exposure of the true dignity and manliness of the new “Americanism,” by Judge Lynch out of Chautauqua! And how beautifully the Hon. Mr. Healy, with his virtuous bluster and empty charges, serves as an exponent and example of it! Consider his logic: THE EVENING SUN, eager for profit, outrages and alienates the overwhelming majority of its readers in order to tickle a small minority! What a syllogism is here, Messieurs! What an Aristotle performs upon the tragic bassoon! And consider again his plain allegation that I have “gloated over the suffering” of the Lusitania victims (When? Where?) and his allegation that I have denounced Dr. Wilson “in language so foul and indecent that at times it was unfit for publication in a decent family journal” (Examples, I prithee!), and his allegation that I am employed “for the special purpose” of signing my name to “the inspired and prepared stuff sent out by the German propagandists” (Am I, then, incapable of writing my stuff myself?), and his allegation that “the German papers published in this country are subsidized by the German Government” (Why subsidize them? How long would they last if they opposed Germany?). What ludicrous yawping, indeed! What a feeble and childish rattling!
I do not offer the Hon. Mr. Healy the affront of assuming that he actually believes these allegations to be true. On the contrary, I assume that he knows very well that they are false. That he makes them at all is sufficient evidence of the lamentable state of mind into which he has fallen, and with him a vast number of other such highfalutin’ and hysterical moralists. England has long rung with these frenzied charges and hollow threats; they are now heard fortissimo in the United States. Let the Hon. Mr. Healy cast his eye toward the Germans, observing them studiously through his pious tears. He will find that they are not moralizing, but fighting; that they make steady progress against the enormous hordes of their foes; that they draw tighter and tighter the rope around John Bull’s neck; that they face the future resolutely, bravely, confidently, paying no heed to the moral slobber-gobble of their enemies, whether open or disguised. Let him ask himself which race is better fitted to prevail in the world—the Germans with their homeric strength and daring, or the English with their white livers and their womanish screams for help.
As for the hon. gentleman’s impatience with my own heterodoxy, I regret that I can offer him no assurances of reform. Strange as it may seem to him, I am a good American (only partly, by the way, of German blood) and eager to serve my country. Unfitted by fastidious prejudices for that petty job-seeking which has been the hon. gentleman’s avenue of service, I devote myself to combating what appear to me to be elements of decay in the national philosophy and the national character. I believe that the American people would be a stronger and more respectable race if they could get rid of the intellectual dishonesty and slimy hypocrisy that they have inherited from England, and take on something of the German’s respect for the eternal and immovable facts. To the promotion of this transformation I shall devote the time intervening between the present moment and my inevitable arrival at Loudon Park. And if not in this place, then in some other place. [12 May 1915]
II
THE CENTRAL QUESTIONS OF EXISTENCE
LESSONS OF A LIFETIME
I OFFER THE following conclusions after 42 years of unremitting observation and reflection, aided by consultations with hundreds of other observers, dead and alive:
1. There is no such thing as honest politics, in the strict sense. All persons who aspire to public office, without a single exception, are mountebanks. Even those who start out honestly, with a sincere desire to sacrifice their private comfort to the public good, become mountebanks the moment they face an assemblage of voters, just as every man becomes a mountebank the moment he faces a woman. Under a republic, with the vote of a farmhand counting exactly as much as the vote of a Huxley, intellectual honesty in politics is inhibited by the very nature of things.
2. It is a capital mistake to assume that the common people are stupid but honest. The exact contrary is more nearly true. The common people never sacrifice their own good to the general good. They are always in favor of the man who promises to get something for them without cost to them—i. e., to steal something for them. This capacity for predatory enterprise they venerate above all other human qualities. Even when it is turned against them, they have a sneaking respect for it. They may laugh at a college professor or an archbishop, but they never laugh at a Charles F. Murphy. One cannot laugh at a man one envies—at the man one would like to be.
3. Virtue is often a mere symptom of meanness, or of poverty, which is the same thing. The mildest vice is an overhead charge, a dead expense. A man of intense and unyielding virtue is often merely a man of overpowering meanness. This explains why it is that such virtue is usually found in combination with lack of generosity, boorishness, suspiciousness—why it is, in brief, that a virtuoso of virtue is seldom a gentleman. It costs something, even to be merely polite. One cannot show any genuine toleration for the other fellow—the essence of being a gentleman—without at the same time practicing, or at least freely condoning, his vices, i. e., his unutilitarian acts. The true test of a man is not the way he gets his money, but the way he spends it. Men are drawn into firm friendship and understanding, not so much by common occupations, as by common vices. Professional musicians usually dislike one another, but amateur musicians are strongly attracted to one another. Thus it appears that good will between man and man is largely based upon common vices—e. g., music, politics, alcoholism, gambling, or the pursuit of women (either openly, as Don Juans, or in disguise, as vice crusaders).
4. Women and actors have this advantage in common: that any sign of intelligence in them, however slight, causes surprise, and is therefore estimated above its true worth. In the case of actors this surprise is justified, but justified or not, it works to the same end. No one gets excited over a man who has read Kant, but a woman who has done so, or who merely gets the reputation of having done so, becomes a sort of celebrity ipso facto. In the same way an actor who is able to put together a dozen intelligible paragraphs about Shakespeare is hailed as a Shakespearean scholar and invited to address universities. I say “intelligible,” mind you, and not “intelligent.” No actor has ever written anything actually intelligent about Shakespeare, or even about acting. Of all the professions open to males, acting is the only one whose practitioners have never contributed anything of value to its theory.
5. A man who has never faced the hazards of war is in exactly the same position as a woman who has never faced the hazards of maternity. That is to say, he has missed the supreme experience of his sex, and is hence an incomplete being. There is something in all of us which makes us crave these natural hazards—some impulse toward danger and courage—and when they are not experienced we are prone to invent imaginary substitutes. Thus it is that the men of a nation long at peace become old maidish: they torture themselves with artificial austerities and hobgoblins—for example, prohibition and the Rum Demon. The remedy for such vapors is war, just as the remedy for hypochondria is a knock in the head.
6. Whatever may be the demerits of Dr. Sigmund Freud’s scheme of psychoanalysis, there is at least sound support for his theory that the thing we hate most is the thing most dangerous to us—that a man’s prejudices afford an index to his weaknesses. The most cruel and vindictive judge is the one who is most a criminal at heart. The loudest whooper for prohibition is the man who is most tempted every time he passes a saloon. But perhaps the best proof of Freud’s theory is to be found in those strange fanatics who specialize in denouncing nude pictures and statuary. The argument of these gentlemen is that such pictures and statues incite the beholder to lewd thougthts. This is a faulty generalization from their personal experience. Their error lies in the assumption that all men, or even any considerable number of men, are as dirty-minded as they are themselves. Wasn’t it Arnold Bennett who said that a novelist must always get his psychology from himself? The same thing is true of a moralist.
7. The prosperity of such bogus healing schemes as osteopathy and Christian Science is largely based upon the fact that they offer simple and intelligible theores as to the causation
