A Saturnalia of Bunk. H. L. Mencken
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without the slightest sense of sin, and some of them swear like archdeacons, or gamble for money, or go to burlesque shows, or perform some other act that would give the Hon. Jack Cornell the fantods. Worse, all of them regard Jack as an immoral and abhorrent fellow, basing their opinion upon the very snoutery that is the foundation of his moral eminence among professional moralists!
Viewing the Hon. Mr. Dunham’s allegation from such lofty peaks, I can well afford to pronounce upon it a superior Pooh-pooh! and so let it go. My own personal morality seems to me to be vastly more austere and elevating than that with which the hon. gent. contrasts it—to wit, the morality of the Sunpaper. I could fill this whole column with a list of things that the Sunpaper has done in the past, and that I myself wouldn’t dare to do. For example, I would never print a line in praise or defense of such a charlatan as the Hon. William Jennings Bryan, knowing his character as I know it, and as the Sunpaper knows it, and as every intelligent American knows it. Again, I would never make a noisy pretense of neutrality in a great and bloody war, and then attack one of the contestants unfairly under cover of it, as the Sunpaper did in August last, and as Monsignor Russell properly denounced it for doing. Yet again—
But no more examples! I am not going to gloat over the poor old Sunpaper because my moral code happens to be too harsh and exacting for it. Nor am I going to revile the Hon. Mr. Dunham because that code is beyond his comprehension. He is, I take it, a virtuous man, and he probably does his darndest within his limitations. If the higher sort of honesty is over his head, he is at least in numerous company. To the average, everyday, unreflecting, platitude-eating man, the truth ever bears a sinister and forbidding aspect. He regards it as immoral, and with reason. If it prevailed in the world, then nine-tenths of the things that he believes in, and that give his life a meaning, and that soothe him and comfort him, and fill him with a pleased, boozy feeling of rectitude and security, would be blown up. [5 November 1914]
MENCKEN AND MATERIALISM
Some anonymous friend in the long-suffering Letter Column:
[The Hon. Mr.] Mencken’s * * * eyes are earthbound. Ethics of the mud. A gross materialist, that fellow, with only earth fires to lighten him.
Empty nonsense, true enough, but nevertheless it bobs up in the Letter Column regularly. One of the hardest of all things for a professed idealist to believe is that the man who dissents from his particular idealism may be an idealist also. This difficulty is at the bottom of most of the political and theological wars that rack the world. The first charge that one disputant makes against another is always that he is a materialist, that he has no idealism. And the counter-charge is always exactly the same. The whole dispute between Catholic and Protestant, Democrat and Monarchist, Christian and Jew, may be reduced to just such terms. The Englishman scorns the German as a worshiper of force; the German scorns the Englishman as a worshiper of ease; the Frenchman sniffs at both as gross and materialistic; both denounce the Frenchman as a voluptuary and an atheist. And so on and so on.
Every man is thus convinced, not only of the brutish materialism of the other fellow, but also and more especially of his own lofty idealism. I myself, for example, though constantly accused of neglecting the things of the spirit (and, from the standpoint of my critics, with excellent cause), am nevertheless an almost fanatical idealist in my own sight. As I look back over my life I see a long record of more or less steady devotion to worthy ideals, often at a heavy sacrifice of material benefits. The picture is intensely agreeable to me; in it I take on a sort of mellow, romantic aspect; I am positively touched. And yet my life, to many other men, must needs appear grossly materialistic, for its net results, to date, are that I am fat, that I have stopped going to Sunday-school, and that my conscience seldom bothers me.
Even when two men pursue one and the same ideal, they often fall into irreconcilable differences over the manner of its attainment. Consider, for example, the commonplace ideal, visioned by practically all of us, of a carefree and happy human race. I should like to see it realized, and Dr. Kelly would like to see it realized. But observe how vastly we differ in our plans for its realization. My plan is to let people do whatever they please, so long as they do not invade the right and freedom of other persons to do the same: that is, I see liberty of desire, of taste, of action as the capital essential to happiness. But Dr. Kelly, with the very same end in view, advocates a diametrically contrary route to its attainment. That is to say, he proposes to make people happy by force, by terrorism, by compulsion. His plan, in brief, is to decide what sort of life is a happy one, and then compel them to live it. This seems to me to be utter nonsense, almost a contradiction in terms. And yet Dr. Kelly and his friends undoubtedly believe in it, and (setting aside the natural pleasure that all of us get out of pursuing and punishing our fellow-men) undoubtedly work for it in good faith, and with a keen and even overpowering sense of virtue.
The correspondent I have quoted bases his accusation that my “eyes are earthbound” chiefly on the fact that I defend and advocate the German cause in this war. This seems to him an effective proof that I am no idealist, but a “gross materialist.” In all friendliness, could anything be more absurd? Even supposing me to be a “gross materialist” as a general thing, certainly the fact must stick out plainly that I am far from being one in this particular case. What have I to gain, materially, by arguing for the Germans? Is there any reward hung up for that advocacy, save the wholly impalpable one (but far from unreal one!) of the idealist? Surely, it would be far more comfortable to drift with the tide. And surely the material rewards of such drifting could not be less.
But perhaps the learned writer means to say that I am not an idealist because the Germans themselves are not—that is, that the attorney shares the culpability of his client. Another absurdity. No people in history have made heavier sacrifices for their ideals than the Germans; no people in history have had ideals that were higher. The German is not content with material prosperity; he also wants to see his country great and venerable. And as a means to that end he counts in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony quite as much as he counts in the War Machine, and such men as Siemanns7 and Ehrlich quite as much as such men as Hindenburg and Bismarck. The German civilization that he sees ahead is a civilization vastly transcending anything that the world knows today, and he is not only eager to work for it but also ready to fight for it. Does the attainment of his ideal demand the risk of his life? Then he risks it gladly and gallantly, and his womenfolk urge him on. (What a golden page of history belongs to German women in this war!)
I believe fully in this German idealism, and what is more, I believe that it will prevail. The truth is behind it, and the truth has a mailed fist. The snuffling and the sobbing dies; the moralists and the mobmasters depart. What stands is the immutable law of human progress: That the more fit shall conquer and obliterate the less fit. This present war is merely the first skirmish. The real battle will be fought out later on. On the one side will be a vigorous, an intelligent and a courageous people, and an ideal that sets great deeds immeasurably above empty words. On the one8 side will be a group of peoples crippled by fear, suspicion and irresolution, and an ideal that makes weakness a virtue and truth-telling an unforgivable sin. I have no doubt of the outcome. [23 December 1914]
III
THE FOLLIES OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY
ABOLISHING THE STATE LEGISLATURE
WHAT AMERICAN STATE will be the first to abolish its Legislature? At least 20 States have already gone halfway—by introducing, in some form or other, the checks of the initiative and referendum—but not one has yet gone, as the poet hath it, the whole hog. That very thing, however, is bound to be done some day, and perhaps it will be done in the near future. The American people, after more than a century of bitter experience, are beginning to see the light. They now realize that the Legislature in the State, like the City Council in the city, is inevitably the headquarters of all governmental incompetence, stupidity and corruption. An honest Legislature is as rare as a modest actor. Here in Maryland we have not had four in 80 years. And an intelligent Legislature is rarer still.
Not, of course, that every lawmaker is necessarily a rascal. Our system of choosing Legislators and Councilmen gives enormous advantage to those aspirants who happen to be rascals, and the next most noticeable advantages