all. + + + + +XLIII + +THE DOUBTER'S REWARD + + +Despite the common delusion to the contrary the philosophy of doubt is +far more comforting than that of hope. The doubter escapes the worst +penalty of the man of hope; he is never disappointed, and hence never +indignant. The inexplicable and irremediable may interest him, but they +do not enrage him, or, I may add, fool him. This immunity is worth all +the dubious assurances ever foisted upon man. It is pragmatically +impregnable.... Moreover, it makes for tolerance and sympathy. The +doubter does not hate his opponents; he sympathizes with them. In the +end, he may even come to sympathize with God.... The old idea of +fatherhood here submerges in a new idea of brotherhood. God, too, is +beset by limitations, difficulties, broken hopes. Is it disconcerting to +think of Him thus? Well, is it any the less disconcerting to think of +Him as able to ease and answer, and yet failing?... + +But he that doubteth--_damnatus est_. At once the penalty of doubt--and +its proof, excuse and genesis. + + + + +XLIV + +BEFORE THE ALTAR + + +A salient objection to the prevailing religious ceremonial lies in the +attitudes of abasement that it enforces upon the faithful. A man would +be thought a slimy and knavish fellow if he approached any human judge +or potentate in the manner provided for approaching the Lord God. It is +an etiquette that involves loss of self-respect, and hence it cannot be +pleasing to its object, for one cannot think of the Lord God as +sacrificing decent feelings to mere vanity. This notion of abasement, +like most of the other ideas that are general in the world, is obviously +the invention of small and ignoble men. It is the pollution of theology +by the _sklavmoral_. + + + + +XLV + +THE MASK + + +Ritual is to religion what the music of an opera is to the libretto: +ostensibly a means of interpretation, but actually a means of +concealment. The Presbyterians made the mistake of keeping the doctrine +of infant damnation in plain words. As enlightenment grew in the +world, intelligence and prudery revolted against it, and so it had +to be abandoned. Had it been set to music it would have +survived--uncomprehended, unsuspected and unchallenged. + + + + +XLVI + +PIA VENEZIANI, POI CRISTIANI + + +I have spoken of the possibility that God, too, may suffer from a finite +intelligence, and so know the bitter sting of disappointment and defeat. +Here I yielded something to politeness; the thing is not only possible, +but obvious. Like man, God is deceived by appearances and probabilities; +He makes calculations that do not work out; He falls into specious +assumptions. For example, He assumed that Adam and Eve would obey the +law in the Garden. Again, He assumed that the appalling lesson of the +Flood would make men better. Yet again, He assumed that men would always +put religion in first place among their concerns--that it would be +eternally possible to reach and influence them through it. This last +assumption was the most erroneous of them all. The truth is that the +generality of men have long since ceased to take religion seriously. +When we encounter one who still does so, he seems eccentric, almost +feeble-minded--or, more commonly, a rogue who has been deluded by his +own hypocrisy. Even men who are professionally religious, and who thus +have far more incentive to stick to religion than the rest of us, nearly +always throw it overboard at the first serious temptation. During the +past four years, for example, Christianity has been in combat with +patriotism all over Christendom. Which has prevailed? How many gentlemen +of God, having to choose between Christ and Patrie, have actually chosen +Christ? + + + + +XLVII + +OFF AGAIN, ON AGAIN + + +The ostensible object of the Reformation, which lately reached its +fourth centenary, was to purge the Church of imbecilities. That object +was accomplished; the Church shook them off. But imbecilities make an +irresistible appeal to man; he inevitably tries to preserve them by +cloaking them with religious sanctions. The result is Protestantism. + + + + +XLVIII + +THEOLOGY + + +The notion that theology is a dull subject is one of the strangest +delusions of a stupid and uncritical age. The truth is that some of the +most engrossing books ever written in the world are full of it. For +example, the Gospel according to St. Luke. For example, Nietzsche's "Der +Antichrist." For example, Mark Twain's "What Is Man?", St. Augustine's +Confessions, Haeckel's "The Riddle of the Universe," and Huxley's +Essays. How, indeed, could a thing be dull that has sent hundreds of +thousands of men--the very best and the very worst of the race--to the +gallows and the stake, and made and broken dynasties, and inspired the +greatest of human hopes and enterprises, and embroiled whole continents +in war? No, theology is not a soporific. The reason it so often seems so +is that its public exposition has chiefly fallen, in these later days, +into the hands of a sect of intellectual castrati, who begin by +mistaking it for a sub-department of etiquette, and then proceed to +anoint it with butter, rose water and talcum powder. Whenever a +first-rate intellect tackles it, as in the case of Huxley, or in that of +Leo XIII., it at once takes on all the sinister fascination it had in +Luther's day. + + + + +XLIX + +EXEMPLI GRATIA + + +Do I let the poor suffer, and consign them, as old Friedrich used to +say, to statistics and the devil? Well, so does God. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Damn!, by Henry Louis Mencken + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAMN! *** + +***** This file should be named 18948-8.txt or 18948-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/9/4/18948/ + +Produced by Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://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. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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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: Damn! + A Book of Calumny + +Author: Henry Louis Mencken + +Release Date: July 31, 2006 [EBook #18948] +[Last updated: December 20, 2014] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAMN! *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + + + + + <h1>DAMN!<br /><br /></h1> + + <h2>A BOOK OF CALUMNY<br /><br /></h2> + + <h3>BY H. L. MENCKEN<br /><br /></h3> + + <p class='center'><i>Third Printing</i></p> + + <p class='center'>PHILIP GOODMAN COMPANY<br /> + NEW YORK NINETEEN EIGHTEEN</p> + + <p class='center'>COPYRIGHT 1918 BY<br /> + PHILIP GOODMAN COMPANY</p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + + +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" width="65%" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents"> +<tr><td align='right'>I</td><td align='left'>Pater Patriæ</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_7'><b>7</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>II</td><td align='left'>The Reward of the Artist</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_9'><b>9</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>III</td><td align='left'>The Heroic Considered</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_10'><b>10</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>IV</td><td align='left'>The Burden of Humor</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_11'><b>11</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>V</td><td align='left'>The Saving Grace</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_13'><b>13</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>VI</td><td align='left'>Moral Indignation</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_14'><b>14</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>VII</td><td align='left'>Stable-Names</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_17'><b>17</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>VIII</td><td align='left'>The Jews</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_19'><b>19</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>IX</td><td align='left'>The Comstockian Premiss</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_22'><b>22</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>X</td><td align='left'>The Labial Infamy</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_23'><b>23</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XI</td><td align='left'>A True Ascetic</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_28'><b>28</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XII</td><td align='left'>On Lying</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_30'><b>30</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XIII</td><td align='left'>History</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_32'><b>32</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XIV</td><td align='left'>The Curse of Civilization</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_34'><b>34</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XV</td><td align='left'>Eugenics</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_35'><b>35</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XVI</td><td align='left'>The Jocose Gods</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_37'><b>37</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XVII</td><td align='left'>War</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_38'><b>38</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XVIII</td><td align='left'>Moralist and Artist</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_39'><b>39</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XIX</td><td align='left'>Actors</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_40'><b>40</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XX</td><td align='left'>The Crowd</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_45'><b>45</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXI</td><td align='left'>An American Philosopher</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_48'><b>48</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXII</td><td align='left'>Clubs</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_49'><b>49</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXIII</td><td align='left'>Fidelis ad Urnum</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_50'><b>50</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXIV</td><td align='left'>A Theological Mystery</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_52'><b>52</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXV</td><td align='left'>The Test of Truth</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_53'><b>53</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXVI</td><td align='left'>Literary Indecencies</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_54'><b>54</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXVII</td><td align='left'>Virtuous Vandalism</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_55'><b>55</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXVIII</td><td align='left'>A Footnote on the Duel of Sex</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_60'><b>60</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXIX</td><td align='left'>Alcohol</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_64'><b>64</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXX</td><td align='left'>Thoughts on the Voluptuous</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_67'><b>67</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXXI</td><td align='left'>The Holy Estate</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_69'><b>69</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXXII</td><td align='left'>Dichtung und Wahrheit</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_70'><b>70</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXXIII</td><td align='left'>Wild Shots</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_71'><b>71</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXXIV</td><td align='left'>Beethoven</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_73'><b>73</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXXV</td><td align='left'>The Tone Art</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_75'><b>75</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXXVI</td><td align='left'>Zoos</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_80'><b>80</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXXVII</td><td align='left'>On Hearing Mozart</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_86'><b>86</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXXVIII</td><td align='left'>The Road to Doubt</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_87'><b>87</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XXXIX</td><td align='left'>A New Use for Churches</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_88'><b>88</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XL</td><td align='left'>The Root of Religion</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_90'><b>90</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XLI</td><td align='left'>Free Will</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_91'><b>91</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XLII</td><td align='left'>Quid est Veritas?</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_95'><b>95</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XLIII</td><td align='left'>The Doubter's Reward</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_96'><b>96</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XLIV</td><td align='left'>Before the Altar</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_97'><b>97</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XLV</td><td align='left'>The Mask</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_98'><b>98</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XLVI</td><td align='left'>Pia Veneziani, poi Cristiani</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_99'><b>99</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XLVII</td><td align='left'>Off Again, On Again</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_101'><b>101</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XLVIII</td><td align='left'>Theology</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_102'><b>102</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XLIX</td><td align='left'>Exemplia Gratia</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_103'><b>103</b></a></td></tr> +</table> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><br /><br /></p> +<h2>DAMN! A BOOK OF CALUMNY</h2> +<p><br /><br /></p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>I.</h2> + +<h3>PATER PATRIÆ</h3> + + +<p>If George Washington were alive today, what a shining mark he would be +for the whole camorra of uplifters, forward-lookers and professional +patriots! He was the Rockefeller of his time, the richest man in the +United States, a promoter of stock companies, a land-grabber, an +exploiter of mines and timber. He was a bitter opponent of foreign +alliances, and denounced their evils in harsh, specific terms. He had a +liking for all forthright and pugnacious men, and a contempt for +lawyers, schoolmasters and all other such obscurantists. He was not +pious. He drank whisky whenever he felt chilly, and kept a jug of it +handy. He knew far more profanity than Scripture, and used and enjoyed +it more. He had no belief in the infallible wisdom of the common people, +but regarded them as inflammatory dolts, and tried to save the republic +from them. He advocated no sure cure for all the sorrows of the world, +and doubted that such a panacea existed. He took no interest in the +private morals of his neighbors.</p> + +<p>Inhabiting These States today, George would be ineligible for any office +of honor or profit. The Senate would never dare confirm him; the +President would not think of nominating him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> He would be on trial in +all the yellow journals for belonging to the Invisible Government, the +Hell Hounds of Plutocracy, the Money Power, the Interests. The Sherman +Act would have him in its toils; he would be under indictment by every +grand jury south of the Potomac; the triumphant prohibitionists of his +native state would be denouncing him (he had a still at Mount Vernon) as +a debaucher of youth, a recruiting officer for insane asylums, a +poisoner of the home. The suffragettes would be on his trail, with +sentinels posted all along the Accotink road. The initiators and +referendors would be bawling for his blood. The young college men of the +<i>Nation</i> and the <i>New Republic</i> would be lecturing him weekly. He would +be used to scare children in Kansas and Arkansas. The chautauquas would +shiver whenever his name was mentioned....</p> + +<p>And what a chance there would be for that ambitious young district +attorney who thought to shadow him on his peregrinations—and grab him +under the Mann Act!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>II</h2> + +<h3>THE REWARD OF THE ARTIST</h3> + + +<p>A man labors and fumes for a whole year to write a symphony in G minor. +He puts enormous diligence into it, and much talent, and maybe no little +downright genius. It draws his blood and wrings his soul. He dies in it +that he may live again.... Nevertheless, its final value, in the open +market of the world, is a great deal less than that of a fur overcoat, +half a Rolls-Royce automobile, or a handful of authentic hair from the +whiskers of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>III</h2> + +<h3>THE HEROIC CONSIDERED</h3> + + +<p>For humility and poverty, in themselves, the world has little liking and +less respect. In the folk-lore of all races, despite the +sentimentalization of abasement for dramatic effect, it is always power +and grandeur that count in the end. The whole point of the story of +Cinderella, the most widely and constantly charming of all stories, is +that the Fairy Prince lifts Cinderella above her cruel sisters and +stepmother, and so enables her to lord it over them. The same idea +underlies practically all other folk-stories: the essence of each of +them is to be found in the ultimate triumph and exaltation of its +protagonist. And of the real men and women of history, the most +venerated and envied are those whose early humiliations were but +preludes to terminal glories; for example, Lincoln, Whittington, +Franklin, Columbus, Demosthenes, Frederick the Great, Catherine, Mary of +Magdala, Moses. Even the Man of Sorrows, cradled in a manger and done to +death between two thieves, is seen, as we part from Him at last, in a +situation of stupendous magnificence, with infinite power in His hands. +Even the Beatitudes, in the midst of their eloquent counselling of +renunciation, give it unimaginable splendor as its reward. The meek +shall inherit—what? The whole earth! And the poor in spirit? They shall +sit upon the right hand of God!...<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IV</h2> + +<h3>THE BURDEN OF HUMOR</h3> + + +<p>What is the origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so +dangerous, if you would keep the public confidence, to make the public +laugh? Is it because humor and sound sense are essentially antagonistic? +Has humanity found by experience that the man who sees the fun of life +is unfitted to deal sanely with its problems? I think not. No man had +more of the comic spirit in him than William Shakespeare, and yet his +serious reflections, by the sheer force of their sublime obviousness, +have pushed their way into the race's arsenal of immortal platitudes. +So, too, with Aesop, and with Balzac, and with Dickens, to come down the +scale. All of these men were fundamentally humorists, and yet all of +them achieved what the race has come to accept as a penetrating +sagacity. Contrariwise, many a haloed pundit has had his occasional +guffaw. Lincoln, had there been no Civil War, might have survived in +history chiefly as the father of the American smutty story—the only +original art-form that America has yet contributed to literature. +Huxley, had he not been the greatest intellectual duellist of his age, +might have been its greatest satirist. Bismarck, pursuing the gruesome +trade of politics, concealed the devastating wit of a Molière; his +surviving epigrams are truly stupendous. And Beethoven, after soaring to +the heights of tragedy in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> first movement of the Fifth Symphony, +turned to the sardonic bull-fiddling of the <i>scherzo</i>.</p> + +<p>No, there is not the slightest disharmony between sense and nonsense, +humor and respectability, despite the skittish tendency to assume that +there is. But, why, then, that widespread error? What actual fact of +life lies behind it, giving it a specious appearance of reasonableness? +None other, I am convinced, than the fact that the average man is far +too stupid to make a joke. He may <i>see</i> a joke and <i>love</i> a joke, +particularly when it floors and flabbergasts some person he dislikes, +but the only way he can himself take part in the priming and pointing of +a new one is by acting as its target. In brief, his personal contact +with humor tends to fill him with an accumulated sense of disadvantage, +of pricked complacency, of sudden and crushing defeat; and so, by an +easy psychological process, he is led into the idea that the thing +itself is incompatible with true dignity of character and intellect. +Hence his deep suspicion of jokers, however adept their thrusts. "What a +damned fool!"—this same half-pitying tribute he pays to wit and butt +alike. He cannot separate the virtuoso of comedy from his general +concept of comedy itself, and that concept is inextricably mingled with +memories of foul ambuscades and mortifying hurts. And so it is not often +that he is willing to admit any wisdom in a humorist, or to condone +frivolity in a sage.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>V</h2> + +<h3>THE SAVING GRACE</h3> + + +<p>Let us not burn the universities—yet. After all, the damage they do +might be worse.... Suppose Oxford had snared and disemboweled +Shakespeare! Suppose Harvard had set its stamp upon Mark Twain!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VI</h2> + +<h3>MORAL INDIGNATION</h3> + + +<p>The loud, preposterous moral crusades that so endlessly rock the +republic—against the rum demon, against Sunday baseball, against Sunday +moving-pictures, against dancing, against fornication, against the +cigarette, against all things sinful and charming—these astounding +Methodist jehads offer fat clinical material to the student of +mobocracy. In the long run, nearly all of them must succeed, for the mob +is eternally virtuous, and the only thing necessary to get it in favor +of some new and super-oppressive law is to convince it that that law +will be distasteful to the minority that it envies and hates. The poor +numskull who is so horribly harrowed by Puritan pulpit-thumpers that he +can't go to a ball game on Sunday afternoon without dreaming of hell and +the devil all Sunday night is naturally envious of the fellow who can, +and being envious of him, he hates him and is eager to destroy his +offensive happiness. The farmer who works 18 hours a day and never gets +a day off is envious of his farmhand who goes to the crossroads and +barrels up on Saturday afternoon; hence the virulence of prohibition +among the peasantry. The hard-working householder who, on some bitter +evening, glances over the <i>Saturday Evening Post</i> for a square and +honest look at his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> wife is envious of those gaudy drummers who go +gallivanting about the country with scarlet girls; hence the Mann act. +If these deviltries were equally open to all men, and all men were +equally capable of appreciating them, their unpopularity would tend to +wither.</p> + +<p>I often think, indeed, that the prohibitionist tub-thumpers make a +tactical mistake in dwelling too much upon the evils and horrors of +alcohol, and not enough upon its delights. A few enlarged photographs of +first-class bar-rooms, showing the rows of well-fed, well-dressed +<i>bibuli</i> happily moored to the brass rails, their noses in fragrant mint +and hops and their hands reaching out for free rations of olives, +pretzels, cloves, pumpernickle, Bismarck herring, anchovies, +<i>schwartenmagen</i>, wieners, Smithfield ham and dill pickles—such a +gallery of contentment would probably do far more execution among the +dismal <i>shudra</i> than all the current portraits of drunkards' livers. To +vote for prohibition in the face of the liver portraits means to vote +for the good of the other fellow, for even the oldest bibulomaniac +always thinks that he himself will escape. This is an act of altruism +almost impossible to the mob-man, whose selfishness is but little +corrupted by the imagination that shows itself in his betters. His most +austere renunciations represent no more than a matching of the joys of +indulgence against the pains of hell; religion, to him, is little more +than synthesized fear.... I ven<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>ture that many a vote for prohibition +comes from gentlemen who look longingly through swinging doors—and pass +on in propitiation of Satan and their alert consorts, the lake of +brimstone and the corrective broomstick....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VII</h2> + +<h3>STABLE-NAMES</h3> + + +<p>Why doesn't some patient drudge of a <i>privat dozent</i> compile a +dictionary of the stable-names of the great? All show dogs and race +horses, as everyone knows, have stable-names. On the list of entries a +fast mare may appear as Czarina Ogla Fedorovna, but in the stable she is +not that at all, nor even Czarina or Olga, but maybe Lil or Jennie. And +a prize bulldog, Champion Zoroaster or Charlemagne XI. on the bench, may +be plain Jack or Ponto <i>en famille</i>. So with celebrities of the <i>genus +homo</i>. Huxley's official style and appellation was "The Right Hon. +Thomas Henry Huxley, P. C., M. D., Ph. D., LL. D., D. C. L., D. Sc., F. +R. S.," and his biographer tells us that he delighted in its rolling +grandeur—but to his wife he was always Hal. Shakespeare, to his fellows +of his Bankside, was Will, and perhaps Willie to Ann Hathaway. The +Kaiser is another Willie: the late Czar so addressed him in their famous +exchange of telegrams. The Czar himself was Nicky in those days, and no +doubt remains Nicky to his intimates today. Edgar Allan Poe was always +Eddie to his wife, and Mark Twain was always Youth to his. P. T. +Barnum's stable-name was Taylor, his middle name; Charles Lamb's was +Guy; Nietzsche's was Fritz; Whistler's was Jimmie; the late King +Edward's was Bertie;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> Grover Cleveland's was Steve; J. Pierpont Morgan's +was Jack; Dr. Wilson's is Tom.</p> + +<p>Some given names are surrounded by a whole flotilla of stable-names. +Henry, for example, is softened variously into Harry, Hen, Hank, Hal, +Henny, Enery, On'ry and Heinie. Which did Ann Boleyn use when she cooed +into the suspicious ear of Henry VIII.? To which did Henrik Ibsen answer +at the domestic hearth? It is difficult to imagine his wife calling him +Henrik: the name is harsh, clumsy, razor-edged. But did she make it Hen +or Rik, or neither? What was Bismarck to the Fürstin, and to the mother +he so vastly feared? Ottchen? Somehow it seems impossible. What was +Grant to his wife? Surely not Ulysses! And Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? And +Rutherford B. Hayes? Was Robert Browning ever Bob? Was John Wesley ever +Jack? Was Emmanuel Swendenborg ever Manny? Was Tadeusz Kosciusko ever +Teddy?</p> + +<p>A fair field of inquiry invites. Let some laborious assistant professor +explore and chart it. There will be more of human nature in his report +than in all the novels ever written.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>VIII</h2> + +<h3>THE JEWS</h3> + + +<p>The Jews, like the Americans, labor under a philosophical dualism, and +in both cases it is a theological heritage. On the one hand there is the +idealism that is lovely and uplifting and will get a man into heaven, +and on the other hand there is the realism that works. The fact that the +Jews cling to both, thus running, as it were, upon two tracks, is what +makes them so puzzling, now and then, to the <i>goyim</i>. In one aspect they +stand for the most savage practicality; in another aspect they are +dreamers of an almost fabulous other-worldiness. My own belief is that +the essential Jew is the idealist—that his occasional flashing of hyena +teeth is no more than a necessary concession to the harsh demands of the +struggle for existence. Perhaps, in many cases, it is due to an actual +corruption of blood. The Jews come from the Levant, and their women were +exposed for many centuries to the admiration of Greek, Arab and +Armenian. The shark that a Jew can be at his worst is simply a Greek or +Armenian at his best.</p> + +<p>As a statement of post-mortem and super-terrestrial fact, the religion +that the Jews have foisted upon the world seems to me to be as vast a +curse as the influenza that we inherit from the Tatars or the democratic +fallacies set afloat by the French Revolution. The one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> thing that can +be said in favor of it is that it is not true, and yet we suffer from it +almost as much as if it were true. But with it, encasing it and +preserving it, there has come something that is positively +valuable—something, indeed, that is beyond all price—and that is +Jewish poetry. To compare it to the poetry of any other race is wholly +impossible; it stands completely above all the rest; it is as far beyond +the next best as German music is beyond French music, or French painting +beyond English painting, or the English drama beyond the Italian drama. +There are single chapters in the Old Testament that are worth all the +poetry ever written in the New World and nine-tenths of that written in +the Old. The Jews of those ancient days had imagination, they had +dignity, they had ears for sweet sound, they had, above all, the faculty +of grandeur. The stupendous music that issued from them has swept their +barbaric demonology along with it, setting at naught the collective +intelligence of the human species; they embalmed their idiotic taboos +and fetishes in undying strains, and so gave them some measure of the +same immortality. A race of lawgivers? Bosh! Leviticus is as archaic as +the Code of Manu, and the Decalogue is a fossil. A race of seers? Bosh +again! The God they saw survives only as a bogey-man, a theory, an +uneasy and vexatious ghost. A race of traders and sharpers? Bosh a third +time! The Jews are as poor as the Spaniards. But a race<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> of poets, my +lords, a race of poets! It is a vision of beauty that has ever haunted +them. And it has been their destiny to transmit that vision, enfeebled, +perhaps, but still distinct, to other and lesser peoples, that life +might be made softer for the sons of men, and the goodness of the Lord +God—whoever He may be—might not be forgotten.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>IX</h2> + +<h3>THE COMSTOCKIAN PREMISS</h3> + + +<p>It is argued against certain books, by virtuosi of moral alarm, that +they depict vice as attractive. This recalls the king who hanged a judge +for deciding that an archbishop was a mammal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>X</h2> + +<h3>THE LABIAL INFAMY</h3> + + +<p>After five years of search I have been able to discover but one book in +English upon the art of kissing, and that is a very feeble treatise by a +savant of York, Pa., Dr. R. McCormick Sturgeon. There may be others, but +I have been quite unable to find them. Kissing, for all one hears of it, +has not attracted the scientists and literati; one compares its meagre +literature with the endless books upon the other phenomena of love, +especially divorce and obstetrics. Even Dr. Sturgeon, pioneering +bravely, is unable to get beyond a sentimental and trivial view of the +thing he vivisects, and so his book is no more than a compendium of +mush. His very description of the act of kissing is made up of sonorous +gabble about heaving bosoms, red lips, electric sparks and such-like +imaginings. What reason have we for believing, as he says, that the +lungs are "strongly expanded" during the act? My own casual observation +inclines me to hold that the opposite is true, that the lungs are +actually collapsed in a pseudo-asthmatic spasm. Again, what is the +ground for arguing that the lips are "full, ripe and red?" The real +effect of the emotions that accompany kissing is to empty the +superficial capillaries and so produce a leaden pallor. As for such +salient symptoms as the temperature, the pulse and the rate of +respiration, the learned pundit passes them over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> without a word. Mrs. +Elsie Clews Parsons would be a good one to write a sober and accurate +treatise upon kissing. Her books upon "The Family" and "Fear and +Conventionality" indicate her possession of the right sort of learning. +Even better would be a work by Havelock Ellis, say, in three or four +volumes. Ellis has devoted his whole life to illuminating the mysteries +of sex, and his collection of materials is unsurpassed in the world. +Surely there must be an enormous mass of instructive stuff about kissing +in his card indexes, letter files, book presses and archives.</p> + +<p>Just why the kiss as we know it should have attained to its present +popularity in Christendom is probably one of the things past finding +out. The Japanese, a very affectionate and sentimental people, do not +practise kissing in any form; they regard the act, in fact, with an +aversion matching our own aversion to the rubbing of noses. Nor is it in +vogue among the Moslems, nor among the Chinese, who countenance it only +as between mother and child. Even in parts of Christendom it is girt +about by rigid taboos, so that its practise tends to be restricted to a +few occasions. Two Frenchmen or Italians, when they meet, kiss each +other on both cheeks. One used to see, indeed, many pictures of General +Joffre thus bussing the heroes of Verdun; there even appeared in print a +story to the effect that one of them objected to the scratching of his +moustache. But imagine two<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> Englishmen kissing! Or two Germans! As well +imagined the former kissing the latter! Such a display of affection is +simply impossible to men of Northern blood; they would die with shame if +caught at it. The Englishman, like the American, never kisses if he can +help it. He even regards it as bad form to kiss his wife in a railway +station, or, in fact, anywhere in sight of a third party. The Latin has +no such compunctions. He leaps to the business regardless of place or +time; his sole concern is with the lady. Once, in driving from Nice to +Monte Carlo along the lower Corniche road, I passed a hundred or so open +taxicabs containing man and woman, and fully 75 per cent. of the men had +their arms around their companions, and were kissing them. These were +not peasants, remember, but well-to-do persons. In England such a scene +would have caused a great scandal; in most American States the police +would have charged the offenders with drawn revolvers.</p> + +<p>The charm of kissing is one of the things I have always wondered at. I +do not pretend, of course, that I have never done it; mere politeness +forces one to it; there are women who sulk and grow bellicose unless one +at least makes the motions of kissing them. But what I mean is that I +have never found the act a tenth part as agreeable as poets, the authors +of musical comedy librettos, and (on the contrary side) chaperones and +the <i>gendarmerie</i> make it out. The physical sensation, far from being +pleasant, is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> intensely uncomfortable—the suspension of respiration, +indeed, quickly resolves itself into a feeling of suffocation—and the +posture necessitated by the approximation of lips and lips is +unfailingly a constrained and ungraceful one. Theoretically, a man +kisses a woman perpendicularly, with their eyes, those "windows of the +soul," synchronizing exactly. But actually, on account of the +incompressibility of the nasal cartilages, he has to incline either his +or her head to an angle of at least 60 degrees, and the result is that +his right eye gazes insanely at the space between her eyebrows, while +his left eye is fixed upon some vague spot behind her. An instantaneous +photograph of such a maneuvre, taken at the moment of incidence, would +probably turn the stomach of even the most romantic man, and force him, +in sheer self-respect, to renounce kissing as he has renounced leap-frog +and walking on stilts. Only a woman (for women are quite devoid of +aesthetic feeling) could survive so damning a picture.</p> + +<p>But the most embarrassing moment, in kissing, does not come during the +actual kiss (for at that time the sensation of suffocation drives out +all purely psychical feelings), but immediately afterward. What is one +to say to the woman then? The occasion obviously demands some sort of +remark. One has just received (in theory) a great boon; the silence +begins to make itself felt; there stands the fair one, obviously +waiting. Is one to thank her? Cer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>tainly that would be too transparent a +piece of hypocrisy, too flaccid a banality. Is one to tell her that one +loves her? Obviously, there is danger in such assurances, and beside, +one usually doesn't, and a lie is a lie. Or is one to descend to chatty +commonplaces—about the weather, literature, politics, the war? The +practical impossibility of solving the problem leads almost inevitably +to a blunder far worse than any merely verbal one: one kisses her again, +and then again, and so on, and so on. The ultimate result is satiety, +repugnance, disgust; even the girl herself gets enough.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XI</h2> + +<h3>A TRUE ASCETIC</h3> + + +<p>Herbert Spencer's objection to swearing, of which so much has been made +by moralists, was not an objection to its sinfulness but an objection to +its charm. In brief, he feared comfort, satisfaction, joy. The boarding +houses in which he dragged out his gray years were as bare and cheerless +as so many piano boxes. He avoided all the little vices and dissipations +which make human existence bearable: good eating, good drinking, +dancing, tobacco, poker, poetry, the theatre, personal adornment, +philandering, adultery. He was insanely suspicious of everything that +threatened to interfere with his work. Even when that work halted him by +the sheer agony of its monotony, and it became necessary for him to find +recreation, he sought out some recreation that was as unattractive as +possible, in the hope that it would quickly drive him back to work +again. Having to choose between methods of locomotion on his holidays, +he chose going afoot, the most laborious and least satisfying available. +Brought to bay by his human need for a woman, he directed his fancy +toward George Eliot, probably the most unappetizing woman of his race +and time. Drawn irresistibly to music, he avoided the Fifth Symphony and +"Tristan und Isolde," and joined a crowd of old maids singing part songs +around a cottage piano. John Tyndall saw clearly the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> effect of all this +and protested against it, saying, "He'd be a much nicer fellow if he had +a good swear now and then"—<i>i. e.</i>, if he let go now and then, if he +yielded to his healthy human instincts now and then, if he went on some +sort of debauch now and then. But what Tyndall overlooked was the fact +that the meagreness of his recreations was the very element that +attracted Spencer to them. Obsessed by the fear—and it turned out to be +well-grounded—that he would not live long enough to complete his work, +he regarded all joy as a temptation, a corruption, a sin of scarlet. He +was a true ascetic. He could sacrifice all things of the present for one +thing of the future, all things real for one thing ideal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XII</h2> + +<h3>ON LYING</h3> + + +<p>Lying stands on a different plane from all other moral offenses, not +because it is intrinsically more heinous or less heinous, but simply +because it is the only one that may be accurately measured. Forgetting +unwitting error, which has nothing to do with morals, a statement is +either true or not true. This is a simple distinction and relatively +easy to establish. But when one comes to other derelictions the thing +grows more complicated. The line between stealing and not stealing is +beautifully vague; whether or not one has crossed it is not determined +by the objective act, but by such delicate things as motive and purpose. +So again, with assault, sex offenses, and even murder; there may be +surrounding circumstances which greatly condition the moral quality of +the actual act. But lying is specific, exact, scientific. Its capacity +for precise determination, indeed, makes its presence or non-presence +the only accurate gauge of other immoral acts. Murder, for example, is +nowhere regarded as immoral save it involve some repudiation of a social +compact, of a tacit promise to refrain from it—in brief, some deceit, +some perfidy, some lie. One may kill freely when the pact is formally +broken, as in war. One may kill equally freely when it is broken by the +victim, as in an assault by a highwayman. But one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> may not kill so long +as it is not broken, and one may not break it to clear the way. Some +form of lie is at the bottom of all other recognized crimes, from +seduction to embezzlement. Curiously enough, this master immorality of +them all is not prohibited by the Ten Commandments, nor is it penalized, +in its pure form, by the code of any civilized nation. Only savages have +laws against lying <i>per se</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XIII</h2> + +<h3>HISTORY</h3> + + +<p>It is the misfortune of humanity that its history is chiefly written by +third-rate men. The first-rate man seldom has any impulse to record and +philosophise; his impulse is to act; life, to him, is an adventure, not +a syllogism or an autopsy. Thus the writing of history is left to +college professors, moralists, theorists, dunder-heads. Few historians, +great or small, have shown any capacity for the affairs they presume to +describe and interpret. Gibbon was an inglorious failure as a member of +Parliament. Thycydides made such a mess of his military (or, rather, +naval) command that he was exiled from Athens for twenty years and +finally assassinated. Flavius Josephus, serving as governor of Galilee, +lost the whole province to the Romans, and had to flee for his life. +Momssen, elected to the Prussian Landtag, flirted with the Socialists. +How much better we would understand the habits and nature of man if +there were more historians like Julius Caesar, or even like Niccolo +Machiavelli! Remembering the sharp and devastating character of their +rough notes, think what marvelous histories Bismarck, Washington and +Frederick the Great might have written! Such men are privy to the facts; +the usual historians have to depend on deductions, rumors, guesses. +Again, such men know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> how to tell the truth, however unpleasant; they +are wholly free of that puerile moral obsession which marks the +professor.... But they so seldom tell it! Well, perhaps some of them +have—and their penalty is that they are damned and forgotten.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XIV</h2> + +<h3>THE CURSE OF CIVILIZATION</h3> + + +<p>A civilized man's worst curse is social obligation. The most unpleasant +act imaginable is to go to a dinner party. One could get far better +food, taking one day with another, at Childs', or even in a Pennsylvania +Railroad dining-car; one could find far more amusing society in a +bar-room or a bordello, or even at the Y. M. C. A. No hostess in +Christendom ever arranged a dinner party of any pretensions without +including at least one intensely disagreeable person—a vain and vapid +girl, a hideous woman, a follower of baseball, a stock-broker, a veteran +of some war or other, a gabbler of politics. And one is enough to do the +business.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XV</h2> + +<h3>EUGENICS</h3> + + +<p>The error of the eugenists lies in the assumption that a physically +healthy man is the best fitted to survive. This is true of rats and the +<i>pediculae</i>, but not of the higher animals, <i>e. g.</i>, horses, dogs and +men. In these higher animals one looks for more subtle qualities, +chiefly of the spirit. Imagine estimating philosophers by their chest +expansions, their blood pressures, their Wassermann reactions!</p> + +<p>The so-called social diseases, over which eugenists raise such a pother, +are surely not the worst curses that mankind has to bear. Some of the +greatest men in history have had them; whole nations have had them and +survived. The truth about them is that, save in relatively rare cases, +they do very little damage. The horror in which they are held is chiefly +a moral horror, and its roots lie in the assumption that they cannot be +contracted without sin. Nothing could be more false. Many great +moralists have suffered from them: the gods are always up to such +sardonic waggeries.</p> + +<p>Moreover, only one of them is actually inheritable, and that one is +transmitted relatively seldom. But among psychic characters one finds +that practically all are inheritable. For example, stupidity, credulity, +avarice, pecksniffery, lack of imagination, hatred of beauty, meanness, +poltroonry, petty brutality, smallness of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> soul.... I here present, of +course, the Puritan complex; there flashes up the image of the "good +man," that libel on God and the devil. Consider him well. If you had to +choose a sire for a first-rate son, would you choose a consumptive Jew +with the fires of eternity in his eyes, or an Iowa right-thinker with +his hold full of Bibles and breakfast food?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XVI</h2> + +<h3>THE JOCOSE GODS</h3> + + +<p>What humor could be wilder than that of life itself? Franz Schubert, on +his deathbed, read the complete works of J. Fenimore Cooper. John +Millington Synge wrote "Riders to the Sea" on a second-hand $40 +typewriter, and wore a celluloid collar. Richard Wagner made a living, +during four lean years, arranging Italian opera arias for the cornet. +Herbert Spencer sang bass in a barber-shop quartette and was in love +with George Eliot. William Shakespeare was a social pusher and bought +him a bogus coat-of-arms. Martin Luther suffered from the jim-jams. One +of the greatest soldiers in Hungarian history was named Hunjadi +Janos....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XVII</h2> + +<h3>WAR</h3> + + +<p>Superficially, war seems inordinately cruel and wasteful, and yet it +must be plain on reflection that the natural evolutionary process is +quite as cruel and even more wasteful. Man's chief efforts in times of +peace are devoted to making that process less violent and sanguinary. +Civilization, indeed, may be defined as a constructive criticism of +nature, and Huxley even called it a conspiracy against nature. Man tries +to remedy what must inevitably seem the mistakes and to check what must +inevitably seem the wanton cruelty of the Creator. In war man abandons +these efforts, and so becomes more jovian. The Greeks never represented +the inhabitants of Olympus as succoring and protecting one another, but +always as fighting and attempting to destroy one another.</p> + +<p>No form of death inflicted by war is one-half so cruel as certain forms +of death that are seen in hospitals every day. Besides, these forms of +death have the further disadvantage of being inglorious. The average +man, dying in bed, not only has to stand the pains and terrors of death; +he must also, if he can bring himself to think of it at all, stand the +notion that he is ridiculous.... The soldier is at least not laughed at. +Even his enemies treat his agonies with respect.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XVIII</h2> + +<h3>MORALIST AND ARTIST</h3> + + +<p>I dredge up the following from an essay on George Bernard Shaw by Robert +Blatchford, the English Socialist: "Shaw is something much better than a +wit, much better than an artist, much better than a politician or a +dramatist; he is a moralist, a teacher of ethics, austere, relentless, +fiercely earnest."</p> + +<p>What could be more idiotic? Then Cotton Mather was a greater man than +Johann Sebastian Bach. Then the average college critic of the arts, with +his balderdash about inspiration and moral purpose, is greater than +Georg Brandes or Saint-Beuve. Then Éugene Brieux, with his Y. M. C. A. +platitudinizing, is greater than Molière, with his ethical agnosticism, +his ironical determinism.</p> + +<p>This childish respect for moralizing runs through the whole of +contemporary criticism—at least in England and America. Blatchford +differs from the professorial critics only in the detail that he can +actually write. What he says about Shaw has been said, in heavy and +suffocating words, by almost all of them. And yet nothing could be more +untrue. The moralist, at his best, can never be anything save a sort of +journalist. Moral values change too often to have any serious validity +or interest; what is a virtue today is a sin tomorrow. But the man who +creates a thing of beauty creates something that lasts.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XIX</h2> + +<h3>ACTORS</h3> + + +<p>"In France they call an actor a <i>m'as-tu-vu</i>, which, anglicised, means a +have-you-seen-me?... The average actor holds the mirror up to nature and +sees in it only the reflection of himself." I take the words from a late +book on the so-called art of the mime by the editor of a magazine +devoted to the stage. The learned author evades plumbing the +psychological springs of this astounding and almost invariable vanity, +this endless bumptiousness of the <i>cabotin</i> in all climes and all ages. +His one attempt is banal: "a foolish public makes much of him." With all +due respect, Nonsense! The larval actor is full of hot and rancid gases +long before a foolish public has had a fair chance to make anything of +him at all, and he continues to emit them long after it has tried him, +condemned him and bidden him be damned. There is, indeed, little choice +in the virulence of their self-respect between a Broadway star who is +slobbered over by press agents and fat women, and the poor ham who plays +thinking parts in a No. 7 road company. The two are alike charged to the +limit; one more ohm, or molecule, and they would burst. Actors begin +where militia colonels, Fifth avenue rectors and Chautauqua orators +leave off. The most modest of them (barring, perhaps, a few unearthly +traitors to the craft) matches the conceit of the solitary pretty girl<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> +on a slow ship. In their lofty eminence of pomposity they are challenged +only by Anglican bishops and grand opera tenors. I have spoken of the +danger they run of bursting. In the case of tenors it must sometimes +actually happen; even the least of them swells visibly as he sings, and +permanently as he grows older....</p> + +<p>But why are actors, in general, such blatant and obnoxious asses, such +arrant posturers and wind-bags? Why is it as surprising to find an +unassuming and likable fellow among them as to find a Greek without +fleas? The answer is quite simple. To reach it one needs but consider +the type of young man who normally gets stage-struck. Is he, taking +averages, the intelligent, alert, ingenious, ambitious young fellow? Is +he the young fellow with ideas in him, and a yearning for hard and +difficult work? Is he the diligent reader, the hard student, the eager +inquirer? No. He is, in the overwhelming main, the neighborhood fop and +beau, the human clothes-horse, the nimble squire of dames. The youths of +more active mind, emerging from adolescence, turn to business and the +professions; the men that they admire and seek to follow are men of +genuine distinction, men who have actually done difficult and valuable +things, men who have fought good (if often dishonest) fights and are +respected and envied by other men. The stage-struck youth is of a softer +and more shallow sort. He seeks, not a chance to test his mettle by hard +and useful work, but an easy chance to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> shine. He craves the regard, not +of men, but of women. He is, in brief, a hollow and incompetent +creature, a strutter and poseur, a popinjay, a pretty one....</p> + +<p>I thus beg the question, but explain the actor. He is this silly +youngster grown older, but otherwise unchanged. An initiate of a +profession requiring little more information, culture or capacity for +ratiocination than that of the lady of joy, and surrounded in his +work-shop by men who are as stupid, as vain and as empty as he himself +will be in the years to come, he suffers an arrest of development, and +the little intelligence that may happen to be in him gets no chance to +show itself. The result, in its usual manifestation, is the average bad +actor—a man with the cerebrum of a floor-walker and the vanity of a +fashionable clergyman. The result, in its highest and holiest form is +the actor-manager, with his retinue of press-agents, parasites and +worshipping wenches—perhaps the most preposterous and awe-inspiring +donkey that civilization has yet produced. To look for sense in a fellow +of such equipment and such a history would be like looking for +serviettes in a sailors' boarding-house.</p> + +<p>By the same token, the relatively greater intelligence of actresses is +explained. They are, at their worst, quite as bad as the generality of +actors. There are she-stars who are all temperament and +balderdash—intellectually speaking, beggars on horseback, servant girls +well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> washed. But no one who knows anything about the stage need be told +that it can show a great many more quick-minded and self-respecting +women than intelligent men. And why? Simply because its women are +recruited, in the main, from a class much above that which furnishes its +men. It is, after all, not unnatural for a woman of considerable +intelligence to aspire to the stage. It offers her, indeed, one of the +most tempting careers that is open to her. She cannot hope to succeed in +business, and in the other professions she is an unwelcome and +much-scoffed-at intruder, but on the boards she can meet men on an equal +footing. It is, therefore, no wonder that women of a relatively superior +class often take to the business.... Once they embrace it, their +superiority to their male colleagues is quickly manifest. All movements +against puerility and imbecility in the drama have originated, not with +actors, but with actresses—that is, in so far as they have originated +among stage folks at all. The Ibsen pioneers were such women as Helena +Modjeska, Agnes Sorma and Janet Achurch; the men all hung back. Ibsen, +it would appear, was aware of this superior alertness and took shrewd +advantage of it. At all events, his most tempting acting parts are +feminine ones.</p> + +<p>The girls of the stage demonstrate this tendency against great +difficulties. They have to carry a heavy handicap in the enormous number +of women who seek the footlights merely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> to advertise their real +profession, but despite all this, anyone who has the slightest +acquaintance with stagefolk will testify that, taking one with another, +the women have vastly more brains than the men and are appreciably less +vain and idiotic. Relatively few actresses of any rank marry actors. +They find close communion with the strutting brethren psychologically +impossible. Stock-brokers, dramatists and even theatrical managers are +greatly to be preferred.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XX</h2> + +<h3>THE CROWD</h3> + + +<p>Gustave Le Bon and his school, in their discussions of the psychology of +crowds, have put forward the doctrine that the individual man, cheek by +jowl with the multitude, drops down an intellectual peg or two, and so +tends to show the mental and emotional reactions of his inferiors. It is +thus that they explain the well-known violence and imbecility of crowds. +The crowd, as a crowd, performs acts that many of its members, as +individuals, would never be guilty of. Its average intelligence is very +low; it is inflammatory, vicious, idiotic, almost simian. Crowds, +properly worked up by skilful demagogues, are ready to believe anything, +and to do anything.</p> + +<p>Le Bon, I daresay, is partly right, but also partly wrong. His theory is +probably too flattering to the average numskull. He accounts for the +extravagance of crowds on the assumption that the numskull, along with +the superior man, is knocked out of his wits by suggestion—that he, +too, does things in association that he would never think of doing +singly. The fact may be accepted, but the reasoning raises a doubt. The +numskull runs amuck in a crowd, not because he has been inoculated with +new rascality by the mysterious crowd influence, but because his +habitual rascality now has its only chance to function safely. In other +words,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> the numskull is vicious, but a poltroon. He refrains from all +attempts at lynching <i>a cappella</i>, not because it takes suggestion to +make him desire to lynch, but because it takes the protection of a crowd +to make him brave enough to try it.</p> + +<p>What happens when a crowd cuts loose is not quite what Le Bon and his +followers describe. The few superior men in it are not straightway +reduced to the level of the underlying stoneheads. On the contrary, they +usually keep their heads, and often make efforts to combat the crowd +action. But the stoneheads are too many for them; the fence is torn down +or the blackamoor is lynched. And why? Not because the stoneheads, +normally virtuous, are suddenly criminally insane. Nay, but because they +are suddenly conscious of the power lying in their numbers—because they +suddenly realize that their natural viciousness and insanity may be +safely permitted to function.</p> + +<p>In other words, the particular swinishness of a crowd is permanently +resident in the majority of its members—in all those members, that is, +who are naturally ignorant and vicious—perhaps 95 per cent. All studies +of mob psychology are defective in that they underestimate this +viciousness. They are poisoned by the prevailing delusion that the lower +orders of men are angels. This is nonsense. The lower orders of men are +incurable rascals, either individually or collectively. Decency, +self-re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>straint, the sense of justice, courage—these virtues belong +only to a small minority of men. This minority never runs amuck. Its +most distinguishing character, in truth, is its resistance to all +running amuck. The third-rate man, though he may wear the false whiskers +of a first-rate man, may always be detected by his inability to keep his +head in the face of an appeal to his emotions. A whoop strips off his +disguise.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXI</h2> + +<h3>AN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER</h3> + + +<p>As for William Jennings Bryan, of whom so much piffle, pro and con, has +been written, the whole of his political philosophy may be reduced to +two propositions, neither of which is true. The first is the proposition +that the common people are wise and honest, and the second is the +proposition that all persons who refuse to believe it are scoundrels. +Take away the two, and all that would remain of Jennings would be a +somewhat greasy bald-headed man with his mouth open.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXII</h2> + +<h3>CLUBS</h3> + + +<p>Men's clubs have but one intelligible purpose: to afford asylum to +fellows who haven't any girls. Hence their general gloom, their air of +lost causes, their prevailing acrimony. No man would ever enter a club +if he had an agreeable woman to talk to. This is particularly true of +married men. Those of them that one finds in clubs answer to a general +description: they have wives too unattractive to entertain them, and yet +too watchful to allow them to seek entertainment elsewhere. The +bachelors, in the main, belong to two classes: (a) those who have been +unfortunate in amour, and are still too sore to show any new enterprise, +and (b) those so lacking in charm that no woman will pay any attention +to them. Is it any wonder that the men one thus encounters in clubs are +stupid and miserable creatures, and that they find their pleasure in +such banal sports as playing cards, drinking highballs, shooting pool, +and reading the barber-shop weeklies?... The day a man's mistress is +married one always finds him at his club.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXIII</h2> + +<h3>FIDELIS AD URNUM</h3> + + +<p>Despite the common belief of women to the contrary, fully 95 per cent. +of all married men, at least in America, are faithful to their wives. +This, however, is not due to virtue, but chiefly to lack of courage. It +takes more initiative and daring to start up an extra-legal affair than +most men are capable of. They look and they make plans, but that is as +far as they get. Another salient cause of connubial rectitude is lack of +means. A mistress costs a great deal more than a wife; in the open +market of the world she can get more. It is only the rare man who can +conceal enough of his income from his wife to pay for a morganatic +affair. And most of the men clever enough to do this are too clever to +be intrigued.</p> + +<p>I have said that 95 per cent. of married men are faithful. I believe the +real proportion is nearer 99 per cent. What women mistake for infidelity +is usually no more than vanity. Every man likes to be regarded as a +devil of a fellow, and particularly by his wife. On the one hand, it +diverts her attention from his more genuine shortcomings, and on the +other hand it increases her respect for him. Moreover, it gives her a +chance to win the sympathy of other women, and so satisfies that craving +for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> martyrdom which is perhaps woman's strongest characteristic. A +woman who never has any chance to suspect her husband feels cheated and +humiliated. She is in the position of those patriots who are induced to +enlist for a war by pictures of cavalry charges, and then find +themselves told off to wash the general's underwear.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXIV</h2> + +<h3>A THEOLOGICAL MYSTERY</h3> + + +<p>The moral order of the world runs aground on hay fever. Of what use is +it? Why was it invented? Cancer and hydrophobia, at least, may be +defended on the ground that they kill. Killing may have some benign +purpose, some esoteric significance, some cosmic use. But hay fever +never kills; it merely tortures. No man ever died of it. Is the torture, +then, an end in itself? Does it break the pride of strutting, snorting +man, and turn his heart to the things of the spirit? Nonsense! A man +with hay fever is a natural criminal. He curses the gods, and defies +them to kill him. He even curses the devil. Is its use, then, to prepare +him for happiness to come—for the vast ease and comfort of +convalescence? Nonsense again! The one thing he is sure of, the one +thing he never forgets for a moment, is that it will come back again +next year.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXV</h2> + +<h3>THE TEST OF TRUTH</h3> + + +<p>The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few religious dogmas have ever +faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene +swine. Dowie's whiskers broke the back of Dowieism. Not the laws of the +United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to +compromise and surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it +killed the doctrine of infant damnation.... But the razor edge of +ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the +barber-surgeons laughed at Harvey—and how vainly! What clown ever +brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Jenner? Or Lincoln? +Or Darwin?... They are laughing at Nietzsche yet....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXVI</h2> + +<h3>LITERARY INDECENCIES</h3> + + +<p>The low, graceless humor of names! On my shelf of poetry, arranged by +the alphabet, Coleridge and J. Gordon Cooglar are next-door neighbors! +Mrs. Hemans is beside Laurence Hope! Walt Whitman rubs elbows with Ella +Wheeler Wilcox; Robert Browning with Richard Burton; Rossetti with Cale +Young Rice; Shelly with Clinton Scollard; Wordsworth with George E. +Woodberry; John Keats with Herbert Kaufman!</p> + +<p>Ibsen, on the shelf of dramatists, is between Victor Hugo and Jerome K. +Jerome. Sudermann follows Harriet Beecher Stowe. Maeterlinck shoulders +Percy Mackaye. Shakespeare is between Sardou and Shaw. Euripides and +Clyde Fitch! Upton Sinclair and Sophocles! Aeschylus and F. Anstey! +D'Annunzio and Richard Harding Davis! Augustus Thomas and Tolstoi!</p> + +<p>More alphabetical humor. Gerhart Hauptmann and Robert Hichens; Voltaire +and Henry Van Dyke; Flaubert and John Fox, Jr.; Balzac and John Kendrick +Bangs; Ostrovsky and E. Phillips Oppenheim; Elinor Glyn and Théophile +Gautier; Joseph Conrad and Robert W. Chambers; Zola and Zangwill!...</p> + +<p>Midway on my scant shelf of novels, between George Moore and Frank +Norris, there is just room enough for the two volumes of "Derringforth," +by Frank A. Munsey.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXVII</h2> + +<h3>VIRTUOUS VANDALISM</h3> + + +<p>A hearing of Schumann's B flat symphony of late, otherwise a very +caressing experience, was corrupted by the thought that music would be +much the gainer if musicians could get over their superstitious +reverence for the mere text of the musical classics. That reverence, +indeed, is already subject to certain limitations; hands have been laid, +at one time or another, upon most of the immortal oratorios, and even +the awful name of Bach has not dissuaded certain German editors. But it +still swathes the standard symphonies like some vast armor of rubber and +angel food, and so imagination has to come to the aid of the flutes and +fiddles when the band plays Schumann, Mozart, and even parts of +Beethoven. One discerns, often quite clearly, what the reverend Master +was aiming at, but just as often one fails to hear it in precise tones.</p> + +<p>This is particularly true of Schumann, whose deficiency in instrumental +cunning has passed into proverb. And in the B flat symphony, his first +venture into the epic form, his failures are most numerous. More than +once, obviously attempting to roll up tone into a moving climax, he +succeeds only in muddling his colors. I remember one place—at the +moment I can't recall where it is—where the strings and the brass storm +at one another in furious figures. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> blast of the brass, as the +vaudevillains say, gets across—but the fiddles merely scream absurdly. +The whole passage suggests the bleating of sheep in the midst of a vast +bellowing of bulls. Schumann overestimated the horsepower of fiddle +music so far up the E string—or underestimated the full kick of the +trumpets.... Other such soft spots are well known.</p> + +<p>Why, then, go on parroting <i>gaucheries</i> that Schumann himself, were he +alive today, would have long since corrected? Why not call an ecumenical +council, appoint a commission to see to such things, and then forget the +sacrilege? As a self-elected delegate from heathendom, I nominate Dr. +Richard Strauss as chairman. When all is said and done, Strauss probably +knows more about writing for orchestra than any other two men that ever +lived, not excluding Wagner. Surely no living rival, as Dr. Sunday would +say, has anything on him. If, after hearing a new composition by +Strauss, one turns to the music, one is invariably surprised to find how +simple it is. The performance reveals so many purple moments, so +staggering an array of lusciousness, that the ear is bemused into +detecting scales and chords that never were on land or sea. What the +exploratory eye subsequently discovers, perhaps, is no more than our +stout and comfortable old friend, the highly well-born <i>hausfrau</i>, Mme. +C Dur—with a vine leaf or two of C sharp minor or F major in her hair. +The trick lies in the tone-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>color—in the flabbergasting magic of the +orchestration. There are some moments in "Elektra" when sounds come out +of the orchestra that tug at the very roots of the hair, sounds so +unearthly that they suggest a caroling of dragons or <i>bierfisch</i>—and +yet they are made by the same old fiddles that play the Kaiser Quartet, +and by the same old trombones that the Valkyrie ride like witch's +broomsticks, and by the same old flutes that sob and snuffle in Tit'l's +Serenade. And in parts of "Feuersnot"—but Roget must be rewritten by +Strauss before "Feuersnot" is described. There is one place where the +harps, taking a running start from the scrolls of the violins, leap +slambang through (or is it into?) the firmament of Heaven. Once, when I +heard this passage played at a concert, a woman sitting beside me rolled +over like a log, and had to be hauled out by the ushers.</p> + +<p>Yes; Strauss is the man to reorchestrate the symphonies of Schumann, +particularly the B flat, the Rhenish and the Fourth. I doubt that he +could do much with Schubert, for Schubert, though he is dead nearly a +hundred years, yet remains curiously modern. The Unfinished symphony is +full of exquisite color effects—consider, for example, the rustling +figure for the strings in the first movement—and as for the C major, it +is so stupendous a debauch of melodic and harmonic beauty that one +scarcely notices the colors at all. In its slow movement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> mere +loveliness in music probably says all that will ever be said.... But +what of old Ludwig? Har, har; here we begin pulling the whiskers of Baal +Himself. Nevertheless, I am vandal enough to wonder, on sad Sunday +mornings, what Strauss could do with the first movement of the C minor. +More, if Strauss ever does it and lets me hear the result just once, +I'll be glad to serve six months in jail with him.... But in Munich, of +course! And with a daily visitor's pass for Cousin Pschorr!...</p> + +<p>The conservatism which shrinks at such barbarities is the same +conservatism which demands that the very typographical errors in the +Bible be swallowed without salt, and that has thus made a puerile +dream-book of parts of Holy Writ. If you want to see how far this last +madness has led Christendom astray, take a look at an article by Abraham +Mitrie Rihbany, an intelligent Syrian, in the <i>Atlantic Monthly</i> of a +couple of years ago. The title of the article is "The Oriental Manner of +Speech," and in it Rihbany shows how much of mere Oriental extravagance +of metaphor is to be found in many celebrated passages, and how little +of literal significance. This Oriental extravagance, of course, makes +for beauty, but as interpreted by pundits of no imagination it surely +doesn't make for understanding. What the Western World needs is a Bible +in which the idioms of the Aramaic of thousands of years ago are +translated into the idioms of today. The man who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> undertook such a +translation, to be sure, would be uproariously denounced, just as Luther +and Wycliffe were denounced, but he could well afford to face the storm. +The various Revised Versions, including the Modern Speech New Testament +of Richard Francis Weymouth, leave much to be desired. They rectify many +naif blunders and so make the whole narrative more intelligible, but +they still render most of the tropes of the original literally.</p> + +<p>These tropes are not the substance of Holy Writ; they are simply its +color. In the same way mere tone-color is not the substance of a musical +composition. Beethoven's Eighth Symphony is just as great a work, in all +its essentials, in a four-hand piano arrangement as in the original +score. Every harmonic and melodic idea of the composer is there; one can +trace just as clearly the subtle processes of his mind; every step in +the working out of the materials is just as plain. True enough, there +are orchestral compositions of which this cannot be reasonably said; +their color is so much more important than their form that when one +takes away the former the latter almost ceases to exist. But I doubt +that many competent critics would argue that they belong to the first +rank. Form, after all, is the important thing. It is design that counts, +not decoration—design and organization. The pillars of a musical +masterpiece are like the pillars of the Parthenon; they are almost as +beautiful bleached white as they were in all their original hues.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXVIII</h2> + +<h3>A FOOTNOTE ON THE DUEL OF SEX</h3> + + +<p>If I were a woman I should want to be a blonde, with golden, silky hair, +pink cheeks and sky-blue eyes. It would not bother me to think that this +color scheme was mistaken by the world for a flaunting badge of +stupidity; I would have a better arm in my arsenal than mere +intelligence; I would get a husband by easy surrender while the +brunettes attempted it vainly by frontal assault.</p> + +<p>Men are not easily taken by frontal assault; it is only strategem that +can quickly knock them down. To be a blonde, pink, soft and delicate, is +to be a strategem. It is to be a ruse, a feint, an ambush. It is to +fight under the Red Cross flag. A man sees nothing alert and designing +in those pale, crystalline eyes; he sees only something helpless, +childish, weak; something that calls to his compassion; something that +appeals powerfully to his conceit in his own strength. And so he is +taken before he knows that there is a war. He lifts his portcullis in +Christian charity—and the enemy is in his citadel.</p> + +<p>The brunette can make no such stealthy and sure attack. No matter how +subtle her art, she can never hope to quite conceal her intent. Her eyes +give her away. They flash and glitter. They have depths. They draw the +male gaze into mysterious and sinister recesses. And so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> the male behind +the gaze flies to arms. He may be taken in the end—indeed, he usually +is—but he is not taken by surprise; he is not taken without a fight. A +brunette has to battle for every inch of her advance. She is confronted +by an endless succession of Dead Man's Hills, each equipped with +telescopes, semaphores, alarm gongs, wireless. The male sees her clearly +through her densest smoke-clouds.... But the blonde captures him under a +flag of truce. He regards her tenderly, kindly, almost pityingly, until +the moment the gyves are upon his wrists.</p> + +<p>It is all an optical matter, a question of color. The pastel shades +deceive him; the louder hues send him to his artillery. God help, I say, +the red-haired girl! She goes into action with warning pennants flying. +The dullest, blindest man can see her a mile away; he can catch the +alarming flash of her hair long before he can see the whites, or even +the terrible red-browns, of her eyes. She has a long field to cross, +heavily under defensive fire, before she can get into rifle range. Her +quarry has a chance to throw up redoubts, to dig himself in, to call for +reinforcements, to elude her by ignominious flight. She must win, if she +is to win at all, by an unparalleled combination of craft and +resolution. She must be swift, daring, merciless. Even the brunette of +black and penetrating eye has great advantages over her. No wonder she +never lets go, once her arms are around her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> antagonist's neck! No +wonder she is, of all women, the hardest to shake off!</p> + +<p>All nature works in circles. Causes become effects; effects develop into +causes. The red-haired girl's dire need of courage and cunning has +augmented her store of those qualities by the law of natural selection. +She is, by long odds, the most intelligent and bemusing of women. She +shows cunning, foresight, technique, variety. She always fails a dozen +times before she succeeds; but she brings to the final business the +abominable expertness of a Ludendorff; she has learnt painfully by the +process of trial and error. Red-haired girls are intellectual +stimulants. They know all the tricks. They are so clever that they have +even cast a false glamour of beauty about their worst defect—their +harsh and gaudy hair. They give it euphemistic and deceitful +names—auburn, bronze, Titian. They overcome by their hellish arts that +deep-seated dread of red which is inborn in all of God's creatures. They +charm men with what would even alarm bulls.</p> + +<p>And the blondes, by following the law of least resistance, have gone in +the other direction. The great majority of them—I speak, of course, of +natural blondes; not of the immoral wenches who work their atrocities +under cover of a synthetic blondeness—are quite as shallow and stupid +as they look. One seldom hears a blonde say anything worth hearing; the +most they commonly achieve is a specious, baby-like prattling,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> an +infantile artlessness. But let us not blame them for nature's work. Why, +after all, be intelligent? It is, at best, no more than a capacity for +unhappiness. The blonde not only doesn't miss it; she is even better off +without it. What imaginable intelligence could compensate her for the +flat blueness of her eyes, the xanthous pallor of her hair, the +doll-like pink of her cheeks? What conceivable cunning could do such +execution as her stupendous appeal to masculine vanity, sentimentality, +egoism?</p> + +<p>If I were a woman I should want to be a blonde. My blondeness might be +hideous, but it would get me a husband, and it would make him cherish me +and love me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXIX</h2> + +<h3>ALCOHOL</h3> + + +<p>Envy, as I have said, is at the heart of the messianic delusion, the +mania to convert the happy sinner into a "good" man, and so make him +miserable. And at the heart of that envy is fear—the fear to sin, to +take a chance, to monkey with the buzzsaw. This ineradicable fear is the +outstanding mark of the fifth-rate man, at all times and everywhere. It +dominates his politics, his theology, his whole thinking. He is a moral +fellow because he is afraid to venture over the fence—and he hates the +man who is not.</p> + +<p>The solemn proofs, so laboriously deduced from life insurance +statistics, that the man who uses alcohol, even moderately, dies +slightly sooner than the teetotaler—these proofs merely show that this +man is one who leads an active and vigorous life, and so faces hazards +and uses himself up—in brief, one who lives at high tempo and with full +joy, what Nietzsche used to call the <i>ja-sager</i>, or yes-sayer. He may, +in fact, die slightly sooner than the teetotaler, but he lives +infinitely longer. Moreover, his life, humanly speaking, is much more +worth while, to himself and to the race. He does the hard and dangerous +work of the world, he takes the chances, he makes the experiments. He is +the soldier, the artist, the innovator, the lover. All the great works +of man have been done by men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> who thus lived joyously, strenuously, and +perhaps a bit dangerously. They have never been concerned about +stretching life for two or three more years; they have been concerned +about making life engrossing and stimulating and a high adventure while +it lasts. Teetotalism is as impossible to such men as any other +manifestation of cowardice, and, if it were possible, it would destroy +their utility and significance just as certainly.</p> + +<p>A man who shrinks from a cocktail before dinner on the ground that it +may flabbergast his hormones, and so make him die at 69 years, ten +months and five days instead of at 69 years, eleven months and seven +days—such a man is as absurd a poltroon as the fellow who shrinks from +kissing a woman on the ground that she may floor him with a chair leg. +Each flees from a purely theoretical risk. Each is a useless encumberer +of the earth, and the sooner dead the better. Each is a discredit to the +human race, already discreditable enough, God knows.</p> + +<p>Teetotalism does not make for human happiness; it makes for the dull, +idiotic happiness of the barnyard. The men who do things in the world, +the men worthy of admiration and imitation, are men constitutionally +incapable of any such pecksniffian stupidity. Their ideal is not a safe +life, but a full life; they do not try to follow the canary bird in a +cage, but the eagle in the air. And in particular they do not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> flee from +shadows and bugaboos. The alcohol myth is such a bugaboo. The sort of +man it scares is the sort of man whose chief mark is that he is always +scared.</p> + +<p>No wonder the Rockefellers and their like are hot for saving the +workingman from John Barleycorn! Imagine the advantage to them of +operating upon a flabby horde of timorous and joyless slaves, afraid of +all fun and kicking up, horribly moral, eager only to live as long as +possible! What mule-like fidelity and efficiency could be got out of +such a rabble! But how many Lincolns would you get out of it, and how +many Jacksons, and how many Grants?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXX</h2> + +<h3>THOUGHTS ON THE VOLUPTUOUS</h3> + + +<p>Why has no publisher ever thought of perfuming his novels? The final +refinement of publishing, already bedizened by every other art! Barabbas +turned Petronius! For instance, consider the bucolic romances of the +hyphenated Mrs. Porter. They have a subtle flavor of new-mown hay and +daffodils already; why not add the actual essence, or at all events some +safe coal-tar substitute, and so help imagination to spread its wings? +For Hall Caine, musk and synthetic bergamot. For Mrs. Glyn and her +neighbors on the tiger-skin, the fragrant blood of the red, red rose. +For the ruffianish pages of Jack London, the pungent, hospitable smell +of a first-class bar-room—that indescribable mingling of Maryland rye, +cigar smoke, stale malt liquor, radishes, potato salad and <i>blutwurst</i>. +For the Dartmoor sagas of the interminable Phillpotts, the warm +ammoniacal bouquet of cows, poultry and yokels. For the "Dodo" school, +violets and Russian cigarettes. For the venerable Howells, lavender and +mignonette. For Zola, Rochefort and wet leather. For Mrs. Humphrey Ward, +lilies of the valley. For Marie Corelli, tuberoses and embalming fluid. +For Chambers, sachet and lip paint. For——</p> + +<p>But I leave you to make your own choices. All I offer is the general +idea. It has been tried<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> in the theatre. Well do I remember the first +weeks of "Florodora" at the old Casino, with a mannikin in the lobby +squirting "La Flor de Florodora" upon all us Florodorans.... I was put +on trial for my life when I got home!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXI</h2> + +<h3>THE HOLY ESTATE</h3> + + +<p>Marriage is always a man's second choice. It is entered upon, more often +than not, as the safest form of intrigue. The caitiff yields quickest; +the man who loves danger and adventure holds out longest. Behind it one +frequently finds, not that lofty romantic passion which poets hymn, but +a mere yearning for peace and security. The abominable hazards of the +high seas, the rough humors and pestilences of the forecastle—these +drive the timid mariner ashore.... The authentic Cupid, at least in +Christendom, was discovered by the late Albert Ludwig Siegmund Neisser +in 1879.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXII</h2> + +<h3>DICHTUNG UND WAHRHEIT</h3> + + +<p>Deponent, being duly sworn, saith: My taste in poetry is for delicate +and fragile things—to be honest, for artificial things. I like a frail +but perfectly articulated stanza, a sonnet wrought like ivory, a song +full of glowing nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, +conjunctions, prepositions and participles, but without too much hard +sense to it. Poetry, to me, has but two meanings. On the one hand, it is +a magical escape from the sordidness of metabolism and the class war, +and on the other hand it is a subtle, very difficult and hence very +charming art, like writing fugues or mixing mayonnaise. I do not go to +poets to be taught anything, or to be heated up to indignation, or to +have my conscience blasted out of its torpor, but to be soothed and +caressed, to be lulled with sweet sounds, to be wooed into +forgetfulness, to be tickled under the metaphysical chin. My favorite +poem is Lizette Woodworth Reese's "Tears," which, as a statement of +fact, seems to me to be as idiotic as the Book of Revelation. The poetry +I regard least is such stuff as that of Robert Browning and Matthew +Arnold, which argues and illuminates. I dislike poetry of intellectual +content as much as I dislike women of intellectual content—and for the +same reason.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXIII</h2> + +<h3>WILD SHOTS</h3> + + +<p>If I had the time, and there were no sweeter follies offering, I should +like to write an essay on the books that have quite failed of achieving +their original purposes, and are yet of respectable use and potency for +other purposes. For example, the Book of Revelation. The obvious aim of +the learned author of this work was to bring the early Christians into +accord by telling them authoritatively what to expect and hope for; its +actual effect during eighteen hundred years has been to split them into +a multitude of camps, and so set them to denouncing, damning, jailing +and murdering one another. Again, consider the autobiography of +Benvenuto Cellini. Ben wrote it to prove that he was an honest man, a +mirror of all the virtues, an injured innocent; the world, reading it, +hails him respectfully as the noblest, the boldest, the gaudiest liar +that ever lived. Again, turn to "Gulliver's Travels." The thing was +planned by its rev. author as a devastating satire, a terrible piece of +cynicism; it survives as a story-book for sucklings. Yet again, there is +"Hamlet." Shakespeare wrote it frankly to make money for a theatrical +manager; it has lost money for theatrical managers ever since. Yet +again, there is Caesar's "De Bello Gallico." Julius composed it to +thrill and arouse the Romans; its sole use today is to stupefy and +sicken<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> schoolboys. Finally, there is the celebrated book of General F. +von Bernhardi. He wrote it to inflame Germany; its effect was to inflame +England....</p> + +<p>The list might be lengthened almost <i>ad infinitum</i>. When a man writes a +book he fires a machine gun into a wood. The game he brings down often +astonishes him, and sometimes horrifies him. Consider the case of +Ibsen.... After my book on Nietzsche I was actually invited to lecture +at Princeton.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXIV</h2> + +<h3>BEETHOVEN</h3> + + +<p>Romain Rolland's "Beethoven," one of the cornerstones of his celebrity +as a critic, is based upon a thesis that is of almost inconceivable +inaccuracy, to wit, the thesis that old Ludwig was an apostle of joy, +and that his music reveals his determination to experience and utter it +in spite of all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Nothing +could be more absurd. Joy, in truth, was precisely the emotion that +Beethoven could never conjure up; it simply was not in him. Turn to the +<i>scherzo</i> of any of his trios, quartets, sonatas or symphonies. A +sardonic waggishness is there, and sometimes even a wistful sort of +merriment, but joy in the real sense—a kicking up of legs, a +light-heartedness, a complete freedom from care—is not to be found. It +is in Haydn, it is in Schubert and it is often in Mozart, but it is no +more in Beethoven than it is in Tschaikovsky. Even the hymn to joy at +the end of the Ninth symphony narrowly escapes being a gruesome parody +on the thing itself; a conscious effort is in every note of it; it is +almost as lacking in spontaneity as (if it were imaginable at all) a +piece of <i>vers libre</i> by Augustus Montague Toplady.</p> + +<p>Nay; Ludwig was no leaping buck. Nor was it his deafness, nor poverty, +nor the crimes of his rascally nephew that pumped joy out of him. The +truth is that he lacked it from birth; he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> was born a Puritan—and +though a Puritan may also become a great man (as witness Herbert Spencer +and Beelzebub), he can never throw off being a Puritan. Beethoven +stemmed from the Low Countries, and the Low Countries, in those days, +were full of Puritan refugees; the very name, in its first incarnation, +may have been Barebones. If you want to comprehend the authentic man, +don't linger over Rolland's fancies but go to his own philosophizings, +as garnered in "Beethoven, the Man and the Artist," by Friedrich Kerst, +Englished by Krehbiel. Here you will find a collection of moral +banalities that would have delighted Jonathan Edwards—a collection that +might well be emblazoned on gilt cards and hung in Sunday schools. He +begins with a naif anthropomorphism that is now almost perished from the +world; he ends with a solemn repudiation of adultery.... But a great +man, my masters, a great man! We have enough biographies of him, and +talmuds upon his works. Who will do a full-length psychological study of +him?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXV</h2> + +<h3>THE TONE ART</h3> + + +<p>The notion that the aim of art is to fix the shifting aspects of nature, +that all art is primarily representative—this notion is as unsound as +the theory that Friday is an unlucky day, and is dying as hard. One even +finds some trace of it in Anatole France, surely a man who should know +better. The true function of art is to criticise, embellish and edit +nature—particularly to edit it, and so make it coherent and lovely. The +artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue-pencilling the +<i>lapsus calami</i> of God. The sounds in a Beethoven symphony, even the +Pastoral, are infinitely more orderly, varied and beautiful than those +of the woods. The worst flute is never as bad as the worst soprano. The +best violoncello is immeasurably better than the best tenor.</p> + +<p>All first-rate music suffers by the fact that it has to be performed by +human beings—that is, that nature must be permitted to corrupt it. The +performance one hears in a concert hall or opera house is no more than a +baroque parody upon the thing the composer imagined. In an orchestra of +eighty men there is inevitably at least one man with a sore thumb, or +bad kidneys, or a brutal wife, or <i>katzenjammer</i>—and one is enough. +Some day the natural clumsiness and imperfection of fingers, lips and +larynxes will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> be overcome by mechanical devices, and we shall have +Beethoven and Mozart and Schubert in such wonderful and perfect beauty +that it will be almost unbearable. If half as much ingenuity had been +lavished upon music machines as has been lavished upon the telephone and +the steam engine, we would have had mechanical orchestras long ago. +Mechanical pianos are already here. Piano-players, bound to put some +value on the tortures of Czerny, affect to laugh at all such +contrivances, but that is no more than a pale phosphorescence of an +outraged <i>wille zur macht</i>. Setting aside half a dozen—perhaps a +dozen—great masters of a moribund craft, who will say that the average +mechanical piano is not as competent as the average pianist?</p> + +<p>When the human performer of music goes the way of the galley-slave, the +charm of personality, of course, will be pumped out of the performance +of music. But the charm of personality does not help music; it hinders +it. It is not a reinforcement to music; it is a rival. When a beautiful +singer comes upon the stage, two shows, as it were, go on at once: first +the music show, and then the arms, shoulders, neck, nose, ankles, eyes, +hips, calves and ruby lips—in brief, the sex-show. The second of these +shows, to the majority of persons present, is more interesting than the +first—to the men because of the sex interest, and to the women because +of the professional or technical interest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>—and so music is forced into +the background. What it becomes, indeed, is no more than a half-heard +accompaniment to an imagined anecdote, just as color, line and mass +become mere accomplishments to an anecdote in a picture by an English +academician, or by a sentimental German of the Boecklin school.</p> + +<p>The purified and dephlogisticated music of the future, to be sure, will +never appeal to the mob, which will keep on demanding its chance to +gloat over gaudy, voluptuous women, and fat, scandalous tenors. The mob, +even disregarding its insatiable appetite for the improper, is a natural +hero worshiper. It loves, not the beautiful, but the strange, the +unprecedented, the astounding; it suffers from an incurable +<i>héliogabalisme</i>. A soprano who can gargle her way up to G sharp in +altissimo interests it almost as much as a contralto who has slept +publicly with a grand duke. If it cannot get the tenor who receives +$3,000 a night, it will take the tenor who fought the manager with +bung-starters last Tuesday. But this is merely saying that the tastes +and desires of the mob have nothing to do with music as an art. For its +ears, as for its eyes, it demands anecdotes—on the one hand the Suicide +symphony, "The Forge in the Forest," and the general run of Italian +opera, and on the other hand such things as "The Angelus," "Playing +Grandpa" and the so-called "Mona Lisa." It cannot imagine art as devoid +of moral content, as beauty pure and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> simple. It always demands +something to edify it, or, failing that, to shock it.</p> + +<p>These concepts, of the edifying and the shocking, are closer together in +the psyche than most persons imagine. The one, in fact, depends upon the +other: without some definite notion of the improving it is almost +impossible to conjure up an active notion of the improper. All salacious +art is addressed, not to the damned, but to the consciously saved; it is +Sunday-school superintendents, not bartenders, who chiefly patronize +peep-shows, and know the dirty books, and have a high artistic +admiration for sopranos of superior gluteal development. The man who has +risen above the petty ethical superstitions of Christendom gets little +pleasure out of impropriety, for very few ordinary phenomena seem to him +to be improper. Thus a Frenchman, viewing the undraped statues which +bedizen his native galleries of art, either enjoys them in a purely +aesthetic fashion—which is seldom possible save when he is in +liquor—or confesses frankly that he doesn't like them at all; whereas +the visiting Americano is so powerfully shocked and fascinated by them +that one finds him, the same evening, in places where no respectable man +ought to go. All art, to this fellow, must have a certain bawdiness, or +he cannot abide it. His favorite soprano, in the opera house, is not the +fat and middle-aged lady who can actually sing, but the girl with the +bare back and translucent drawers. Con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>descending to the concert hall, +he is bored by the posse of enemy aliens in funereal black, and so +demands a vocal soloist—that is, a gaudy creature of such advanced +corsetting that she can make him forget Bach for a while, and turn his +thoughts pleasantly to amorous intrigue.</p> + +<p>In all this, of course, there is nothing new. Other and better men have +noted the damage that the personal equation does to music, and some of +them have even sought ways out. For example, Richard Strauss. His +so-called ballet, "Josefs Legend," produced in Paris just before the +war, is an attempt to write an opera without singers. All of the music +is in the orchestra; the folks on the stage merely go through a +pointless pantomime; their main function is to entertain the eye with +shifting colors. Thus, the romantic sentiments of Joseph are announced, +not by some eye-rolling tenor, but by the first, second, third, fourth, +fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth violins (it is a Strauss score!), with +the incidental aid of the wood-wind, the brass, the percussion and the +rest of the strings. And the heroine's reply is made, not by a soprano +with a cold, but by an honest man playing a flute. The next step will be +the substitution of marionettes for actors. The removal of the orchestra +to a sort of trench, out of sight of the audience, is already an +accomplished fact at Munich. The end, perhaps, will be music purged of +its current ptomaines. In brief, music.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXVI</h2> + +<h3>ZOOS</h3> + + +<p>I often wonder how much sound and nourishing food is fed to the animals +in the zoological gardens of America every week, and try to figure out +what the public gets in return for the cost thereof. The annual bill +must surely run into millions; one is constantly hearing how much beef a +lion downs at a meal, and how many tons of hay an elephant dispatches in +a month. And to what end? To the end, principally, that a horde of +superintendents and keepers may be kept in easy jobs. To the end, +secondarily, that the least intelligent minority of the population may +have an idiotic show to gape at on Sunday afternoons, and that the young +of the species may be instructed in the methods of amour prevailing +among chimpanzees and become privy to the technic employed by jaguars, +hyenas and polar bears in ridding themselves of lice.</p> + +<p>So far as I can make out, after laborious visits to all the chief zoos +of the nation, no other imaginable purpose is served by their existence. +One hears constantly, true enough (mainly from the gentlemen they +support) that they are educational. But how? Just what sort of +instruction do they radiate, and what is its value? I have never been +able to find out. The sober truth is that they are no more educational +than so many firemen's parades or displays of sky-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>rockets, and that all +they actually offer to the public in return for the taxes wasted upon +them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit +to a penitentiary, or even to Congress or a state legislature in +session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.</p> + +<p>Education your grandmother! Show me a schoolboy who has ever learned +anything valuable or important by watching a mangy old lion snoring away +in its cage or a family of monkeys fighting for peanuts. To get any +useful instruction out of such a spectacle is palpably impossible; not +even a college professor is improved by it. The most it can imaginably +impart is that the stripes of a certain sort of tiger run one way and +the stripes of another sort some other way, that hyenas and polecats +smell worse than Greek 'bus boys, that the Latin name of the raccoon +(who was unheard of by the Romans) is <i>Procyon lotor</i>. For the +dissemination of such banal knowledge, absurdly emitted and defectively +taken in, the taxpayers of the United States are mulcted in hundreds of +thousands of dollars a year. As well make them pay for teaching +policemen the theory of least squares, or for instructing roosters in +the laying of eggs.</p> + +<p>But zoos, it is argued, are of scientific value. They enable learned men +to study this or that. Again the facts blast the theory. No scientific +discovery of any value whatsoever, even to the animals themselves, has +ever come out of a zoo.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> The zoo scientist is the old woman of zoology, +and his alleged wisdom is usually exhibited, not in the groves of actual +learning, but in the yellow journals. He is to biology what the late +Camille Flammarion was to astronomy, which is to say, its court jester +and reductio ad absurdum. When he leaps into public notice with some new +pearl of knowledge, it commonly turns out to be no more than the news +that Marie Bashkirtseff, the Russian lady walrus, has had her teeth +plugged with zinc and is expecting twins. Or that Pishposh, the +man-eating alligator, is down with locomotor ataxia. Or that Damon, the +grizzly, has just finished his brother Pythias in the tenth round, +chewing off his tail, nose and remaining ear.</p> + +<p>Science, of course, has its uses for the lower animals. A diligent study +of their livers and lights helps to an understanding of the anatomy and +physiology, and particularly of the pathology, of man. They are +necessary aids in devising and manufacturing many remedial agents, and +in testing the virtues of those already devised; out of the mute agonies +of a rabbit or a calf may come relief for a baby with diphtheria, or +means for an archdeacon to escape the consequences of his youthful +follies. Moreover, something valuable is to be got out of a mere study +of their habits, instincts and ways of mind—knowledge that, by analogy, +may illuminate the parallel doings of the <i>genus homo</i>, and so enable us +to comprehend the primitive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> mental processes of Congressmen, morons and +the rev. clergy.</p> + +<p>But it must be obvious that none of these studies can be made in a zoo. +The zoo animals, to begin with, provide no material for the biologist; +he can find out no more about their insides than what he discerns from a +safe distance and through the bars. He is not allowed to try his germs +and specifics upon them; he is not allowed to vivisect them. If he would +find out what goes on in the animal body under this condition or that, +he must turn from the inhabitants of the zoo to the customary guinea +pigs and street dogs, and buy or steal them for himself. Nor does he get +any chance for profitable inquiry when zoo animals die (usually of lack +of exercise or ignorant doctoring), for their carcasses are not handed +to him for autopsy, but at once stuffed with gypsum and excelsior and +placed in some museum.</p> + +<p>Least of all do zoos produce any new knowledge about animal behavior. +Such knowledge must be got, not from animals penned up and tortured, but +from animals in a state of nature. A college professor studying the +habits of the giraffe, for example, and confining his observations to +specimens in zoos, would inevitably come to the conclusion that the +giraffe is a sedentary and melancholy beast, standing immovable for +hours at a time and employing an Italian to feed him hay and cabbages. +As well proceed to a study of the psychology of a juris-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>consult by +first immersing him in Sing Sing, or of a juggler by first cutting off +his hands. Knowledge so gained is inaccurate and imbecile knowledge. Not +even a college professor, if sober, would give it any faith and credit.</p> + +<p>There remains, then, the only true utility of a zoo: it is a childish +and pointless show for the unintelligent, in brief, for children, +nursemaids, visiting yokels and the generality of the defective. Should +the taxpayers be forced to sweat millions for such a purpose? I think +not. The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of +monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch +flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be +combatted at the public expense, and not fostered. He is a public +liability and a public menace, and society should seek to improve him. +Instead of that, we spend a lot of money to feed his degrading appetite +and further paralyze his mind. It is precisely as if the community +provided free champagne for dipsomaniacs, or hired lecturers to convert +the army to the doctrines of the Bolsheviki.</p> + +<p>Of the abominable cruelties practised in zoos it is unnecessary to make +mention. Even assuming that all the keepers are men of delicate natures +and ardent zoophiles (which is about as safe as assuming that the +keepers of a prison are all sentimentalists, and weep for the sorrows of +their charges), it must be plain that the work they do involves an +endless war upon the native<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> instincts of the animals, and that they +must thus inflict the most abominable tortures every day. What could be +a sadder sight than a tiger in a cage, save it be a forest monkey +climbing dispairingly up a barked stump, or an eagle chained to its +roost? How can man be benefitted and made better by robbing the seal of +its arctic ice, the hippopotamus of its soft wallow, the buffalo of its +open range, the lion of its kingship, the birds of their air?</p> + +<p>I am no sentimentalist, God knows. I am in favor of vivisection +unrestrained, so long as the vivisectionist knows what he is about. I +advocate clubbing a dog that barks unnecessarily, which all dogs do. I +enjoy hangings, particularly of converts to the evangelical faiths. The +crunch of a cockroach is music to my ears. But when the day comes to +turn the prisoners of the zoo out of their cages, if it is only to lead +them to the swifter, kinder knife of the <i>schochet</i>, I shall be present +and rejoicing, and if any one present thinks to suggest that it would be +a good plan to celebrate the day by shooting the whole zoo faculty, I +shall have a revolver in my pocket and a sound eye in my head.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXVII</h2> + +<h3>ON HEARING MOZART</h3> + + +<p>The only permanent values in the world are truth and beauty, and of +these it is probable that truth is lasting only in so far as it is a +function and manifestation of beauty—a projection of feeling in terms +of idea. The world is a charnel house of dead religions. Where are all +the faiths of the middle ages, so complex and yet so precise? But all +that was essential in the beauty of the middle ages still lives....</p> + +<p>This is the heritage of man, but not of men. The great majority of men +are not even aware of it. Their participation in the progress of the +world, and even in the history of the world, is infinitely remote and +trivial. They live and die, at bottom, as animals live and die. The +human race, as a race, is scarcely cognizant of their existence; they +haven't even definite number, but stand grouped together as <i>x</i>, the +quantity unknown ... and not worth knowing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXVIII</h2> + +<h3>THE ROAD TO DOUBT</h3> + + +<p>The first effect of what used to be called natural philosophy is to fill +its devotee with wonder at the marvels of God. This explains why the +pursuit of science, so long as it remains superficial, is not +incompatible with the most naif sort of religious faith. But the moment +the student of the sciences passes this stage of childlike amazement and +begins to investigate the inner workings of natural phenomena, he begins +to see how ineptly many of them are managed, and so he tends to pass +from awe of the Creator to criticism of the Creator, and once he has +crossed that bridge he has ceased to be a believer. One finds plenty of +neighborhood physicians, amateur botanists, high-school physics teachers +and other such quasi-scientists in the pews on Sunday, but one never +sees a Huxley there, or a Darwin, or an Ehrlich.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XXXIX</h2> + +<h3>A NEW USE FOR CHURCHES</h3> + + +<p>The argument by design, it may be granted, establishes a reasonable +ground for accepting the existence of God. It makes belief, at all +events, quite as intelligible as unbelief. But when the theologians take +their step from the existence of God to the goodness of God they tread +upon much less firm earth. How can one see any proof of that goodness in +the senseless and intolerable sufferings of man—his helplessness, the +brief and troubled span of his life, the inexplicable disproportion +between his deserts and his rewards, the tragedy of his soaring +aspiration, the worse tragedy of his dumb questioning? Granting the +existence of God, a house dedicated to Him naturally follows. He is +all-important; it is fit that man should take some notice of Him. But +why praise and flatter Him for His unspeakable cruelties? Why forget so +supinely His failures to remedy the easily remediable? Why, indeed, +devote the churches exclusively to worship? Why not give them over, now +and then, to justifiable indignation meetings?</p> + +<p>Perhaps men will incline to this idea later on. It is not inconceivable, +indeed, that religion will one day cease to be a poltroonish +acquiescence and become a vigorous and insistent criticism. If God can +hear a petition, what ground is there for holding that He would not hear +a complaint?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> It might, indeed, please Him to find His creatures grown +so self-reliant and reflective. More, it might even help Him to get +through His infinitely complex and difficult work. Theology has already +moved toward such notions. It has abandoned the primitive doctrine of +God's arbitrariness and indifference, and substituted the doctrine that +He is willing, and even eager, to hear the desires of His creatures—<i>i. +e.</i>, their private notions, born of experience, as to what would be best +for them. Why assume that those notions would be any the less worth +hearing and heeding if they were cast in the form of criticism, and even +of denunciation? Why hold that the God who can understand and forgive +even treason could not understand and forgive remonstrance?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XL</h2> + +<h3>THE ROOT OF RELIGION</h3> + + +<p>The idea of literal truth crept into religion relatively late: it is the +invention of lawyers, priests and cheese-mongers. The idea of mystery +long preceded it, and at the heart of that idea of mystery was an idea +of beauty—that is, an idea that this or that view of the celestial and +infernal process presented a satisfying picture of form, rhythm and +organization. Once this view was adopted as satisfying, its professional +interpreters and their dupes sought to reinforce it by declaring it +true. The same flow of reasoning is familiar on lower planes. The +average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is +true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XLI</h2> + +<h3>FREE WILL</h3> + + +<p>Free will, it appears, is still a Christian dogma. Without it the +cruelties of God would strain faith to the breaking-point. But outside +the fold it is gradually falling into decay. Such men of science as +George W. Crile and Jacques Loeb have dealt it staggering blows, and +among laymen of inquiring mind it seems to be giving way to an +apologetic sort of determinism—a determinism, one may say, tempered by +defective observation. The late Mark Twain, in his secret heart, was +such a determinist. In his "What Is Man?" you will find him at his +farewells to libertarianism. The vast majority of our acts, he argues, +are determined, but there remains a residuum of free choices. Here we +stand free of compulsion and face a pair or more of alternatives, and +are free to go this way or that.</p> + +<p>A pillow for free will to fall upon—but one loaded with disconcerting +brickbats. Where the occupants of this last trench of libertarianism err +is in their assumption that the pulls of their antagonistic impulses are +exactly equal—that the individual is absolutely free to choose which +one he will yield to. Such freedom, in practise, is never encountered. +When an individual confronts alternatives, it is not alone his volition +that chooses between them, but also his environment, his inherited +prejudices, his race, his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> color, his condition of servitude. I may kiss +a girl or I may not kiss her, but surely it would be absurd to say that +I am, in any true sense, a free agent in the matter. The world has even +put my helplessness into a proverb. It says that my decision and act +depend upon the time, the place—and even to some extent, upon the girl.</p> + +<p>Examples might be multiplied <i>ad infinitum</i>. I can scarcely remember +performing a wholly voluntary act. My whole life, as I look back upon +it, seems to be a long series of inexplicable accidents, not only quite +unavoidable, but even quite unintelligible. Its history is the history +of the reactions of my personality to my environment, of my behavior +before external stimuli. I have been no more responsible for that +personality than I have been for that environment. To say that I can +change the former by a voluntary effort is as ridiculous as to say that +I can modify the curvature of the lenses of my eyes. I know, because I +have often tried to change it, and always failed. Nevertheless, it has +changed. I am not the same man I was in the last century. But the +gratifying improvements so plainly visible are surely not to be credited +to me. All of them came from without—or from unplumbable and +uncontrollable depths within.</p> + +<p>The more the matter is examined the more the residuum of free will +shrinks and shrinks, until in the end it is almost impossible to find +it. A great many men, of course, looking at them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>selves, see it as +something very large; they slap their chests and call themselves free +agents, and demand that God reward them for their virtue. But these +fellows are simply idiotic egoists, devoid of a critical sense. They +mistake the acts of God for their own acts. Of such sort are the +coxcombs who boast about wooing and winning their wives. They are +brothers to the fox who boasted that he had made the hounds run....</p> + +<p>The throwing overboard of free will is commonly denounced on the ground +that it subverts morality and makes of religion a mocking. Such pious +objections, of course, are foreign to logic, but nevertheless it may be +well to give a glance to this one. It is based upon the fallacious +hypothesis that the determinist escapes, or hopes to escape, the +consequences of his acts. Nothing could be more untrue. Consequences +follow acts just as relentlessly if the latter be involuntary as if they +be voluntary. If I rob a bank of my free choice or in response to some +unfathomable inner necessity, it is all one; I will go to the same jail. +Conscripts in war are killed just as often as volunteers. Men who are +tracked down and shanghaied by their wives have just as hard a time of +it as men who walk fatuously into the trap by formally proposing.</p> + +<p>Even on the ghostly side, determinism does not do much damage to +theology. It is no harder to believe that a man will be damned for his +involuntary acts than it is to believe that he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> will be damned for his +voluntary acts, for even the supposition that he is wholly free does not +dispose of the massive fact that God made him as he is, and that God +could have made him a saint if He had so desired. To deny this is to +flout omnipotence—a crime at which, as I have often said, I balk. But +here I begin to fear that I wade too far into the hot waters of the +sacred sciences, and that I had better retire before I lose my hide. +This prudent retirement is purely deterministic. I do not ascribe it to +my own sagacity; I ascribe it wholly to that singular kindness which +fate always shows me. If I were free I'd probably keep on, and then +regret it afterward.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XLII</h2> + +<h3>QUID EST VERITAS?</h3> + + +<p>All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a +dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African +bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and +intent of God exactly and completely. "For who hath known the mind of +the Lord?" asked Paul of the Romans. "How unsearchable are his +judgments, and his ways past finding out!" "It is the glory of God," +said Solomon, "to conceal a thing." "Clouds and darkness," said David, +"are around him." "No man," said the Preacher, "can find out the work of +God." ... The difference between religions is a difference in their +relative content of agnosticism. The most satisfying and ecstatic faith +is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to +know at all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XLIII</h2> + +<h3>THE DOUBTER'S REWARD</h3> + + +<p>Despite the common delusion to the contrary the philosophy of doubt is +far more comforting than that of hope. The doubter escapes the worst +penalty of the man of hope; he is never disappointed, and hence never +indignant. The inexplicable and irremediable may interest him, but they +do not enrage him, or, I may add, fool him. This immunity is worth all +the dubious assurances ever foisted upon man. It is pragmatically +impregnable.... Moreover, it makes for tolerance and sympathy. The +doubter does not hate his opponents; he sympathizes with them. In the +end, he may even come to sympathize with God.... The old idea of +fatherhood here submerges in a new idea of brotherhood. God, too, is +beset by limitations, difficulties, broken hopes. Is it disconcerting to +think of Him thus? Well, is it any the less disconcerting to think of +Him as able to ease and answer, and yet failing?...</p> + +<p>But he that doubteth—<i>damnatus est</i>. At once the penalty of doubt—and +its proof, excuse and genesis.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XLIV</h2> + +<h3>BEFORE THE ALTAR</h3> + + +<p>A salient objection to the prevailing religious ceremonial lies in the +attitudes of abasement that it enforces upon the faithful. A man would +be thought a slimy and knavish fellow if he approached any human judge +or potentate in the manner provided for approaching the Lord God. It is +an etiquette that involves loss of self-respect, and hence it cannot be +pleasing to its object, for one cannot think of the Lord God as +sacrificing decent feelings to mere vanity. This notion of abasement, +like most of the other ideas that are general in the world, is obviously +the invention of small and ignoble men. It is the pollution of theology +by the <i>sklavmoral</i>.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XLV</h2> + +<h3>THE MASK</h3> + + +<p>Ritual is to religion what the music of an opera is to the libretto: +ostensibly a means of interpretation, but actually a means of +concealment. The Presbyterians made the mistake of keeping the doctrine +of infant damnation in plain words. As enlightenment grew in the +world, intelligence and prudery revolted against it, and so it had +to be abandoned. Had it been set to music it would have +survived—uncomprehended, unsuspected and unchallenged.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XLVI</h2> + +<h3>PIA VENEZIANI, POI CRISTIANI</h3> + + +<p>I have spoken of the possibility that God, too, may suffer from a finite +intelligence, and so know the bitter sting of disappointment and defeat. +Here I yielded something to politeness; the thing is not only possible, +but obvious. Like man, God is deceived by appearances and probabilities; +He makes calculations that do not work out; He falls into specious +assumptions. For example, He assumed that Adam and Eve would obey the +law in the Garden. Again, He assumed that the appalling lesson of the +Flood would make men better. Yet again, He assumed that men would always +put religion in first place among their concerns—that it would be +eternally possible to reach and influence them through it. This last +assumption was the most erroneous of them all. The truth is that the +generality of men have long since ceased to take religion seriously. +When we encounter one who still does so, he seems eccentric, almost +feeble-minded—or, more commonly, a rogue who has been deluded by his +own hypocrisy. Even men who are professionally religious, and who thus +have far more incentive to stick to religion than the rest of us, nearly +always throw it overboard at the first serious temptation. During the +past four years, for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> example, Christianity has been in combat with +patriotism all over Christendom. Which has prevailed? How many gentlemen +of God, having to choose between Christ and Patrie, have actually chosen +Christ?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XLVII</h2> + +<h3>OFF AGAIN, ON AGAIN</h3> + + +<p>The ostensible object of the Reformation, which lately reached its +fourth centenary, was to purge the Church of imbecilities. That object +was accomplished; the Church shook them off. But imbecilities make an +irresistible appeal to man; he inevitably tries to preserve them by +cloaking them with religious sanctions. The result is Protestantism.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XLVIII</h2> + +<h3>THEOLOGY</h3> + + +<p>The notion that theology is a dull subject is one of the strangest +delusions of a stupid and uncritical age. The truth is that some of the +most engrossing books ever written in the world are full of it. For +example, the Gospel according to St. Luke. For example, Nietzsche's "Der +Antichrist." For example, Mark Twain's "What Is Man?", St. Augustine's +Confessions, Haeckel's "The Riddle of the Universe," and Huxley's +Essays. How, indeed, could a thing be dull that has sent hundreds of +thousands of men—the very best and the very worst of the race—to the +gallows and the stake, and made and broken dynasties, and inspired the +greatest of human hopes and enterprises, and embroiled whole continents +in war? No, theology is not a soporific. The reason it so often seems so +is that its public exposition has chiefly fallen, in these later days, +into the hands of a sect of intellectual castrati, who begin by +mistaking it for a sub-department of etiquette, and then proceed to +anoint it with butter, rose water and talcum powder. Whenever a +first-rate intellect tackles it, as in the case of Huxley, or in that of +Leo XIII., it at once takes on all the sinister fascination it had in +Luther's day.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>XLIX</h2> + +<h3>EXEMPLI GRATIA</h3> + + +<p>Do I let the poor suffer, and consign them, as old Friedrich used to +say, to statistics and the devil? Well, so does God.</p> + +<p><br /><br /></p> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Damn!, by Henry Louis Mencken + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAMN! *** + +***** This file should be named 18948-h.htm or 18948-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/9/4/18948/ + +Produced by Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://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: Damn! + A Book of Calumny + +Author: Henry Louis Mencken + +Release Date: July 31, 2006 [EBook #18948] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAMN! *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + + DAMN! + + A BOOK OF CALUMNY + + BY H. L. MENCKEN + + + + + _Third Printing_ + + PHILIP GOODMAN COMPANY + NEW YORK NINETEEN EIGHTEEN + + COPYRIGHT 1918 BY + PHILIP GOODMAN COMPANY + + + + + CONTENTS + + + I Pater Patriae 7 + + II The Reward of the Artist 9 + + III The Heroic Considered 10 + + IV The Burden of Humor 11 + + V The Saving Grace 13 + + VI Moral Indignation 14 + + VII Stable-Names 17 + + VIII The Jews 19 + + IX The Comstockian Premiss 22 + + X The Labial Infamy 23 + + XI A True Ascetic 28 + + XII On Lying 30 + + XIII History 32 + + XIV The Curse of Civilization 34 + + XV Eugenics 35 + + XVI The Jocose Gods 37 + + XVII War 38 + + XVIII Moralist and Artist 39 + + XIX Actors 40 + + XX The Crowd 45 + + XXI An American Philosopher 48 + + XXII Clubs 49 + + XXIII Fidelis ad Urnum 50 + + XXIV A Theological Mystery 52 + + XXV The Test of Truth 53 + + XXVI Literary Indecencies 54 + + XXVII Virtuous Vandalism 55 + + XXVIII A Footnote on the Duel of Sex 60 + + XXIX Alcohol 64 + + XXX Thoughts on the Voluptuous 67 + + XXXI The Holy Estate 69 + + XXXII Dichtung und Wahrheit 70 + + XXXIII Wild Shots 71 + + XXXIV Beethoven 73 + + XXXV The Tone Art 75 + + XXXVI Zoos 80 + + XXXVII On Hearing Mozart 86 + + XXXVIII The Road to Doubt 87 + + XXXIX A New Use for Churches 88 + + XL The Root of Religion 90 + + XLI Free Will 91 + + XLII Quid est Veritas? 95 + + XLIII The Doubter's Reward 96 + + XLIV Before the Altar 97 + + XLV The Mask 98 + + XLVI Pia Veneziani, poi Cristiani 99 + + XLVII Off Again, On Again 101 + + XLVIII Theology 102 + + XLIX Exemplia Gratia 103 + + + + +DAMN! A BOOK OF CALUMNY + + + + +I. + +PATER PATRIAE + + +If George Washington were alive today, what a shining mark he would be +for the whole camorra of uplifters, forward-lookers and professional +patriots! He was the Rockefeller of his time, the richest man in the +United States, a promoter of stock companies, a land-grabber, an +exploiter of mines and timber. He was a bitter opponent of foreign +alliances, and denounced their evils in harsh, specific terms. He had a +liking for all forthright and pugnacious men, and a contempt for +lawyers, schoolmasters and all other such obscurantists. He was not +pious. He drank whisky whenever he felt chilly, and kept a jug of it +handy. He knew far more profanity than Scripture, and used and enjoyed +it more. He had no belief in the infallible wisdom of the common people, +but regarded them as inflammatory dolts, and tried to save the republic +from them. He advocated no sure cure for all the sorrows of the world, +and doubted that such a panacea existed. He took no interest in the +private morals of his neighbors. + +Inhabiting These States today, George would be ineligible for any office +of honor or profit. The Senate would never dare confirm him; the +President would not think of nominating him. He would be on trial in +all the yellow journals for belonging to the Invisible Government, the +Hell Hounds of Plutocracy, the Money Power, the Interests. The Sherman +Act would have him in its toils; he would be under indictment by every +grand jury south of the Potomac; the triumphant prohibitionists of his +native state would be denouncing him (he had a still at Mount Vernon) as +a debaucher of youth, a recruiting officer for insane asylums, a +poisoner of the home. The suffragettes would be on his trail, with +sentinels posted all along the Accotink road. The initiators and +referendors would be bawling for his blood. The young college men of the +_Nation_ and the _New Republic_ would be lecturing him weekly. He would +be used to scare children in Kansas and Arkansas. The chautauquas would +shiver whenever his name was mentioned.... + +And what a chance there would be for that ambitious young district +attorney who thought to shadow him on his peregrinations--and grab him +under the Mann Act! + + + + +II + +THE REWARD OF THE ARTIST + + +A man labors and fumes for a whole year to write a symphony in G minor. +He puts enormous diligence into it, and much talent, and maybe no little +downright genius. It draws his blood and wrings his soul. He dies in it +that he may live again.... Nevertheless, its final value, in the open +market of the world, is a great deal less than that of a fur overcoat, +half a Rolls-Royce automobile, or a handful of authentic hair from the +whiskers of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. + + + + +III + +THE HEROIC CONSIDERED + + +For humility and poverty, in themselves, the world has little liking and +less respect. In the folk-lore of all races, despite the +sentimentalization of abasement for dramatic effect, it is always power +and grandeur that count in the end. The whole point of the story of +Cinderella, the most widely and constantly charming of all stories, is +that the Fairy Prince lifts Cinderella above her cruel sisters and +stepmother, and so enables her to lord it over them. The same idea +underlies practically all other folk-stories: the essence of each of +them is to be found in the ultimate triumph and exaltation of its +protagonist. And of the real men and women of history, the most +venerated and envied are those whose early humiliations were but +preludes to terminal glories; for example, Lincoln, Whittington, +Franklin, Columbus, Demosthenes, Frederick the Great, Catherine, Mary of +Magdala, Moses. Even the Man of Sorrows, cradled in a manger and done to +death between two thieves, is seen, as we part from Him at last, in a +situation of stupendous magnificence, with infinite power in His hands. +Even the Beatitudes, in the midst of their eloquent counselling of +renunciation, give it unimaginable splendor as its reward. The meek +shall inherit--what? The whole earth! And the poor in spirit? They shall +sit upon the right hand of God!... + + + + +IV + +THE BURDEN OF HUMOR + + +What is the origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so +dangerous, if you would keep the public confidence, to make the public +laugh? Is it because humor and sound sense are essentially antagonistic? +Has humanity found by experience that the man who sees the fun of life +is unfitted to deal sanely with its problems? I think not. No man had +more of the comic spirit in him than William Shakespeare, and yet his +serious reflections, by the sheer force of their sublime obviousness, +have pushed their way into the race's arsenal of immortal platitudes. +So, too, with Aesop, and with Balzac, and with Dickens, to come down the +scale. All of these men were fundamentally humorists, and yet all of +them achieved what the race has come to accept as a penetrating +sagacity. Contrariwise, many a haloed pundit has had his occasional +guffaw. Lincoln, had there been no Civil War, might have survived in +history chiefly as the father of the American smutty story--the only +original art-form that America has yet contributed to literature. +Huxley, had he not been the greatest intellectual duellist of his age, +might have been its greatest satirist. Bismarck, pursuing the gruesome +trade of politics, concealed the devastating wit of a Moliere; his +surviving epigrams are truly stupendous. And Beethoven, after soaring to +the heights of tragedy in the first movement of the Fifth Symphony, +turned to the sardonic bull-fiddling of the _scherzo_. + +No, there is not the slightest disharmony between sense and nonsense, +humor and respectability, despite the skittish tendency to assume that +there is. But, why, then, that widespread error? What actual fact of +life lies behind it, giving it a specious appearance of reasonableness? +None other, I am convinced, than the fact that the average man is far +too stupid to make a joke. He may _see_ a joke and _love_ a joke, +particularly when it floors and flabbergasts some person he dislikes, +but the only way he can himself take part in the priming and pointing of +a new one is by acting as its target. In brief, his personal contact +with humor tends to fill him with an accumulated sense of disadvantage, +of pricked complacency, of sudden and crushing defeat; and so, by an +easy psychological process, he is led into the idea that the thing +itself is incompatible with true dignity of character and intellect. +Hence his deep suspicion of jokers, however adept their thrusts. "What a +damned fool!"--this same half-pitying tribute he pays to wit and butt +alike. He cannot separate the virtuoso of comedy from his general +concept of comedy itself, and that concept is inextricably mingled with +memories of foul ambuscades and mortifying hurts. And so it is not often +that he is willing to admit any wisdom in a humorist, or to condone +frivolity in a sage. + + + + +V + +THE SAVING GRACE + + +Let us not burn the universities--yet. After all, the damage they do +might be worse.... Suppose Oxford had snared and disemboweled +Shakespeare! Suppose Harvard had set its stamp upon Mark Twain! + + + + +VI + +MORAL INDIGNATION + + +The loud, preposterous moral crusades that so endlessly rock the +republic--against the rum demon, against Sunday baseball, against Sunday +moving-pictures, against dancing, against fornication, against the +cigarette, against all things sinful and charming--these astounding +Methodist jehads offer fat clinical material to the student of +mobocracy. In the long run, nearly all of them must succeed, for the mob +is eternally virtuous, and the only thing necessary to get it in favor +of some new and super-oppressive law is to convince it that that law +will be distasteful to the minority that it envies and hates. The poor +numskull who is so horribly harrowed by Puritan pulpit-thumpers that he +can't go to a ball game on Sunday afternoon without dreaming of hell and +the devil all Sunday night is naturally envious of the fellow who can, +and being envious of him, he hates him and is eager to destroy his +offensive happiness. The farmer who works 18 hours a day and never gets +a day off is envious of his farmhand who goes to the crossroads and +barrels up on Saturday afternoon; hence the virulence of prohibition +among the peasantry. The hard-working householder who, on some bitter +evening, glances over the _Saturday Evening Post_ for a square and +honest look at his wife is envious of those gaudy drummers who go +gallivanting about the country with scarlet girls; hence the Mann act. +If these deviltries were equally open to all men, and all men were +equally capable of appreciating them, their unpopularity would tend to +wither. + +I often think, indeed, that the prohibitionist tub-thumpers make a +tactical mistake in dwelling too much upon the evils and horrors of +alcohol, and not enough upon its delights. A few enlarged photographs of +first-class bar-rooms, showing the rows of well-fed, well-dressed +_bibuli_ happily moored to the brass rails, their noses in fragrant mint +and hops and their hands reaching out for free rations of olives, +pretzels, cloves, pumpernickle, Bismarck herring, anchovies, +_schwartenmagen_, wieners, Smithfield ham and dill pickles--such a +gallery of contentment would probably do far more execution among the +dismal _shudra_ than all the current portraits of drunkards' livers. To +vote for prohibition in the face of the liver portraits means to vote +for the good of the other fellow, for even the oldest bibulomaniac +always thinks that he himself will escape. This is an act of altruism +almost impossible to the mob-man, whose selfishness is but little +corrupted by the imagination that shows itself in his betters. His most +austere renunciations represent no more than a matching of the joys of +indulgence against the pains of hell; religion, to him, is little more +than synthesized fear.... I venture that many a vote for prohibition +comes from gentlemen who look longingly through swinging doors--and pass +on in propitiation of Satan and their alert consorts, the lake of +brimstone and the corrective broomstick.... + + + + +VII + +STABLE-NAMES + + +Why doesn't some patient drudge of a _privat dozent_ compile a +dictionary of the stable-names of the great? All show dogs and race +horses, as everyone knows, have stable-names. On the list of entries a +fast mare may appear as Czarina Ogla Fedorovna, but in the stable she is +not that at all, nor even Czarina or Olga, but maybe Lil or Jennie. And +a prize bulldog, Champion Zoroaster or Charlemagne XI. on the bench, may +be plain Jack or Ponto _en famille_. So with celebrities of the _genus +homo_. Huxley's official style and appellation was "The Right Hon. +Thomas Henry Huxley, P. C., M. D., Ph. D., LL. D., D. C. L., D. Sc., F. +R. S.," and his biographer tells us that he delighted in its rolling +grandeur--but to his wife he was always Hal. Shakespeare, to his fellows +of his Bankside, was Will, and perhaps Willie to Ann Hathaway. The +Kaiser is another Willie: the late Czar so addressed him in their famous +exchange of telegrams. The Czar himself was Nicky in those days, and no +doubt remains Nicky to his intimates today. Edgar Allan Poe was always +Eddie to his wife, and Mark Twain was always Youth to his. P. T. +Barnum's stable-name was Taylor, his middle name; Charles Lamb's was +Guy; Nietzsche's was Fritz; Whistler's was Jimmie; the late King +Edward's was Bertie; Grover Cleveland's was Steve; J. Pierpont Morgan's +was Jack; Dr. Wilson's is Tom. + +Some given names are surrounded by a whole flotilla of stable-names. +Henry, for example, is softened variously into Harry, Hen, Hank, Hal, +Henny, Enery, On'ry and Heinie. Which did Ann Boleyn use when she cooed +into the suspicious ear of Henry VIII.? To which did Henrik Ibsen answer +at the domestic hearth? It is difficult to imagine his wife calling him +Henrik: the name is harsh, clumsy, razor-edged. But did she make it Hen +or Rik, or neither? What was Bismarck to the Fuerstin, and to the mother +he so vastly feared? Ottchen? Somehow it seems impossible. What was +Grant to his wife? Surely not Ulysses! And Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? And +Rutherford B. Hayes? Was Robert Browning ever Bob? Was John Wesley ever +Jack? Was Emmanuel Swendenborg ever Manny? Was Tadeusz Kosciusko ever +Teddy? + +A fair field of inquiry invites. Let some laborious assistant professor +explore and chart it. There will be more of human nature in his report +than in all the novels ever written. + + + + +VIII + +THE JEWS + + +The Jews, like the Americans, labor under a philosophical dualism, and +in both cases it is a theological heritage. On the one hand there is the +idealism that is lovely and uplifting and will get a man into heaven, +and on the other hand there is the realism that works. The fact that the +Jews cling to both, thus running, as it were, upon two tracks, is what +makes them so puzzling, now and then, to the _goyim_. In one aspect they +stand for the most savage practicality; in another aspect they are +dreamers of an almost fabulous other-worldiness. My own belief is that +the essential Jew is the idealist--that his occasional flashing of hyena +teeth is no more than a necessary concession to the harsh demands of the +struggle for existence. Perhaps, in many cases, it is due to an actual +corruption of blood. The Jews come from the Levant, and their women were +exposed for many centuries to the admiration of Greek, Arab and +Armenian. The shark that a Jew can be at his worst is simply a Greek or +Armenian at his best. + +As a statement of post-mortem and super-terrestrial fact, the religion +that the Jews have foisted upon the world seems to me to be as vast a +curse as the influenza that we inherit from the Tatars or the democratic +fallacies set afloat by the French Revolution. The one thing that can +be said in favor of it is that it is not true, and yet we suffer from it +almost as much as if it were true. But with it, encasing it and +preserving it, there has come something that is positively +valuable--something, indeed, that is beyond all price--and that is +Jewish poetry. To compare it to the poetry of any other race is wholly +impossible; it stands completely above all the rest; it is as far beyond +the next best as German music is beyond French music, or French painting +beyond English painting, or the English drama beyond the Italian drama. +There are single chapters in the Old Testament that are worth all the +poetry ever written in the New World and nine-tenths of that written in +the Old. The Jews of those ancient days had imagination, they had +dignity, they had ears for sweet sound, they had, above all, the faculty +of grandeur. The stupendous music that issued from them has swept their +barbaric demonology along with it, setting at naught the collective +intelligence of the human species; they embalmed their idiotic taboos +and fetishes in undying strains, and so gave them some measure of the +same immortality. A race of lawgivers? Bosh! Leviticus is as archaic as +the Code of Manu, and the Decalogue is a fossil. A race of seers? Bosh +again! The God they saw survives only as a bogey-man, a theory, an +uneasy and vexatious ghost. A race of traders and sharpers? Bosh a third +time! The Jews are as poor as the Spaniards. But a race of poets, my +lords, a race of poets! It is a vision of beauty that has ever haunted +them. And it has been their destiny to transmit that vision, enfeebled, +perhaps, but still distinct, to other and lesser peoples, that life +might be made softer for the sons of men, and the goodness of the Lord +God--whoever He may be--might not be forgotten. + + + + +IX + +THE COMSTOCKIAN PREMISS + + +It is argued against certain books, by virtuosi of moral alarm, that +they depict vice as attractive. This recalls the king who hanged a judge +for deciding that an archbishop was a mammal. + + + + +X + +THE LABIAL INFAMY + + +After five years of search I have been able to discover but one book in +English upon the art of kissing, and that is a very feeble treatise by a +savant of York, Pa., Dr. R. McCormick Sturgeon. There may be others, but +I have been quite unable to find them. Kissing, for all one hears of it, +has not attracted the scientists and literati; one compares its meagre +literature with the endless books upon the other phenomena of love, +especially divorce and obstetrics. Even Dr. Sturgeon, pioneering +bravely, is unable to get beyond a sentimental and trivial view of the +thing he vivisects, and so his book is no more than a compendium of +mush. His very description of the act of kissing is made up of sonorous +gabble about heaving bosoms, red lips, electric sparks and such-like +imaginings. What reason have we for believing, as he says, that the +lungs are "strongly expanded" during the act? My own casual observation +inclines me to hold that the opposite is true, that the lungs are +actually collapsed in a pseudo-asthmatic spasm. Again, what is the +ground for arguing that the lips are "full, ripe and red?" The real +effect of the emotions that accompany kissing is to empty the +superficial capillaries and so produce a leaden pallor. As for such +salient symptoms as the temperature, the pulse and the rate of +respiration, the learned pundit passes them over without a word. Mrs. +Elsie Clews Parsons would be a good one to write a sober and accurate +treatise upon kissing. Her books upon "The Family" and "Fear and +Conventionality" indicate her possession of the right sort of learning. +Even better would be a work by Havelock Ellis, say, in three or four +volumes. Ellis has devoted his whole life to illuminating the mysteries +of sex, and his collection of materials is unsurpassed in the world. +Surely there must be an enormous mass of instructive stuff about kissing +in his card indexes, letter files, book presses and archives. + +Just why the kiss as we know it should have attained to its present +popularity in Christendom is probably one of the things past finding +out. The Japanese, a very affectionate and sentimental people, do not +practise kissing in any form; they regard the act, in fact, with an +aversion matching our own aversion to the rubbing of noses. Nor is it in +vogue among the Moslems, nor among the Chinese, who countenance it only +as between mother and child. Even in parts of Christendom it is girt +about by rigid taboos, so that its practise tends to be restricted to a +few occasions. Two Frenchmen or Italians, when they meet, kiss each +other on both cheeks. One used to see, indeed, many pictures of General +Joffre thus bussing the heroes of Verdun; there even appeared in print a +story to the effect that one of them objected to the scratching of his +moustache. But imagine two Englishmen kissing! Or two Germans! As well +imagined the former kissing the latter! Such a display of affection is +simply impossible to men of Northern blood; they would die with shame if +caught at it. The Englishman, like the American, never kisses if he can +help it. He even regards it as bad form to kiss his wife in a railway +station, or, in fact, anywhere in sight of a third party. The Latin has +no such compunctions. He leaps to the business regardless of place or +time; his sole concern is with the lady. Once, in driving from Nice to +Monte Carlo along the lower Corniche road, I passed a hundred or so open +taxicabs containing man and woman, and fully 75 per cent. of the men had +their arms around their companions, and were kissing them. These were +not peasants, remember, but well-to-do persons. In England such a scene +would have caused a great scandal; in most American States the police +would have charged the offenders with drawn revolvers. + +The charm of kissing is one of the things I have always wondered at. I +do not pretend, of course, that I have never done it; mere politeness +forces one to it; there are women who sulk and grow bellicose unless one +at least makes the motions of kissing them. But what I mean is that I +have never found the act a tenth part as agreeable as poets, the authors +of musical comedy librettos, and (on the contrary side) chaperones and +the _gendarmerie_ make it out. The physical sensation, far from being +pleasant, is intensely uncomfortable--the suspension of respiration, +indeed, quickly resolves itself into a feeling of suffocation--and the +posture necessitated by the approximation of lips and lips is +unfailingly a constrained and ungraceful one. Theoretically, a man +kisses a woman perpendicularly, with their eyes, those "windows of the +soul," synchronizing exactly. But actually, on account of the +incompressibility of the nasal cartilages, he has to incline either his +or her head to an angle of at least 60 degrees, and the result is that +his right eye gazes insanely at the space between her eyebrows, while +his left eye is fixed upon some vague spot behind her. An instantaneous +photograph of such a maneuvre, taken at the moment of incidence, would +probably turn the stomach of even the most romantic man, and force him, +in sheer self-respect, to renounce kissing as he has renounced leap-frog +and walking on stilts. Only a woman (for women are quite devoid of +aesthetic feeling) could survive so damning a picture. + +But the most embarrassing moment, in kissing, does not come during the +actual kiss (for at that time the sensation of suffocation drives out +all purely psychical feelings), but immediately afterward. What is one +to say to the woman then? The occasion obviously demands some sort of +remark. One has just received (in theory) a great boon; the silence +begins to make itself felt; there stands the fair one, obviously +waiting. Is one to thank her? Certainly that would be too transparent a +piece of hypocrisy, too flaccid a banality. Is one to tell her that one +loves her? Obviously, there is danger in such assurances, and beside, +one usually doesn't, and a lie is a lie. Or is one to descend to chatty +commonplaces--about the weather, literature, politics, the war? The +practical impossibility of solving the problem leads almost inevitably +to a blunder far worse than any merely verbal one: one kisses her again, +and then again, and so on, and so on. The ultimate result is satiety, +repugnance, disgust; even the girl herself gets enough. + + + + +XI + +A TRUE ASCETIC + + +Herbert Spencer's objection to swearing, of which so much has been made +by moralists, was not an objection to its sinfulness but an objection to +its charm. In brief, he feared comfort, satisfaction, joy. The boarding +houses in which he dragged out his gray years were as bare and cheerless +as so many piano boxes. He avoided all the little vices and dissipations +which make human existence bearable: good eating, good drinking, +dancing, tobacco, poker, poetry, the theatre, personal adornment, +philandering, adultery. He was insanely suspicious of everything that +threatened to interfere with his work. Even when that work halted him by +the sheer agony of its monotony, and it became necessary for him to find +recreation, he sought out some recreation that was as unattractive as +possible, in the hope that it would quickly drive him back to work +again. Having to choose between methods of locomotion on his holidays, +he chose going afoot, the most laborious and least satisfying available. +Brought to bay by his human need for a woman, he directed his fancy +toward George Eliot, probably the most unappetizing woman of his race +and time. Drawn irresistibly to music, he avoided the Fifth Symphony and +"Tristan und Isolde," and joined a crowd of old maids singing part songs +around a cottage piano. John Tyndall saw clearly the effect of all this +and protested against it, saying, "He'd be a much nicer fellow if he had +a good swear now and then"--_i. e._, if he let go now and then, if he +yielded to his healthy human instincts now and then, if he went on some +sort of debauch now and then. But what Tyndall overlooked was the fact +that the meagreness of his recreations was the very element that +attracted Spencer to them. Obsessed by the fear--and it turned out to be +well-grounded--that he would not live long enough to complete his work, +he regarded all joy as a temptation, a corruption, a sin of scarlet. He +was a true ascetic. He could sacrifice all things of the present for one +thing of the future, all things real for one thing ideal. + + + + +XII + +ON LYING + + +Lying stands on a different plane from all other moral offenses, not +because it is intrinsically more heinous or less heinous, but simply +because it is the only one that may be accurately measured. Forgetting +unwitting error, which has nothing to do with morals, a statement is +either true or not true. This is a simple distinction and relatively +easy to establish. But when one comes to other derelictions the thing +grows more complicated. The line between stealing and not stealing is +beautifully vague; whether or not one has crossed it is not determined +by the objective act, but by such delicate things as motive and purpose. +So again, with assault, sex offenses, and even murder; there may be +surrounding circumstances which greatly condition the moral quality of +the actual act. But lying is specific, exact, scientific. Its capacity +for precise determination, indeed, makes its presence or non-presence +the only accurate gauge of other immoral acts. Murder, for example, is +nowhere regarded as immoral save it involve some repudiation of a social +compact, of a tacit promise to refrain from it--in brief, some deceit, +some perfidy, some lie. One may kill freely when the pact is formally +broken, as in war. One may kill equally freely when it is broken by the +victim, as in an assault by a highwayman. But one may not kill so long +as it is not broken, and one may not break it to clear the way. Some +form of lie is at the bottom of all other recognized crimes, from +seduction to embezzlement. Curiously enough, this master immorality of +them all is not prohibited by the Ten Commandments, nor is it penalized, +in its pure form, by the code of any civilized nation. Only savages have +laws against lying _per se_. + + + + +XIII + +HISTORY + + +It is the misfortune of humanity that its history is chiefly written by +third-rate men. The first-rate man seldom has any impulse to record and +philosophise; his impulse is to act; life, to him, is an adventure, not +a syllogism or an autopsy. Thus the writing of history is left to +college professors, moralists, theorists, dunder-heads. Few historians, +great or small, have shown any capacity for the affairs they presume to +describe and interpret. Gibbon was an inglorious failure as a member of +Parliament. Thycydides made such a mess of his military (or, rather, +naval) command that he was exiled from Athens for twenty years and +finally assassinated. Flavius Josephus, serving as governor of Galilee, +lost the whole province to the Romans, and had to flee for his life. +Momssen, elected to the Prussian Landtag, flirted with the Socialists. +How much better we would understand the habits and nature of man if +there were more historians like Julius Caesar, or even like Niccolo +Machiavelli! Remembering the sharp and devastating character of their +rough notes, think what marvelous histories Bismarck, Washington and +Frederick the Great might have written! Such men are privy to the facts; +the usual historians have to depend on deductions, rumors, guesses. +Again, such men know how to tell the truth, however unpleasant; they +are wholly free of that puerile moral obsession which marks the +professor.... But they so seldom tell it! Well, perhaps some of them +have--and their penalty is that they are damned and forgotten. + + + + +XIV + +THE CURSE OF CIVILIZATION + + +A civilized man's worst curse is social obligation. The most unpleasant +act imaginable is to go to a dinner party. One could get far better +food, taking one day with another, at Childs', or even in a Pennsylvania +Railroad dining-car; one could find far more amusing society in a +bar-room or a bordello, or even at the Y. M. C. A. No hostess in +Christendom ever arranged a dinner party of any pretensions without +including at least one intensely disagreeable person--a vain and vapid +girl, a hideous woman, a follower of baseball, a stock-broker, a veteran +of some war or other, a gabbler of politics. And one is enough to do the +business. + + + + +XV + +EUGENICS + + +The error of the eugenists lies in the assumption that a physically +healthy man is the best fitted to survive. This is true of rats and the +_pediculae_, but not of the higher animals, _e. g._, horses, dogs and +men. In these higher animals one looks for more subtle qualities, +chiefly of the spirit. Imagine estimating philosophers by their chest +expansions, their blood pressures, their Wassermann reactions! + +The so-called social diseases, over which eugenists raise such a pother, +are surely not the worst curses that mankind has to bear. Some of the +greatest men in history have had them; whole nations have had them and +survived. The truth about them is that, save in relatively rare cases, +they do very little damage. The horror in which they are held is chiefly +a moral horror, and its roots lie in the assumption that they cannot be +contracted without sin. Nothing could be more false. Many great +moralists have suffered from them: the gods are always up to such +sardonic waggeries. + +Moreover, only one of them is actually inheritable, and that one is +transmitted relatively seldom. But among psychic characters one finds +that practically all are inheritable. For example, stupidity, credulity, +avarice, pecksniffery, lack of imagination, hatred of beauty, meanness, +poltroonry, petty brutality, smallness of soul.... I here present, of +course, the Puritan complex; there flashes up the image of the "good +man," that libel on God and the devil. Consider him well. If you had to +choose a sire for a first-rate son, would you choose a consumptive Jew +with the fires of eternity in his eyes, or an Iowa right-thinker with +his hold full of Bibles and breakfast food? + + + + +XVI + +THE JOCOSE GODS + + +What humor could be wilder than that of life itself? Franz Schubert, on +his deathbed, read the complete works of J. Fenimore Cooper. John +Millington Synge wrote "Riders to the Sea" on a second-hand $40 +typewriter, and wore a celluloid collar. Richard Wagner made a living, +during four lean years, arranging Italian opera arias for the cornet. +Herbert Spencer sang bass in a barber-shop quartette and was in love +with George Eliot. William Shakespeare was a social pusher and bought +him a bogus coat-of-arms. Martin Luther suffered from the jim-jams. One +of the greatest soldiers in Hungarian history was named Hunjadi +Janos.... + + + + +XVII + +WAR + + +Superficially, war seems inordinately cruel and wasteful, and yet it +must be plain on reflection that the natural evolutionary process is +quite as cruel and even more wasteful. Man's chief efforts in times of +peace are devoted to making that process less violent and sanguinary. +Civilization, indeed, may be defined as a constructive criticism of +nature, and Huxley even called it a conspiracy against nature. Man tries +to remedy what must inevitably seem the mistakes and to check what must +inevitably seem the wanton cruelty of the Creator. In war man abandons +these efforts, and so becomes more jovian. The Greeks never represented +the inhabitants of Olympus as succoring and protecting one another, but +always as fighting and attempting to destroy one another. + +No form of death inflicted by war is one-half so cruel as certain forms +of death that are seen in hospitals every day. Besides, these forms of +death have the further disadvantage of being inglorious. The average +man, dying in bed, not only has to stand the pains and terrors of death; +he must also, if he can bring himself to think of it at all, stand the +notion that he is ridiculous.... The soldier is at least not laughed at. +Even his enemies treat his agonies with respect. + + + + +XVIII + +MORALIST AND ARTIST + + +I dredge up the following from an essay on George Bernard Shaw by Robert +Blatchford, the English Socialist: "Shaw is something much better than a +wit, much better than an artist, much better than a politician or a +dramatist; he is a moralist, a teacher of ethics, austere, relentless, +fiercely earnest." + +What could be more idiotic? Then Cotton Mather was a greater man than +Johann Sebastian Bach. Then the average college critic of the arts, with +his balderdash about inspiration and moral purpose, is greater than +Georg Brandes or Saint-Beuve. Then Eugene Brieux, with his Y. M. C. A. +platitudinizing, is greater than Moliere, with his ethical agnosticism, +his ironical determinism. + +This childish respect for moralizing runs through the whole of +contemporary criticism--at least in England and America. Blatchford +differs from the professorial critics only in the detail that he can +actually write. What he says about Shaw has been said, in heavy and +suffocating words, by almost all of them. And yet nothing could be more +untrue. The moralist, at his best, can never be anything save a sort of +journalist. Moral values change too often to have any serious validity +or interest; what is a virtue today is a sin tomorrow. But the man who +creates a thing of beauty creates something that lasts. + + + + +XIX + +ACTORS + + +"In France they call an actor a _m'as-tu-vu_, which, anglicised, means a +have-you-seen-me?... The average actor holds the mirror up to nature and +sees in it only the reflection of himself." I take the words from a late +book on the so-called art of the mime by the editor of a magazine +devoted to the stage. The learned author evades plumbing the +psychological springs of this astounding and almost invariable vanity, +this endless bumptiousness of the _cabotin_ in all climes and all ages. +His one attempt is banal: "a foolish public makes much of him." With all +due respect, Nonsense! The larval actor is full of hot and rancid gases +long before a foolish public has had a fair chance to make anything of +him at all, and he continues to emit them long after it has tried him, +condemned him and bidden him be damned. There is, indeed, little choice +in the virulence of their self-respect between a Broadway star who is +slobbered over by press agents and fat women, and the poor ham who plays +thinking parts in a No. 7 road company. The two are alike charged to the +limit; one more ohm, or molecule, and they would burst. Actors begin +where militia colonels, Fifth avenue rectors and Chautauqua orators +leave off. The most modest of them (barring, perhaps, a few unearthly +traitors to the craft) matches the conceit of the solitary pretty girl +on a slow ship. In their lofty eminence of pomposity they are challenged +only by Anglican bishops and grand opera tenors. I have spoken of the +danger they run of bursting. In the case of tenors it must sometimes +actually happen; even the least of them swells visibly as he sings, and +permanently as he grows older.... + +But why are actors, in general, such blatant and obnoxious asses, such +arrant posturers and wind-bags? Why is it as surprising to find an +unassuming and likable fellow among them as to find a Greek without +fleas? The answer is quite simple. To reach it one needs but consider +the type of young man who normally gets stage-struck. Is he, taking +averages, the intelligent, alert, ingenious, ambitious young fellow? Is +he the young fellow with ideas in him, and a yearning for hard and +difficult work? Is he the diligent reader, the hard student, the eager +inquirer? No. He is, in the overwhelming main, the neighborhood fop and +beau, the human clothes-horse, the nimble squire of dames. The youths of +more active mind, emerging from adolescence, turn to business and the +professions; the men that they admire and seek to follow are men of +genuine distinction, men who have actually done difficult and valuable +things, men who have fought good (if often dishonest) fights and are +respected and envied by other men. The stage-struck youth is of a softer +and more shallow sort. He seeks, not a chance to test his mettle by hard +and useful work, but an easy chance to shine. He craves the regard, not +of men, but of women. He is, in brief, a hollow and incompetent +creature, a strutter and poseur, a popinjay, a pretty one.... + +I thus beg the question, but explain the actor. He is this silly +youngster grown older, but otherwise unchanged. An initiate of a +profession requiring little more information, culture or capacity for +ratiocination than that of the lady of joy, and surrounded in his +work-shop by men who are as stupid, as vain and as empty as he himself +will be in the years to come, he suffers an arrest of development, and +the little intelligence that may happen to be in him gets no chance to +show itself. The result, in its usual manifestation, is the average bad +actor--a man with the cerebrum of a floor-walker and the vanity of a +fashionable clergyman. The result, in its highest and holiest form is +the actor-manager, with his retinue of press-agents, parasites and +worshipping wenches--perhaps the most preposterous and awe-inspiring +donkey that civilization has yet produced. To look for sense in a fellow +of such equipment and such a history would be like looking for +serviettes in a sailors' boarding-house. + +By the same token, the relatively greater intelligence of actresses is +explained. They are, at their worst, quite as bad as the generality of +actors. There are she-stars who are all temperament and +balderdash--intellectually speaking, beggars on horseback, servant girls +well washed. But no one who knows anything about the stage need be told +that it can show a great many more quick-minded and self-respecting +women than intelligent men. And why? Simply because its women are +recruited, in the main, from a class much above that which furnishes its +men. It is, after all, not unnatural for a woman of considerable +intelligence to aspire to the stage. It offers her, indeed, one of the +most tempting careers that is open to her. She cannot hope to succeed in +business, and in the other professions she is an unwelcome and +much-scoffed-at intruder, but on the boards she can meet men on an equal +footing. It is, therefore, no wonder that women of a relatively superior +class often take to the business.... Once they embrace it, their +superiority to their male colleagues is quickly manifest. All movements +against puerility and imbecility in the drama have originated, not with +actors, but with actresses--that is, in so far as they have originated +among stage folks at all. The Ibsen pioneers were such women as Helena +Modjeska, Agnes Sorma and Janet Achurch; the men all hung back. Ibsen, +it would appear, was aware of this superior alertness and took shrewd +advantage of it. At all events, his most tempting acting parts are +feminine ones. + +The girls of the stage demonstrate this tendency against great +difficulties. They have to carry a heavy handicap in the enormous number +of women who seek the footlights merely to advertise their real +profession, but despite all this, anyone who has the slightest +acquaintance with stagefolk will testify that, taking one with another, +the women have vastly more brains than the men and are appreciably less +vain and idiotic. Relatively few actresses of any rank marry actors. +They find close communion with the strutting brethren psychologically +impossible. Stock-brokers, dramatists and even theatrical managers are +greatly to be preferred. + + + + +XX + +THE CROWD + + +Gustave Le Bon and his school, in their discussions of the psychology of +crowds, have put forward the doctrine that the individual man, cheek by +jowl with the multitude, drops down an intellectual peg or two, and so +tends to show the mental and emotional reactions of his inferiors. It is +thus that they explain the well-known violence and imbecility of crowds. +The crowd, as a crowd, performs acts that many of its members, as +individuals, would never be guilty of. Its average intelligence is very +low; it is inflammatory, vicious, idiotic, almost simian. Crowds, +properly worked up by skilful demagogues, are ready to believe anything, +and to do anything. + +Le Bon, I daresay, is partly right, but also partly wrong. His theory is +probably too flattering to the average numskull. He accounts for the +extravagance of crowds on the assumption that the numskull, along with +the superior man, is knocked out of his wits by suggestion--that he, +too, does things in association that he would never think of doing +singly. The fact may be accepted, but the reasoning raises a doubt. The +numskull runs amuck in a crowd, not because he has been inoculated with +new rascality by the mysterious crowd influence, but because his +habitual rascality now has its only chance to function safely. In other +words, the numskull is vicious, but a poltroon. He refrains from all +attempts at lynching _a cappella_, not because it takes suggestion to +make him desire to lynch, but because it takes the protection of a crowd +to make him brave enough to try it. + +What happens when a crowd cuts loose is not quite what Le Bon and his +followers describe. The few superior men in it are not straightway +reduced to the level of the underlying stoneheads. On the contrary, they +usually keep their heads, and often make efforts to combat the crowd +action. But the stoneheads are too many for them; the fence is torn down +or the blackamoor is lynched. And why? Not because the stoneheads, +normally virtuous, are suddenly criminally insane. Nay, but because they +are suddenly conscious of the power lying in their numbers--because they +suddenly realize that their natural viciousness and insanity may be +safely permitted to function. + +In other words, the particular swinishness of a crowd is permanently +resident in the majority of its members--in all those members, that is, +who are naturally ignorant and vicious--perhaps 95 per cent. All studies +of mob psychology are defective in that they underestimate this +viciousness. They are poisoned by the prevailing delusion that the lower +orders of men are angels. This is nonsense. The lower orders of men are +incurable rascals, either individually or collectively. Decency, +self-restraint, the sense of justice, courage--these virtues belong +only to a small minority of men. This minority never runs amuck. Its +most distinguishing character, in truth, is its resistance to all +running amuck. The third-rate man, though he may wear the false whiskers +of a first-rate man, may always be detected by his inability to keep his +head in the face of an appeal to his emotions. A whoop strips off his +disguise. + + + + +XXI + +AN AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER + + +As for William Jennings Bryan, of whom so much piffle, pro and con, has +been written, the whole of his political philosophy may be reduced to +two propositions, neither of which is true. The first is the proposition +that the common people are wise and honest, and the second is the +proposition that all persons who refuse to believe it are scoundrels. +Take away the two, and all that would remain of Jennings would be a +somewhat greasy bald-headed man with his mouth open. + + + + +XXII + +CLUBS + + +Men's clubs have but one intelligible purpose: to afford asylum to +fellows who haven't any girls. Hence their general gloom, their air of +lost causes, their prevailing acrimony. No man would ever enter a club +if he had an agreeable woman to talk to. This is particularly true of +married men. Those of them that one finds in clubs answer to a general +description: they have wives too unattractive to entertain them, and yet +too watchful to allow them to seek entertainment elsewhere. The +bachelors, in the main, belong to two classes: (a) those who have been +unfortunate in amour, and are still too sore to show any new enterprise, +and (b) those so lacking in charm that no woman will pay any attention +to them. Is it any wonder that the men one thus encounters in clubs are +stupid and miserable creatures, and that they find their pleasure in +such banal sports as playing cards, drinking highballs, shooting pool, +and reading the barber-shop weeklies?... The day a man's mistress is +married one always finds him at his club. + + + + +XXIII + +FIDELIS AD URNUM + + +Despite the common belief of women to the contrary, fully 95 per cent. +of all married men, at least in America, are faithful to their wives. +This, however, is not due to virtue, but chiefly to lack of courage. It +takes more initiative and daring to start up an extra-legal affair than +most men are capable of. They look and they make plans, but that is as +far as they get. Another salient cause of connubial rectitude is lack of +means. A mistress costs a great deal more than a wife; in the open +market of the world she can get more. It is only the rare man who can +conceal enough of his income from his wife to pay for a morganatic +affair. And most of the men clever enough to do this are too clever to +be intrigued. + +I have said that 95 per cent. of married men are faithful. I believe the +real proportion is nearer 99 per cent. What women mistake for infidelity +is usually no more than vanity. Every man likes to be regarded as a +devil of a fellow, and particularly by his wife. On the one hand, it +diverts her attention from his more genuine shortcomings, and on the +other hand it increases her respect for him. Moreover, it gives her a +chance to win the sympathy of other women, and so satisfies that craving +for martyrdom which is perhaps woman's strongest characteristic. A +woman who never has any chance to suspect her husband feels cheated and +humiliated. She is in the position of those patriots who are induced to +enlist for a war by pictures of cavalry charges, and then find +themselves told off to wash the general's underwear. + + + + +XXIV + +A THEOLOGICAL MYSTERY + + +The moral order of the world runs aground on hay fever. Of what use is +it? Why was it invented? Cancer and hydrophobia, at least, may be +defended on the ground that they kill. Killing may have some benign +purpose, some esoteric significance, some cosmic use. But hay fever +never kills; it merely tortures. No man ever died of it. Is the torture, +then, an end in itself? Does it break the pride of strutting, snorting +man, and turn his heart to the things of the spirit? Nonsense! A man +with hay fever is a natural criminal. He curses the gods, and defies +them to kill him. He even curses the devil. Is its use, then, to prepare +him for happiness to come--for the vast ease and comfort of +convalescence? Nonsense again! The one thing he is sure of, the one +thing he never forgets for a moment, is that it will come back again +next year. + + + + +XXV + +THE TEST OF TRUTH + + +The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few religious dogmas have ever +faced it and survived. Huxley laughed the devils out of the Gadarene +swine. Dowie's whiskers broke the back of Dowieism. Not the laws of the +United States but the mother-in-law joke brought the Mormons to +compromise and surrender. Not the horror of it but the absurdity of it +killed the doctrine of infant damnation.... But the razor edge of +ridicule is turned by the tough hide of truth. How loudly the +barber-surgeons laughed at Harvey--and how vainly! What clown ever +brought down the house like Galileo? Or Columbus? Or Jenner? Or Lincoln? +Or Darwin?... They are laughing at Nietzsche yet.... + + + + +XXVI + +LITERARY INDECENCIES + + +The low, graceless humor of names! On my shelf of poetry, arranged by +the alphabet, Coleridge and J. Gordon Cooglar are next-door neighbors! +Mrs. Hemans is beside Laurence Hope! Walt Whitman rubs elbows with Ella +Wheeler Wilcox; Robert Browning with Richard Burton; Rossetti with Cale +Young Rice; Shelly with Clinton Scollard; Wordsworth with George E. +Woodberry; John Keats with Herbert Kaufman! + +Ibsen, on the shelf of dramatists, is between Victor Hugo and Jerome K. +Jerome. Sudermann follows Harriet Beecher Stowe. Maeterlinck shoulders +Percy Mackaye. Shakespeare is between Sardou and Shaw. Euripides and +Clyde Fitch! Upton Sinclair and Sophocles! Aeschylus and F. Anstey! +D'Annunzio and Richard Harding Davis! Augustus Thomas and Tolstoi! + +More alphabetical humor. Gerhart Hauptmann and Robert Hichens; Voltaire +and Henry Van Dyke; Flaubert and John Fox, Jr.; Balzac and John Kendrick +Bangs; Ostrovsky and E. Phillips Oppenheim; Elinor Glyn and Theophile +Gautier; Joseph Conrad and Robert W. Chambers; Zola and Zangwill!... + +Midway on my scant shelf of novels, between George Moore and Frank +Norris, there is just room enough for the two volumes of "Derringforth," +by Frank A. Munsey. + + + + +XXVII + +VIRTUOUS VANDALISM + + +A hearing of Schumann's B flat symphony of late, otherwise a very +caressing experience, was corrupted by the thought that music would be +much the gainer if musicians could get over their superstitious +reverence for the mere text of the musical classics. That reverence, +indeed, is already subject to certain limitations; hands have been laid, +at one time or another, upon most of the immortal oratorios, and even +the awful name of Bach has not dissuaded certain German editors. But it +still swathes the standard symphonies like some vast armor of rubber and +angel food, and so imagination has to come to the aid of the flutes and +fiddles when the band plays Schumann, Mozart, and even parts of +Beethoven. One discerns, often quite clearly, what the reverend Master +was aiming at, but just as often one fails to hear it in precise tones. + +This is particularly true of Schumann, whose deficiency in instrumental +cunning has passed into proverb. And in the B flat symphony, his first +venture into the epic form, his failures are most numerous. More than +once, obviously attempting to roll up tone into a moving climax, he +succeeds only in muddling his colors. I remember one place--at the +moment I can't recall where it is--where the strings and the brass storm +at one another in furious figures. The blast of the brass, as the +vaudevillains say, gets across--but the fiddles merely scream absurdly. +The whole passage suggests the bleating of sheep in the midst of a vast +bellowing of bulls. Schumann overestimated the horsepower of fiddle +music so far up the E string--or underestimated the full kick of the +trumpets.... Other such soft spots are well known. + +Why, then, go on parroting _gaucheries_ that Schumann himself, were he +alive today, would have long since corrected? Why not call an ecumenical +council, appoint a commission to see to such things, and then forget the +sacrilege? As a self-elected delegate from heathendom, I nominate Dr. +Richard Strauss as chairman. When all is said and done, Strauss probably +knows more about writing for orchestra than any other two men that ever +lived, not excluding Wagner. Surely no living rival, as Dr. Sunday would +say, has anything on him. If, after hearing a new composition by +Strauss, one turns to the music, one is invariably surprised to find how +simple it is. The performance reveals so many purple moments, so +staggering an array of lusciousness, that the ear is bemused into +detecting scales and chords that never were on land or sea. What the +exploratory eye subsequently discovers, perhaps, is no more than our +stout and comfortable old friend, the highly well-born _hausfrau_, Mme. +C Dur--with a vine leaf or two of C sharp minor or F major in her hair. +The trick lies in the tone-color--in the flabbergasting magic of the +orchestration. There are some moments in "Elektra" when sounds come out +of the orchestra that tug at the very roots of the hair, sounds so +unearthly that they suggest a caroling of dragons or _bierfisch_--and +yet they are made by the same old fiddles that play the Kaiser Quartet, +and by the same old trombones that the Valkyrie ride like witch's +broomsticks, and by the same old flutes that sob and snuffle in Tit'l's +Serenade. And in parts of "Feuersnot"--but Roget must be rewritten by +Strauss before "Feuersnot" is described. There is one place where the +harps, taking a running start from the scrolls of the violins, leap +slambang through (or is it into?) the firmament of Heaven. Once, when I +heard this passage played at a concert, a woman sitting beside me rolled +over like a log, and had to be hauled out by the ushers. + +Yes; Strauss is the man to reorchestrate the symphonies of Schumann, +particularly the B flat, the Rhenish and the Fourth. I doubt that he +could do much with Schubert, for Schubert, though he is dead nearly a +hundred years, yet remains curiously modern. The Unfinished symphony is +full of exquisite color effects--consider, for example, the rustling +figure for the strings in the first movement--and as for the C major, it +is so stupendous a debauch of melodic and harmonic beauty that one +scarcely notices the colors at all. In its slow movement mere +loveliness in music probably says all that will ever be said.... But +what of old Ludwig? Har, har; here we begin pulling the whiskers of Baal +Himself. Nevertheless, I am vandal enough to wonder, on sad Sunday +mornings, what Strauss could do with the first movement of the C minor. +More, if Strauss ever does it and lets me hear the result just once, +I'll be glad to serve six months in jail with him.... But in Munich, of +course! And with a daily visitor's pass for Cousin Pschorr!... + +The conservatism which shrinks at such barbarities is the same +conservatism which demands that the very typographical errors in the +Bible be swallowed without salt, and that has thus made a puerile +dream-book of parts of Holy Writ. If you want to see how far this last +madness has led Christendom astray, take a look at an article by Abraham +Mitrie Rihbany, an intelligent Syrian, in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of a +couple of years ago. The title of the article is "The Oriental Manner of +Speech," and in it Rihbany shows how much of mere Oriental extravagance +of metaphor is to be found in many celebrated passages, and how little +of literal significance. This Oriental extravagance, of course, makes +for beauty, but as interpreted by pundits of no imagination it surely +doesn't make for understanding. What the Western World needs is a Bible +in which the idioms of the Aramaic of thousands of years ago are +translated into the idioms of today. The man who undertook such a +translation, to be sure, would be uproariously denounced, just as Luther +and Wycliffe were denounced, but he could well afford to face the storm. +The various Revised Versions, including the Modern Speech New Testament +of Richard Francis Weymouth, leave much to be desired. They rectify many +naif blunders and so make the whole narrative more intelligible, but +they still render most of the tropes of the original literally. + +These tropes are not the substance of Holy Writ; they are simply its +color. In the same way mere tone-color is not the substance of a musical +composition. Beethoven's Eighth Symphony is just as great a work, in all +its essentials, in a four-hand piano arrangement as in the original +score. Every harmonic and melodic idea of the composer is there; one can +trace just as clearly the subtle processes of his mind; every step in +the working out of the materials is just as plain. True enough, there +are orchestral compositions of which this cannot be reasonably said; +their color is so much more important than their form that when one +takes away the former the latter almost ceases to exist. But I doubt +that many competent critics would argue that they belong to the first +rank. Form, after all, is the important thing. It is design that counts, +not decoration--design and organization. The pillars of a musical +masterpiece are like the pillars of the Parthenon; they are almost as +beautiful bleached white as they were in all their original hues. + + + + +XXVIII + +A FOOTNOTE ON THE DUEL OF SEX + + +If I were a woman I should want to be a blonde, with golden, silky hair, +pink cheeks and sky-blue eyes. It would not bother me to think that this +color scheme was mistaken by the world for a flaunting badge of +stupidity; I would have a better arm in my arsenal than mere +intelligence; I would get a husband by easy surrender while the +brunettes attempted it vainly by frontal assault. + +Men are not easily taken by frontal assault; it is only strategem that +can quickly knock them down. To be a blonde, pink, soft and delicate, is +to be a strategem. It is to be a ruse, a feint, an ambush. It is to +fight under the Red Cross flag. A man sees nothing alert and designing +in those pale, crystalline eyes; he sees only something helpless, +childish, weak; something that calls to his compassion; something that +appeals powerfully to his conceit in his own strength. And so he is +taken before he knows that there is a war. He lifts his portcullis in +Christian charity--and the enemy is in his citadel. + +The brunette can make no such stealthy and sure attack. No matter how +subtle her art, she can never hope to quite conceal her intent. Her eyes +give her away. They flash and glitter. They have depths. They draw the +male gaze into mysterious and sinister recesses. And so the male behind +the gaze flies to arms. He may be taken in the end--indeed, he usually +is--but he is not taken by surprise; he is not taken without a fight. A +brunette has to battle for every inch of her advance. She is confronted +by an endless succession of Dead Man's Hills, each equipped with +telescopes, semaphores, alarm gongs, wireless. The male sees her clearly +through her densest smoke-clouds.... But the blonde captures him under a +flag of truce. He regards her tenderly, kindly, almost pityingly, until +the moment the gyves are upon his wrists. + +It is all an optical matter, a question of color. The pastel shades +deceive him; the louder hues send him to his artillery. God help, I say, +the red-haired girl! She goes into action with warning pennants flying. +The dullest, blindest man can see her a mile away; he can catch the +alarming flash of her hair long before he can see the whites, or even +the terrible red-browns, of her eyes. She has a long field to cross, +heavily under defensive fire, before she can get into rifle range. Her +quarry has a chance to throw up redoubts, to dig himself in, to call for +reinforcements, to elude her by ignominious flight. She must win, if she +is to win at all, by an unparalleled combination of craft and +resolution. She must be swift, daring, merciless. Even the brunette of +black and penetrating eye has great advantages over her. No wonder she +never lets go, once her arms are around her antagonist's neck! No +wonder she is, of all women, the hardest to shake off! + +All nature works in circles. Causes become effects; effects develop into +causes. The red-haired girl's dire need of courage and cunning has +augmented her store of those qualities by the law of natural selection. +She is, by long odds, the most intelligent and bemusing of women. She +shows cunning, foresight, technique, variety. She always fails a dozen +times before she succeeds; but she brings to the final business the +abominable expertness of a Ludendorff; she has learnt painfully by the +process of trial and error. Red-haired girls are intellectual +stimulants. They know all the tricks. They are so clever that they have +even cast a false glamour of beauty about their worst defect--their +harsh and gaudy hair. They give it euphemistic and deceitful +names--auburn, bronze, Titian. They overcome by their hellish arts that +deep-seated dread of red which is inborn in all of God's creatures. They +charm men with what would even alarm bulls. + +And the blondes, by following the law of least resistance, have gone in +the other direction. The great majority of them--I speak, of course, of +natural blondes; not of the immoral wenches who work their atrocities +under cover of a synthetic blondeness--are quite as shallow and stupid +as they look. One seldom hears a blonde say anything worth hearing; the +most they commonly achieve is a specious, baby-like prattling, an +infantile artlessness. But let us not blame them for nature's work. Why, +after all, be intelligent? It is, at best, no more than a capacity for +unhappiness. The blonde not only doesn't miss it; she is even better off +without it. What imaginable intelligence could compensate her for the +flat blueness of her eyes, the xanthous pallor of her hair, the +doll-like pink of her cheeks? What conceivable cunning could do such +execution as her stupendous appeal to masculine vanity, sentimentality, +egoism? + +If I were a woman I should want to be a blonde. My blondeness might be +hideous, but it would get me a husband, and it would make him cherish me +and love me. + + + + +XXIX + +ALCOHOL + + +Envy, as I have said, is at the heart of the messianic delusion, the +mania to convert the happy sinner into a "good" man, and so make him +miserable. And at the heart of that envy is fear--the fear to sin, to +take a chance, to monkey with the buzzsaw. This ineradicable fear is the +outstanding mark of the fifth-rate man, at all times and everywhere. It +dominates his politics, his theology, his whole thinking. He is a moral +fellow because he is afraid to venture over the fence--and he hates the +man who is not. + +The solemn proofs, so laboriously deduced from life insurance +statistics, that the man who uses alcohol, even moderately, dies +slightly sooner than the teetotaler--these proofs merely show that this +man is one who leads an active and vigorous life, and so faces hazards +and uses himself up--in brief, one who lives at high tempo and with full +joy, what Nietzsche used to call the _ja-sager_, or yes-sayer. He may, +in fact, die slightly sooner than the teetotaler, but he lives +infinitely longer. Moreover, his life, humanly speaking, is much more +worth while, to himself and to the race. He does the hard and dangerous +work of the world, he takes the chances, he makes the experiments. He is +the soldier, the artist, the innovator, the lover. All the great works +of man have been done by men who thus lived joyously, strenuously, and +perhaps a bit dangerously. They have never been concerned about +stretching life for two or three more years; they have been concerned +about making life engrossing and stimulating and a high adventure while +it lasts. Teetotalism is as impossible to such men as any other +manifestation of cowardice, and, if it were possible, it would destroy +their utility and significance just as certainly. + +A man who shrinks from a cocktail before dinner on the ground that it +may flabbergast his hormones, and so make him die at 69 years, ten +months and five days instead of at 69 years, eleven months and seven +days--such a man is as absurd a poltroon as the fellow who shrinks from +kissing a woman on the ground that she may floor him with a chair leg. +Each flees from a purely theoretical risk. Each is a useless encumberer +of the earth, and the sooner dead the better. Each is a discredit to the +human race, already discreditable enough, God knows. + +Teetotalism does not make for human happiness; it makes for the dull, +idiotic happiness of the barnyard. The men who do things in the world, +the men worthy of admiration and imitation, are men constitutionally +incapable of any such pecksniffian stupidity. Their ideal is not a safe +life, but a full life; they do not try to follow the canary bird in a +cage, but the eagle in the air. And in particular they do not flee from +shadows and bugaboos. The alcohol myth is such a bugaboo. The sort of +man it scares is the sort of man whose chief mark is that he is always +scared. + +No wonder the Rockefellers and their like are hot for saving the +workingman from John Barleycorn! Imagine the advantage to them of +operating upon a flabby horde of timorous and joyless slaves, afraid of +all fun and kicking up, horribly moral, eager only to live as long as +possible! What mule-like fidelity and efficiency could be got out of +such a rabble! But how many Lincolns would you get out of it, and how +many Jacksons, and how many Grants? + + + + +XXX + +THOUGHTS ON THE VOLUPTUOUS + + +Why has no publisher ever thought of perfuming his novels? The final +refinement of publishing, already bedizened by every other art! Barabbas +turned Petronius! For instance, consider the bucolic romances of the +hyphenated Mrs. Porter. They have a subtle flavor of new-mown hay and +daffodils already; why not add the actual essence, or at all events some +safe coal-tar substitute, and so help imagination to spread its wings? +For Hall Caine, musk and synthetic bergamot. For Mrs. Glyn and her +neighbors on the tiger-skin, the fragrant blood of the red, red rose. +For the ruffianish pages of Jack London, the pungent, hospitable smell +of a first-class bar-room--that indescribable mingling of Maryland rye, +cigar smoke, stale malt liquor, radishes, potato salad and _blutwurst_. +For the Dartmoor sagas of the interminable Phillpotts, the warm +ammoniacal bouquet of cows, poultry and yokels. For the "Dodo" school, +violets and Russian cigarettes. For the venerable Howells, lavender and +mignonette. For Zola, Rochefort and wet leather. For Mrs. Humphrey Ward, +lilies of the valley. For Marie Corelli, tuberoses and embalming fluid. +For Chambers, sachet and lip paint. For---- + +But I leave you to make your own choices. All I offer is the general +idea. It has been tried in the theatre. Well do I remember the first +weeks of "Florodora" at the old Casino, with a mannikin in the lobby +squirting "La Flor de Florodora" upon all us Florodorans.... I was put +on trial for my life when I got home! + + + + +XXXI + +THE HOLY ESTATE + + +Marriage is always a man's second choice. It is entered upon, more often +than not, as the safest form of intrigue. The caitiff yields quickest; +the man who loves danger and adventure holds out longest. Behind it one +frequently finds, not that lofty romantic passion which poets hymn, but +a mere yearning for peace and security. The abominable hazards of the +high seas, the rough humors and pestilences of the forecastle--these +drive the timid mariner ashore.... The authentic Cupid, at least in +Christendom, was discovered by the late Albert Ludwig Siegmund Neisser +in 1879. + + + + +XXXII + +DICHTUNG UND WAHRHEIT + + +Deponent, being duly sworn, saith: My taste in poetry is for delicate +and fragile things--to be honest, for artificial things. I like a frail +but perfectly articulated stanza, a sonnet wrought like ivory, a song +full of glowing nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, +conjunctions, prepositions and participles, but without too much hard +sense to it. Poetry, to me, has but two meanings. On the one hand, it is +a magical escape from the sordidness of metabolism and the class war, +and on the other hand it is a subtle, very difficult and hence very +charming art, like writing fugues or mixing mayonnaise. I do not go to +poets to be taught anything, or to be heated up to indignation, or to +have my conscience blasted out of its torpor, but to be soothed and +caressed, to be lulled with sweet sounds, to be wooed into +forgetfulness, to be tickled under the metaphysical chin. My favorite +poem is Lizette Woodworth Reese's "Tears," which, as a statement of +fact, seems to me to be as idiotic as the Book of Revelation. The poetry +I regard least is such stuff as that of Robert Browning and Matthew +Arnold, which argues and illuminates. I dislike poetry of intellectual +content as much as I dislike women of intellectual content--and for the +same reason. + + + + +XXXIII + +WILD SHOTS + + +If I had the time, and there were no sweeter follies offering, I should +like to write an essay on the books that have quite failed of achieving +their original purposes, and are yet of respectable use and potency for +other purposes. For example, the Book of Revelation. The obvious aim of +the learned author of this work was to bring the early Christians into +accord by telling them authoritatively what to expect and hope for; its +actual effect during eighteen hundred years has been to split them into +a multitude of camps, and so set them to denouncing, damning, jailing +and murdering one another. Again, consider the autobiography of +Benvenuto Cellini. Ben wrote it to prove that he was an honest man, a +mirror of all the virtues, an injured innocent; the world, reading it, +hails him respectfully as the noblest, the boldest, the gaudiest liar +that ever lived. Again, turn to "Gulliver's Travels." The thing was +planned by its rev. author as a devastating satire, a terrible piece of +cynicism; it survives as a story-book for sucklings. Yet again, there is +"Hamlet." Shakespeare wrote it frankly to make money for a theatrical +manager; it has lost money for theatrical managers ever since. Yet +again, there is Caesar's "De Bello Gallico." Julius composed it to +thrill and arouse the Romans; its sole use today is to stupefy and +sicken schoolboys. Finally, there is the celebrated book of General F. +von Bernhardi. He wrote it to inflame Germany; its effect was to inflame +England.... + +The list might be lengthened almost _ad infinitum_. When a man writes a +book he fires a machine gun into a wood. The game he brings down often +astonishes him, and sometimes horrifies him. Consider the case of +Ibsen.... After my book on Nietzsche I was actually invited to lecture +at Princeton. + + + + +XXXIV + +BEETHOVEN + + +Romain Rolland's "Beethoven," one of the cornerstones of his celebrity +as a critic, is based upon a thesis that is of almost inconceivable +inaccuracy, to wit, the thesis that old Ludwig was an apostle of joy, +and that his music reveals his determination to experience and utter it +in spite of all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Nothing +could be more absurd. Joy, in truth, was precisely the emotion that +Beethoven could never conjure up; it simply was not in him. Turn to the +_scherzo_ of any of his trios, quartets, sonatas or symphonies. A +sardonic waggishness is there, and sometimes even a wistful sort of +merriment, but joy in the real sense--a kicking up of legs, a +light-heartedness, a complete freedom from care--is not to be found. It +is in Haydn, it is in Schubert and it is often in Mozart, but it is no +more in Beethoven than it is in Tschaikovsky. Even the hymn to joy at +the end of the Ninth symphony narrowly escapes being a gruesome parody +on the thing itself; a conscious effort is in every note of it; it is +almost as lacking in spontaneity as (if it were imaginable at all) a +piece of _vers libre_ by Augustus Montague Toplady. + +Nay; Ludwig was no leaping buck. Nor was it his deafness, nor poverty, +nor the crimes of his rascally nephew that pumped joy out of him. The +truth is that he lacked it from birth; he was born a Puritan--and +though a Puritan may also become a great man (as witness Herbert Spencer +and Beelzebub), he can never throw off being a Puritan. Beethoven +stemmed from the Low Countries, and the Low Countries, in those days, +were full of Puritan refugees; the very name, in its first incarnation, +may have been Barebones. If you want to comprehend the authentic man, +don't linger over Rolland's fancies but go to his own philosophizings, +as garnered in "Beethoven, the Man and the Artist," by Friedrich Kerst, +Englished by Krehbiel. Here you will find a collection of moral +banalities that would have delighted Jonathan Edwards--a collection that +might well be emblazoned on gilt cards and hung in Sunday schools. He +begins with a naif anthropomorphism that is now almost perished from the +world; he ends with a solemn repudiation of adultery.... But a great +man, my masters, a great man! We have enough biographies of him, and +talmuds upon his works. Who will do a full-length psychological study of +him? + + + + +XXXV + +THE TONE ART + + +The notion that the aim of art is to fix the shifting aspects of nature, +that all art is primarily representative--this notion is as unsound as +the theory that Friday is an unlucky day, and is dying as hard. One even +finds some trace of it in Anatole France, surely a man who should know +better. The true function of art is to criticise, embellish and edit +nature--particularly to edit it, and so make it coherent and lovely. The +artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue-pencilling the +_lapsus calami_ of God. The sounds in a Beethoven symphony, even the +Pastoral, are infinitely more orderly, varied and beautiful than those +of the woods. The worst flute is never as bad as the worst soprano. The +best violoncello is immeasurably better than the best tenor. + +All first-rate music suffers by the fact that it has to be performed by +human beings--that is, that nature must be permitted to corrupt it. The +performance one hears in a concert hall or opera house is no more than a +baroque parody upon the thing the composer imagined. In an orchestra of +eighty men there is inevitably at least one man with a sore thumb, or +bad kidneys, or a brutal wife, or _katzenjammer_--and one is enough. +Some day the natural clumsiness and imperfection of fingers, lips and +larynxes will be overcome by mechanical devices, and we shall have +Beethoven and Mozart and Schubert in such wonderful and perfect beauty +that it will be almost unbearable. If half as much ingenuity had been +lavished upon music machines as has been lavished upon the telephone and +the steam engine, we would have had mechanical orchestras long ago. +Mechanical pianos are already here. Piano-players, bound to put some +value on the tortures of Czerny, affect to laugh at all such +contrivances, but that is no more than a pale phosphorescence of an +outraged _wille zur macht_. Setting aside half a dozen--perhaps a +dozen--great masters of a moribund craft, who will say that the average +mechanical piano is not as competent as the average pianist? + +When the human performer of music goes the way of the galley-slave, the +charm of personality, of course, will be pumped out of the performance +of music. But the charm of personality does not help music; it hinders +it. It is not a reinforcement to music; it is a rival. When a beautiful +singer comes upon the stage, two shows, as it were, go on at once: first +the music show, and then the arms, shoulders, neck, nose, ankles, eyes, +hips, calves and ruby lips--in brief, the sex-show. The second of these +shows, to the majority of persons present, is more interesting than the +first--to the men because of the sex interest, and to the women because +of the professional or technical interest--and so music is forced into +the background. What it becomes, indeed, is no more than a half-heard +accompaniment to an imagined anecdote, just as color, line and mass +become mere accomplishments to an anecdote in a picture by an English +academician, or by a sentimental German of the Boecklin school. + +The purified and dephlogisticated music of the future, to be sure, will +never appeal to the mob, which will keep on demanding its chance to +gloat over gaudy, voluptuous women, and fat, scandalous tenors. The mob, +even disregarding its insatiable appetite for the improper, is a natural +hero worshiper. It loves, not the beautiful, but the strange, the +unprecedented, the astounding; it suffers from an incurable +_heliogabalisme_. A soprano who can gargle her way up to G sharp in +altissimo interests it almost as much as a contralto who has slept +publicly with a grand duke. If it cannot get the tenor who receives +$3,000 a night, it will take the tenor who fought the manager with +bung-starters last Tuesday. But this is merely saying that the tastes +and desires of the mob have nothing to do with music as an art. For its +ears, as for its eyes, it demands anecdotes--on the one hand the Suicide +symphony, "The Forge in the Forest," and the general run of Italian +opera, and on the other hand such things as "The Angelus," "Playing +Grandpa" and the so-called "Mona Lisa." It cannot imagine art as devoid +of moral content, as beauty pure and simple. It always demands +something to edify it, or, failing that, to shock it. + +These concepts, of the edifying and the shocking, are closer together in +the psyche than most persons imagine. The one, in fact, depends upon the +other: without some definite notion of the improving it is almost +impossible to conjure up an active notion of the improper. All salacious +art is addressed, not to the damned, but to the consciously saved; it is +Sunday-school superintendents, not bartenders, who chiefly patronize +peep-shows, and know the dirty books, and have a high artistic +admiration for sopranos of superior gluteal development. The man who has +risen above the petty ethical superstitions of Christendom gets little +pleasure out of impropriety, for very few ordinary phenomena seem to him +to be improper. Thus a Frenchman, viewing the undraped statues which +bedizen his native galleries of art, either enjoys them in a purely +aesthetic fashion--which is seldom possible save when he is in +liquor--or confesses frankly that he doesn't like them at all; whereas +the visiting Americano is so powerfully shocked and fascinated by them +that one finds him, the same evening, in places where no respectable man +ought to go. All art, to this fellow, must have a certain bawdiness, or +he cannot abide it. His favorite soprano, in the opera house, is not the +fat and middle-aged lady who can actually sing, but the girl with the +bare back and translucent drawers. Condescending to the concert hall, +he is bored by the posse of enemy aliens in funereal black, and so +demands a vocal soloist--that is, a gaudy creature of such advanced +corsetting that she can make him forget Bach for a while, and turn his +thoughts pleasantly to amorous intrigue. + +In all this, of course, there is nothing new. Other and better men have +noted the damage that the personal equation does to music, and some of +them have even sought ways out. For example, Richard Strauss. His +so-called ballet, "Josefs Legend," produced in Paris just before the +war, is an attempt to write an opera without singers. All of the music +is in the orchestra; the folks on the stage merely go through a +pointless pantomime; their main function is to entertain the eye with +shifting colors. Thus, the romantic sentiments of Joseph are announced, +not by some eye-rolling tenor, but by the first, second, third, fourth, +fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth violins (it is a Strauss score!), with +the incidental aid of the wood-wind, the brass, the percussion and the +rest of the strings. And the heroine's reply is made, not by a soprano +with a cold, but by an honest man playing a flute. The next step will be +the substitution of marionettes for actors. The removal of the orchestra +to a sort of trench, out of sight of the audience, is already an +accomplished fact at Munich. The end, perhaps, will be music purged of +its current ptomaines. In brief, music. + + + + +XXXVI + +ZOOS + + +I often wonder how much sound and nourishing food is fed to the animals +in the zoological gardens of America every week, and try to figure out +what the public gets in return for the cost thereof. The annual bill +must surely run into millions; one is constantly hearing how much beef a +lion downs at a meal, and how many tons of hay an elephant dispatches in +a month. And to what end? To the end, principally, that a horde of +superintendents and keepers may be kept in easy jobs. To the end, +secondarily, that the least intelligent minority of the population may +have an idiotic show to gape at on Sunday afternoons, and that the young +of the species may be instructed in the methods of amour prevailing +among chimpanzees and become privy to the technic employed by jaguars, +hyenas and polar bears in ridding themselves of lice. + +So far as I can make out, after laborious visits to all the chief zoos +of the nation, no other imaginable purpose is served by their existence. +One hears constantly, true enough (mainly from the gentlemen they +support) that they are educational. But how? Just what sort of +instruction do they radiate, and what is its value? I have never been +able to find out. The sober truth is that they are no more educational +than so many firemen's parades or displays of sky-rockets, and that all +they actually offer to the public in return for the taxes wasted upon +them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit +to a penitentiary, or even to Congress or a state legislature in +session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling. + +Education your grandmother! Show me a schoolboy who has ever learned +anything valuable or important by watching a mangy old lion snoring away +in its cage or a family of monkeys fighting for peanuts. To get any +useful instruction out of such a spectacle is palpably impossible; not +even a college professor is improved by it. The most it can imaginably +impart is that the stripes of a certain sort of tiger run one way and +the stripes of another sort some other way, that hyenas and polecats +smell worse than Greek 'bus boys, that the Latin name of the raccoon +(who was unheard of by the Romans) is _Procyon lotor_. For the +dissemination of such banal knowledge, absurdly emitted and defectively +taken in, the taxpayers of the United States are mulcted in hundreds of +thousands of dollars a year. As well make them pay for teaching +policemen the theory of least squares, or for instructing roosters in +the laying of eggs. + +But zoos, it is argued, are of scientific value. They enable learned men +to study this or that. Again the facts blast the theory. No scientific +discovery of any value whatsoever, even to the animals themselves, has +ever come out of a zoo. The zoo scientist is the old woman of zoology, +and his alleged wisdom is usually exhibited, not in the groves of actual +learning, but in the yellow journals. He is to biology what the late +Camille Flammarion was to astronomy, which is to say, its court jester +and reductio ad absurdum. When he leaps into public notice with some new +pearl of knowledge, it commonly turns out to be no more than the news +that Marie Bashkirtseff, the Russian lady walrus, has had her teeth +plugged with zinc and is expecting twins. Or that Pishposh, the +man-eating alligator, is down with locomotor ataxia. Or that Damon, the +grizzly, has just finished his brother Pythias in the tenth round, +chewing off his tail, nose and remaining ear. + +Science, of course, has its uses for the lower animals. A diligent study +of their livers and lights helps to an understanding of the anatomy and +physiology, and particularly of the pathology, of man. They are +necessary aids in devising and manufacturing many remedial agents, and +in testing the virtues of those already devised; out of the mute agonies +of a rabbit or a calf may come relief for a baby with diphtheria, or +means for an archdeacon to escape the consequences of his youthful +follies. Moreover, something valuable is to be got out of a mere study +of their habits, instincts and ways of mind--knowledge that, by analogy, +may illuminate the parallel doings of the _genus homo_, and so enable us +to comprehend the primitive mental processes of Congressmen, morons and +the rev. clergy. + +But it must be obvious that none of these studies can be made in a zoo. +The zoo animals, to begin with, provide no material for the biologist; +he can find out no more about their insides than what he discerns from a +safe distance and through the bars. He is not allowed to try his germs +and specifics upon them; he is not allowed to vivisect them. If he would +find out what goes on in the animal body under this condition or that, +he must turn from the inhabitants of the zoo to the customary guinea +pigs and street dogs, and buy or steal them for himself. Nor does he get +any chance for profitable inquiry when zoo animals die (usually of lack +of exercise or ignorant doctoring), for their carcasses are not handed +to him for autopsy, but at once stuffed with gypsum and excelsior and +placed in some museum. + +Least of all do zoos produce any new knowledge about animal behavior. +Such knowledge must be got, not from animals penned up and tortured, but +from animals in a state of nature. A college professor studying the +habits of the giraffe, for example, and confining his observations to +specimens in zoos, would inevitably come to the conclusion that the +giraffe is a sedentary and melancholy beast, standing immovable for +hours at a time and employing an Italian to feed him hay and cabbages. +As well proceed to a study of the psychology of a juris-consult by +first immersing him in Sing Sing, or of a juggler by first cutting off +his hands. Knowledge so gained is inaccurate and imbecile knowledge. Not +even a college professor, if sober, would give it any faith and credit. + +There remains, then, the only true utility of a zoo: it is a childish +and pointless show for the unintelligent, in brief, for children, +nursemaids, visiting yokels and the generality of the defective. Should +the taxpayers be forced to sweat millions for such a purpose? I think +not. The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of +monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch +flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be +combatted at the public expense, and not fostered. He is a public +liability and a public menace, and society should seek to improve him. +Instead of that, we spend a lot of money to feed his degrading appetite +and further paralyze his mind. It is precisely as if the community +provided free champagne for dipsomaniacs, or hired lecturers to convert +the army to the doctrines of the Bolsheviki. + +Of the abominable cruelties practised in zoos it is unnecessary to make +mention. Even assuming that all the keepers are men of delicate natures +and ardent zoophiles (which is about as safe as assuming that the +keepers of a prison are all sentimentalists, and weep for the sorrows of +their charges), it must be plain that the work they do involves an +endless war upon the native instincts of the animals, and that they +must thus inflict the most abominable tortures every day. What could be +a sadder sight than a tiger in a cage, save it be a forest monkey +climbing dispairingly up a barked stump, or an eagle chained to its +roost? How can man be benefitted and made better by robbing the seal of +its arctic ice, the hippopotamus of its soft wallow, the buffalo of its +open range, the lion of its kingship, the birds of their air? + +I am no sentimentalist, God knows. I am in favor of vivisection +unrestrained, so long as the vivisectionist knows what he is about. I +advocate clubbing a dog that barks unnecessarily, which all dogs do. I +enjoy hangings, particularly of converts to the evangelical faiths. The +crunch of a cockroach is music to my ears. But when the day comes to +turn the prisoners of the zoo out of their cages, if it is only to lead +them to the swifter, kinder knife of the _schochet_, I shall be present +and rejoicing, and if any one present thinks to suggest that it would be +a good plan to celebrate the day by shooting the whole zoo faculty, I +shall have a revolver in my pocket and a sound eye in my head. + + + + +XXXVII + +ON HEARING MOZART + + +The only permanent values in the world are truth and beauty, and of +these it is probable that truth is lasting only in so far as it is a +function and manifestation of beauty--a projection of feeling in terms +of idea. The world is a charnel house of dead religions. Where are all +the faiths of the middle ages, so complex and yet so precise? But all +that was essential in the beauty of the middle ages still lives.... + +This is the heritage of man, but not of men. The great majority of men +are not even aware of it. Their participation in the progress of the +world, and even in the history of the world, is infinitely remote and +trivial. They live and die, at bottom, as animals live and die. The +human race, as a race, is scarcely cognizant of their existence; they +haven't even definite number, but stand grouped together as _x_, the +quantity unknown ... and not worth knowing. + + + + +XXXVIII + +THE ROAD TO DOUBT + + +The first effect of what used to be called natural philosophy is to fill +its devotee with wonder at the marvels of God. This explains why the +pursuit of science, so long as it remains superficial, is not +incompatible with the most naif sort of religious faith. But the moment +the student of the sciences passes this stage of childlike amazement and +begins to investigate the inner workings of natural phenomena, he begins +to see how ineptly many of them are managed, and so he tends to pass +from awe of the Creator to criticism of the Creator, and once he has +crossed that bridge he has ceased to be a believer. One finds plenty of +neighborhood physicians, amateur botanists, high-school physics teachers +and other such quasi-scientists in the pews on Sunday, but one never +sees a Huxley there, or a Darwin, or an Ehrlich. + + + + +XXXIX + +A NEW USE FOR CHURCHES + + +The argument by design, it may be granted, establishes a reasonable +ground for accepting the existence of God. It makes belief, at all +events, quite as intelligible as unbelief. But when the theologians take +their step from the existence of God to the goodness of God they tread +upon much less firm earth. How can one see any proof of that goodness in +the senseless and intolerable sufferings of man--his helplessness, the +brief and troubled span of his life, the inexplicable disproportion +between his deserts and his rewards, the tragedy of his soaring +aspiration, the worse tragedy of his dumb questioning? Granting the +existence of God, a house dedicated to Him naturally follows. He is +all-important; it is fit that man should take some notice of Him. But +why praise and flatter Him for His unspeakable cruelties? Why forget so +supinely His failures to remedy the easily remediable? Why, indeed, +devote the churches exclusively to worship? Why not give them over, now +and then, to justifiable indignation meetings? + +Perhaps men will incline to this idea later on. It is not inconceivable, +indeed, that religion will one day cease to be a poltroonish +acquiescence and become a vigorous and insistent criticism. If God can +hear a petition, what ground is there for holding that He would not hear +a complaint? It might, indeed, please Him to find His creatures grown +so self-reliant and reflective. More, it might even help Him to get +through His infinitely complex and difficult work. Theology has already +moved toward such notions. It has abandoned the primitive doctrine of +God's arbitrariness and indifference, and substituted the doctrine that +He is willing, and even eager, to hear the desires of His creatures--_i. +e._, their private notions, born of experience, as to what would be best +for them. Why assume that those notions would be any the less worth +hearing and heeding if they were cast in the form of criticism, and even +of denunciation? Why hold that the God who can understand and forgive +even treason could not understand and forgive remonstrance? + + + + +XL + +THE ROOT OF RELIGION + + +The idea of literal truth crept into religion relatively late: it is the +invention of lawyers, priests and cheese-mongers. The idea of mystery +long preceded it, and at the heart of that idea of mystery was an idea +of beauty--that is, an idea that this or that view of the celestial and +infernal process presented a satisfying picture of form, rhythm and +organization. Once this view was adopted as satisfying, its professional +interpreters and their dupes sought to reinforce it by declaring it +true. The same flow of reasoning is familiar on lower planes. The +average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is +true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it. + + + + +XLI + +FREE WILL + + +Free will, it appears, is still a Christian dogma. Without it the +cruelties of God would strain faith to the breaking-point. But outside +the fold it is gradually falling into decay. Such men of science as +George W. Crile and Jacques Loeb have dealt it staggering blows, and +among laymen of inquiring mind it seems to be giving way to an +apologetic sort of determinism--a determinism, one may say, tempered by +defective observation. The late Mark Twain, in his secret heart, was +such a determinist. In his "What Is Man?" you will find him at his +farewells to libertarianism. The vast majority of our acts, he argues, +are determined, but there remains a residuum of free choices. Here we +stand free of compulsion and face a pair or more of alternatives, and +are free to go this way or that. + +A pillow for free will to fall upon--but one loaded with disconcerting +brickbats. Where the occupants of this last trench of libertarianism err +is in their assumption that the pulls of their antagonistic impulses are +exactly equal--that the individual is absolutely free to choose which +one he will yield to. Such freedom, in practise, is never encountered. +When an individual confronts alternatives, it is not alone his volition +that chooses between them, but also his environment, his inherited +prejudices, his race, his color, his condition of servitude. I may kiss +a girl or I may not kiss her, but surely it would be absurd to say that +I am, in any true sense, a free agent in the matter. The world has even +put my helplessness into a proverb. It says that my decision and act +depend upon the time, the place--and even to some extent, upon the girl. + +Examples might be multiplied _ad infinitum_. I can scarcely remember +performing a wholly voluntary act. My whole life, as I look back upon +it, seems to be a long series of inexplicable accidents, not only quite +unavoidable, but even quite unintelligible. Its history is the history +of the reactions of my personality to my environment, of my behavior +before external stimuli. I have been no more responsible for that +personality than I have been for that environment. To say that I can +change the former by a voluntary effort is as ridiculous as to say that +I can modify the curvature of the lenses of my eyes. I know, because I +have often tried to change it, and always failed. Nevertheless, it has +changed. I am not the same man I was in the last century. But the +gratifying improvements so plainly visible are surely not to be credited +to me. All of them came from without--or from unplumbable and +uncontrollable depths within. + +The more the matter is examined the more the residuum of free will +shrinks and shrinks, until in the end it is almost impossible to find +it. A great many men, of course, looking at themselves, see it as +something very large; they slap their chests and call themselves free +agents, and demand that God reward them for their virtue. But these +fellows are simply idiotic egoists, devoid of a critical sense. They +mistake the acts of God for their own acts. Of such sort are the +coxcombs who boast about wooing and winning their wives. They are +brothers to the fox who boasted that he had made the hounds run.... + +The throwing overboard of free will is commonly denounced on the ground +that it subverts morality and makes of religion a mocking. Such pious +objections, of course, are foreign to logic, but nevertheless it may be +well to give a glance to this one. It is based upon the fallacious +hypothesis that the determinist escapes, or hopes to escape, the +consequences of his acts. Nothing could be more untrue. Consequences +follow acts just as relentlessly if the latter be involuntary as if they +be voluntary. If I rob a bank of my free choice or in response to some +unfathomable inner necessity, it is all one; I will go to the same jail. +Conscripts in war are killed just as often as volunteers. Men who are +tracked down and shanghaied by their wives have just as hard a time of +it as men who walk fatuously into the trap by formally proposing. + +Even on the ghostly side, determinism does not do much damage to +theology. It is no harder to believe that a man will be damned for his +involuntary acts than it is to believe that he will be damned for his +voluntary acts, for even the supposition that he is wholly free does not +dispose of the massive fact that God made him as he is, and that God +could have made him a saint if He had so desired. To deny this is to +flout omnipotence--a crime at which, as I have often said, I balk. But +here I begin to fear that I wade too far into the hot waters of the +sacred sciences, and that I had better retire before I lose my hide. +This prudent retirement is purely deterministic. I do not ascribe it to +my own sagacity; I ascribe it wholly to that singular kindness which +fate always shows me. If I were free I'd probably keep on, and then +regret it afterward. + + + + +XLII + +QUID EST VERITAS? + + +All great religions, in order to escape absurdity, have to admit a +dilution of agnosticism. It is only the savage, whether of the African +bush or the American gospel tent, who pretends to know the will and +intent of God exactly and completely. "For who hath known the mind of +the Lord?" asked Paul of the Romans. "How unsearchable are his +judgments, and his ways past finding out!" "It is the glory of God," +said Solomon, "to conceal a thing." "Clouds and darkness," said David, +"are around him." "No man," said the Preacher, "can find out the work of +God." ... The difference between religions is a difference in their +relative content of agnosticism. The most satisfying and ecstatic faith +is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to +know at all. + + + + +XLIII + +THE DOUBTER'S REWARD + + +Despite the common delusion to the contrary the philosophy of doubt is +far more comforting than that of hope. The doubter escapes the worst +penalty of the man of hope; he is never disappointed, and hence never +indignant. The inexplicable and irremediable may interest him, but they +do not enrage him, or, I may add, fool him. This immunity is worth all +the dubious assurances ever foisted upon man. It is pragmatically +impregnable.... Moreover, it makes for tolerance and sympathy. The +doubter does not hate his opponents; he sympathizes with them. In the +end, he may even come to sympathize with God.... The old idea of +fatherhood here submerges in a new idea of brotherhood. God, too, is +beset by limitations, difficulties, broken hopes. Is it disconcerting to +think of Him thus? Well, is it any the less disconcerting to think of +Him as able to ease and answer, and yet failing?... + +But he that doubteth--_damnatus est_. At once the penalty of doubt--and +its proof, excuse and genesis. + + + + +XLIV + +BEFORE THE ALTAR + + +A salient objection to the prevailing religious ceremonial lies in the +attitudes of abasement that it enforces upon the faithful. A man would +be thought a slimy and knavish fellow if he approached any human judge +or potentate in the manner provided for approaching the Lord God. It is +an etiquette that involves loss of self-respect, and hence it cannot be +pleasing to its object, for one cannot think of the Lord God as +sacrificing decent feelings to mere vanity. This notion of abasement, +like most of the other ideas that are general in the world, is obviously +the invention of small and ignoble men. It is the pollution of theology +by the _sklavmoral_. + + + + +XLV + +THE MASK + + +Ritual is to religion what the music of an opera is to the libretto: +ostensibly a means of interpretation, but actually a means of +concealment. The Presbyterians made the mistake of keeping the doctrine +of infant damnation in plain words. As enlightenment grew in the +world, intelligence and prudery revolted against it, and so it had +to be abandoned. Had it been set to music it would have +survived--uncomprehended, unsuspected and unchallenged. + + + + +XLVI + +PIA VENEZIANI, POI CRISTIANI + + +I have spoken of the possibility that God, too, may suffer from a finite +intelligence, and so know the bitter sting of disappointment and defeat. +Here I yielded something to politeness; the thing is not only possible, +but obvious. Like man, God is deceived by appearances and probabilities; +He makes calculations that do not work out; He falls into specious +assumptions. For example, He assumed that Adam and Eve would obey the +law in the Garden. Again, He assumed that the appalling lesson of the +Flood would make men better. Yet again, He assumed that men would always +put religion in first place among their concerns--that it would be +eternally possible to reach and influence them through it. This last +assumption was the most erroneous of them all. The truth is that the +generality of men have long since ceased to take religion seriously. +When we encounter one who still does so, he seems eccentric, almost +feeble-minded--or, more commonly, a rogue who has been deluded by his +own hypocrisy. Even men who are professionally religious, and who thus +have far more incentive to stick to religion than the rest of us, nearly +always throw it overboard at the first serious temptation. During the +past four years, for example, Christianity has been in combat with +patriotism all over Christendom. Which has prevailed? How many gentlemen +of God, having to choose between Christ and Patrie, have actually chosen +Christ? + + + + +XLVII + +OFF AGAIN, ON AGAIN + + +The ostensible object of the Reformation, which lately reached its +fourth centenary, was to purge the Church of imbecilities. That object +was accomplished; the Church shook them off. But imbecilities make an +irresistible appeal to man; he inevitably tries to preserve them by +cloaking them with religious sanctions. The result is Protestantism. + + + + +XLVIII + +THEOLOGY + + +The notion that theology is a dull subject is one of the strangest +delusions of a stupid and uncritical age. The truth is that some of the +most engrossing books ever written in the world are full of it. For +example, the Gospel according to St. Luke. For example, Nietzsche's "Der +Antichrist." For example, Mark Twain's "What Is Man?", St. Augustine's +Confessions, Haeckel's "The Riddle of the Universe," and Huxley's +Essays. How, indeed, could a thing be dull that has sent hundreds of +thousands of men--the very best and the very worst of the race--to the +gallows and the stake, and made and broken dynasties, and inspired the +greatest of human hopes and enterprises, and embroiled whole continents +in war? No, theology is not a soporific. The reason it so often seems so +is that its public exposition has chiefly fallen, in these later days, +into the hands of a sect of intellectual castrati, who begin by +mistaking it for a sub-department of etiquette, and then proceed to +anoint it with butter, rose water and talcum powder. Whenever a +first-rate intellect tackles it, as in the case of Huxley, or in that of +Leo XIII., it at once takes on all the sinister fascination it had in +Luther's day. + + + + +XLIX + +EXEMPLI GRATIA + + +Do I let the poor suffer, and consign them, as old Friedrich used to +say, to statistics and the devil? Well, so does God. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Damn!, by Henry Louis Mencken + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAMN! *** + +***** This file should be named 18948.txt or 18948.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/9/4/18948/ + +Produced by Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://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. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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