{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_16340/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_16340","id":"gutenberg_16340","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16340","summary":null,"tags":["Category: American Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Essays"],"text":"Produced by Ted Garvin, Dave Macfarlane and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n[Transcriber's note: _ is equivalent to italics markup.]\n\n\nLITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 1099\nEdited by E. Haldeman-Julius\n\n\nA Cynic Looks at Life\n\nAmbrose Bierce\n\n\nHALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY\nGIRARD, KANSAS\n\nCopyright, 1912, by\nThe Neale Publishing Company\n\nReprinted by Special Arrangement With\nAlbert and Charles Boni, New York\n\nPRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA\n\n\nA CYNIC LOOKS AT LIFE\n\n\n\n\nCIVILIZATION\n\n\nI\n\nThe question \"Does civilization civilize?\" is a fine example of _petitio\nprincipii_, and decides itself in the affirmative; for civilization must\nneeds do that from the doing of which it has its name. But it is not\nnecessary to suppose that he who propounds is either unconscious of his\nlapse in logic or desirous of digging a pitfall for the feet of those\nwho discuss; I take it he simply wishes to put the matter in an\nimpressive way, and relies upon a certain degree of intelligence in the\ninterpretation.\n\nConcerning uncivilized peoples we know but little except what we are\ntold by travelers--who, speaking generally, can know very little but the\nfact of uncivilization, as shown in externals and irrelevances, and are\nmoreover, greatly given to lying. From the savages we hear very little.\nJudging them in all things by our own standards in default of a\nknowledge of theirs, we necessarily condemn, disparage and belittle. One\nthing that civilization certainly has not done is to make us intelligent\nenough to understand that the contrary of a virtue is not necessarily a\nvice. Because, as a rule, we have but one wife and several mistresses\neach it is not certain that polygamy is everywhere--nor, for that\nmatter, anywhere--either wrong or inexpedient. Because the brutality of\nthe civilized slave owners and dealers created a conquering sentiment\nagainst slavery it is not intelligent to assume that slavery is a\nmaleficent thing amongst Oriental peoples (for example) where the slave\nis not oppressed. Some of these same Orientals whom we are pleased to\nterm half-civilized have no regard for truth. \"Takest thou me for a\nChristian dog,\" said one of them, \"that I should be the slave of my\nword?\" So far as I can perceive, the \"Christian dog\" is no more the\nslave of his word than the True Believer, and I think the\nsavage--allowing for the fact that his inveracity has dominion over\nfewer things--as great a liar as either of them. For my part, I do not\nknow what, in all circumstances, is right or wrong; but I know that, if\nright, it is at least stupid, to judge an uncivilized people by the\nstandards of morality and intelligence set up by civilized ones. Life in\ncivilized countries is so complex that men there have more ways to be\ngood than savages have, and more to be bad; more to be happy, and more\nto be miserable. And in each way to be good or bad, their generally\nsuperior knowledge--their knowledge of more things--enables them to\ncommit greater excesses than the savage can. The civilized\nphilanthropist wreaks upon his fellows a ranker philanthropy, the\ncivilized rascal a sturdier rascality. And--splendid triumph of\nenlightenment!--the two characters are, in civilization, frequently\ncombined in one person.\n\nI know of no savage custom or habit of thought which has not its mate\nin civilized countries. For every mischievous or absurd practice of the\nnatural man I can name you one of ours that is essentially the same. And\nnearly every custom of our barbarian ancestors in historic times\npersists in some form today. We make ourselves look formidable in\nbattle--for that matter, we fight. Our women paint their faces. We feel\nit obligatory to dress more or less alike, inventing the most ingenious\nreasons for doing so and actually despising and persecuting those who do\nnot care to conform. Almost within the memory of living persons bearded\nmen were stoned in the streets; and a clergyman in New York who wore his\nbeard as Christ wore his, was put into jail and variously persecuted\ntill he died.\n\nCivilization does not, I think, make the race any better. It makes men\nknow more: and if knowledge makes them happy it is useful and desirable.\nThe one purpose of every sane human being is to be happy. No one can\nhave any other motive than that. There is no such thing as\nunselfishness. We perform the most \"generous\" and \"self-sacrificing\"\nacts because we should be unhappy if we did not. We move on lines of\nleast reluctance. Whatever tends to increase the beggarly sum of human\nhappiness is worth having; nothing else has any value.\n\nThe cant of civilization fatigues. Civilization, is a fine and beautiful\nstructure. It is as picturesque as a Gothic cathedral, but it is built\nupon the bones and cemented with the blood of those whose part in all\nits pomp is that and nothing more. It cannot be reared in the\nungenerous tropics, for there the people will not contribute their\nblood and bones. The proposition that the average American workingman or\nEuropean peasant is \"better off\" than the South Sea islander, lolling\nunder a palm and drunk with over-eating, will not bear a moment's\nexamination. It is we scholars and gentlemen that are better off.\n\nIt is admitted that the South Sea islander in a state of nature is\novermuch addicted to the practice of eating human flesh; but concerning\nthat I submit: first, that he likes it; second, that those who supply it\nare mostly dead. It is upon his enemies that he feeds, and these he\nwould kill anyhow, as we do ours. In civilized, enlightened and\nChristian countries, where cannibalism has not yet established itself,\nwars are as frequent and destructive as among the maneaters. The\nuntitled savage knows at least why he goes killing, whereas our private\nsoldier is commonly in black ignorance of the apparent cause of\nquarrel--of the actual cause, always. Their shares in the fruits of\nvictory are about equal, for the chief takes all the dead, the general\nall the glory.\n\n\nII\n\nTransplanted institutions grow slowly; civilization can not be put into\na ship and carried across an ocean. The history of this country is a\nsequence of illustrations of these truths. It was settled by civilized\nmen and women from civilized countries, yet after two and a half\ncenturies, with unbroken communication with the mother systems, it is\nstill imperfectly civilized. In learning and letters, in art and the\nscience of government, America is but a faint and stammering echo of\nEurope.\n\nFor nearly all that is good in our American civilization we\nare indebted to the Old World; the errors and mischiefs are of our own\ncreation. We have originated little, because there is little to\noriginate, but we have unconsciously reproduced many of the discredited\nsystems of former ages and other countries--receiving them at second\nhand, but making them ours by the sheer strength and immobility of the\nnational belief in their novelty. Novelty! Why, it is not possible to\nmake an experiment in government, in art, in literature, in sociology,\nor in morals, that has not been made over, and over, and over again.\n\nThe glories of England are our glories. She can achieve nothing that our\nfathers did not help to make possible to her. The learning, the power,\nthe refinement of a great nation, are not the growth of a century, but\nof many centuries; each generation builds upon the work of the\npreceding. For untold ages our ancestors wrought to rear that \"reverend\npile,\" the civilization of England. And shall we now try to belittle the\nmighty structure because other though kindred hands are laying the top\ncourses while we have elected to found a new tower in another land? The\nAmerican eulogist of civilization who is not proud of his heritage in\nEngland's glory is unworthy to enjoy his lesser heritage in the lesser\nglory of his own country.\n\nThe English, are undoubtedly our intellectual superiors; and as the\nvirtues are solely the product of intelligence and cultivation--a rogue\nbeing only a dunce considered from another point of view--they are our\nmoral superiors likewise. Why should they not be? Theirs is a land, not\nof ugly schoolhouses grudgingly erected, containing schools supported by\nsuch niggardly tax levies as a sparse and hard-handed population will\nconsent to pay, but of ancient institutions splendidly endowed by the\nstate and by centuries of private benefaction. As a means of dispensing\nformulated ignorance our boasted public school system is not without\nmerit; it spreads out education sufficiently thin to give everyone\nenough to make him a more competent fool than he would have been without\nit; but to compare it with that which is not the creature of legislation\nacting with malice aforethought, but the unnoted out-growth of ages, is\nto be ridiculous. It is like comparing the laid-out town of a western\nprairie, its right-angled streets, prim cottages, and wooden a-b-c\nshops, with the grand old town of Oxford, topped with the clustered\ndomes and towers of its twenty-odd great colleges, the very names of\nmany of whose founders have perished from human record, as have the\nchronicles of the times in which they lived.\n\nIt is not only that we have had to \"subdue the wilderness\"; our\neducational conditions are adverse otherwise. Our political system is\nunfavorable. Our fortunes, accumulated in one generation, are dispersed\nin the next. If it takes three generations to make a gentleman one will\nnot make a thinker. Instruction is acquired, but capacity for\ninstruction is transmitted. The brain that is to contain a trained\nintellect is not the result of a haphazard marriage between a clown and\na wench, nor does it get its tractable tissues from a hard-headed farmer\nand a soft-headed milliner. If you confess the importance of race and\npedigree in a horse and a dog how dare you deny it in a man?\n\nI do not hold that the political and social system that creates an\naristocracy of leisure is the best possible kind of human organization;\nI perceive its disadvantages clearly enough. But I do hold that a system\nunder which most important public trusts, political and professional,\ncivil and military ecclesiastical and secular, are held by educated\nmen--that is, men of trained faculties and disciplined judgment--is\nnot an altogether faulty system.\n\nIt is a universal human weakness to disparage the knowledge that we do\nnot ourselves possess, but it is only my own beloved country that can\njustly boast herself the last refuge and asylum of the impotents and\nincapables who deny the advantage of all knowledge whatsoever. It was an\nAmerican senator who declared that he had devoted a couple of weeks to\nthe study of finance, and found the accepted authorities all wrong. It\nwas another American senator who, confronted with certain hostile facts\nin the history of another country, proposed \"to brush away all facts,\nand argue the question on consideration of plain common sense.\"\n\nRepublican institutions have this disadvantage: by incessant changes in\nthe _personnel_ of government--to say nothing of the manner of men that\nignorant constituencies elect; and all constituencies are ignorant--we\nattain to no fixed principles and standards. There is no such thing here\nas a science of politics, because it is not to any one's interest to\nmake politics the study of his life. Nothing is settled; no truth finds\ngeneral acceptance. What we do one year we undo the next, and do over\nagain the year following. Our energy is wasted in, and our prosperity\nsuffers from, experiments endlessly repeated.\n\nEvery patriot believes his country better than any other country. Now,\nthey cannot all be the best; indeed, only one can be the best, and it\nfollows that the patriots of all the others have suffered themselves to\nbe misled by a mere sentiment into blind unreason. In its active\nmanifestation--it is fond of killing--patriotism would be well if it\nwere simply defensive; but it is also aggressive, and the same feeling\nthat prompts us to strike for our altars and our fires impels us over\nthe border to quench the fires and overturn the altars of our neighbors.\nIt is all very pretty and spirited, what the poets tell us about\nThermopylae, but there was as much patriotism at one end of that pass as\nthere was at the other.\n\nPatriotism deliberately and with folly aforethought subordinates the\ninterests of a whole to the interests of a part. Worse still, the\nfraction so favored is determined by an accident of birth or residence.\nThe Western hoodlum who cuts the tail from a Chinaman's nowl, and would\ncut the nowl from the body, if he dared, is simply a patriot with a\nlogical mind, having the courage of his opinions. Patriotism is fierce\nas a fever, pitiless as the grave and blind as a stone.\n\n\nIII\n\nThere are two ways of clarifying liquids--ebullition and precipitation;\none forces the impurities to the surface as scum, the other sends them\nto the bottom as dregs. The former is the more offensive, and that seems\nto be our way; but neither is useful if the impurities are merely\nseparated but not removed. We are told with tiresome iteration that our\nsocial and political systems are clarifying; but when is the skimmer to\nappear? If the purpose of free institutions is good government where is\nthe good government?--when may it be expected to begin?--how is it to\ncome about? Systems of government have no sanctity; they are practical\nmeans to a simple end--the public welfare; worthy of no respect if they\nfail of its accomplishment. The tree is known by its fruit. Ours is\nbearing crab-apples. If the body politic is constitutionally diseased,\nas I verily believe; if the disorder inheres in the system; there is no\nremedy. The fever must burn itself out, and then Nature will do the\nrest. One does not prescribe what time alone can administer. We have put\nour criminals and dunces into power; do we suppose they will efface\nthemselves? Will they restore to _us_ the power of governing _them_?\nThey must have their way and go their length. The natural and immemorial\nsequence is: tyranny, insurrection, combat. In combat everything that\nwears a sword has a chance--even the right. History does not forbid us\nto hope. But it forbids us to rely upon numbers; they will be against\nus. If history teaches anything worth learning it teaches that the\nmajority of mankind is neither good nor wise. When government is founded\nupon the public conscience and the public intelligence the stability of\nstates is a dream.\n\nIn that moment of time that is covered by historical records we have\nabundant evidence that each generation has believed itself wiser and\nbetter than any of its predecessors; that each people has believed\nitself to have the secret of national perpetuity. In support of this\nuniversal delusion there is nothing to be said; the desolate places of\nthe earth cry out against it. Vestiges of obliterated civilizations\ncover the earth; no savage but has camped upon the sites of proud and\npopulous cities; no desert but has heard the statesman's boast of\nnational stability. Our nation, our laws, our history--all shall go down\nto everlasting oblivion with the others, and by the same road. But I\nsubmit that we are traveling it with needless haste.\n\nIt can be spared--this Jonah's gourd civilization of ours. We have\nhardly the rudiments of a true one; compared with the splendors of which\nwe catch dim glimpses in the fading past, ours are as an illumination of\ntallow candles. We know no more than the ancients; we only know other\nthings, but nothing in which is an assurance of perpetuity, and little\nthat is truly wisdom. Our vaunted _elixir vitae_ is the art of\nprinting. What good will that do when posterity, struck by the\ninevitable intellectual blight, shall have ceased to read what is\nprinted? Our libraries will become its stables, our books its fuel.\n\nOurs is a civilization that might be heard from afar in space as a\nscolding and a riot; a civilization in which the race has so\ndifferentiated as to have no longer a community of interest and feeling;\nwhich shows as a ripe result of the principles underlying it a\nreasonless and rascally feud between rich and poor; in which one is\noffered a choice (if one have the means to take it) between American\nplutocracy and European militocracy, with an imminent chance of\nrenouncing either for a stultocratic republic with a headsman in the\npresidential chair and every laundress in exile.\n\nI have not a \"solution\" to the \"labor problem.\" I have only a story.\nMany and many years ago lived a man who was so good and wise that none\nin all the world was so good and wise as he. He was one of those few\nwhose goodness and wisdom are such that after some time has passed their\nfoolish fellowmen begin to think them gods and treasure their words as\ndivine law; and by millions they are worshiped through centuries of\ntime. Amongst the utterances of this man was one command--not a new nor\nperfect one--which has seemed to his adorers so preeminently wise that\nthey have given it a name by which it is known over half the world. One\nof the sovereign virtues of this famous law is its simplicity, which is\nsuch that all hearing must understand; and obedience is so easy that\nany nation refusing is unfit to exist except in the turbulence and\nadversity that will surely come to it. When a people would avert want\nand strife, or, having them, would restore plenty and peace, this noble\ncommandment offers the only means--all other plans for safety or relief\nare as vain as dreams, as empty as the crooning of hags. And behold,\nhere is it: \"All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,\ndo ye even so to them.\"\n\nWhat! you unappeasable rich, coining the sweat and blood of your workmen\ninto drachmas, understanding the law of supply and demand as mandatory\nand justifying your cruel greed by the senseless dictum that \"business\nis business\"; you lazy workmen, railing at the capitalist by whose\ndesertion, when you have frightened away his capital, you\nstarve--rioting and shedding blood and torturing and poisoning by way of\nanswer to exaction and by way of exaction; you foul anarchists,\napplauding with untidy palms when one of your coward kind hurls a bomb\namongst powerless and helpless women and children; you imbecile\npoliticians with a plague of remedial legislation for the irremediable;\nyou writers and thinkers unread in history, with as many \"solutions to\nthe labor problem\" as there are among you those who can not coherently\ndefine it--do you really think yourselves wiser than Jesus of Nazareth?\nDo you seriously suppose yourselves competent to amend his plan for\ndealing with evils besetting nations and souls? Have you the effrontery\nto believe that those who spurn his Golden Rule you can bind to\nobedience of an act entitled an act to amend an act? Bah! you fatigue\nthe spirit. Go get ye to your scoundrel lockouts, your villain strikes,\nyour blacklisting, your boycotting, your speeching, marching and\nmaundering; but if ye do not to others as ye would that they do to you\nit shall occur, and that right soon, that ye be drowned in your own\nblood and your pick-pocket civilization quenched as a star that falls\ninto the sea.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GIFT O' GAB\n\n\nA book entitled _Forensic Eloquence_, by Mr. John Goss, appears to have\nfor purpose to teach the young idea how to spout, and that purpose, I\ndare say, it will accomplish if something is not done to prevent. I know\nnothing of the matter myself, a strong distaste for forensic eloquence,\nor eloquence of any kind implying a man mounted on his legs and doing\nall the talking, having averted me from its study. The training of the\nyouth of this country to utterance of themselves after that fashion I\nshould regard as a disaster of magnitude. So far as I know it, forensic\neloquence is the art of saying things in such a way as to make them pass\nfor more than they are worth. Employed in matters of importance (and for\nother employment it were hardly worth acquiring) it is mischievous\nbecause dishonest and misleading. In the public service Truth toils best\nwhen not clad in cloth-of-gold and bedaubed with fine lace. If eloquence\ndoes not beget action it is valueless; but action which results from the\npassions, sentiments and emotions is less likely to be wise than that\nwhich comes of a persuaded judgment. For that reason I cannot help\nthinking that the influence of Bismarck in German politics was more\nwholesome than is that of Mr. John Temple Graves.\n\nFor eloquence _per se_--considered merely as an art of pleasing--I\nentertain something of the respect evoked by success; for it always\npleases at least the speaker. It is to speech what an ornate style is to\nwriting--good and pleasant enough in its time and place and, like\npie-crust and the evening girl, destitute of any basis in common sense.\nForensic eloquence, on the contrary, has an all too sufficient\nfoundation in reason and the order of things: it promotes the ambition\nof tricksters and advances the fortunes of rogues. For I take it that\nthe Ciceros, the Mirabeaus, the Burkes, the O'Connells, the Patrick\nHenrys and the rest of them--pets of the text-bookers and scourges of\nyouth--belong in either the one category or the other, or in both.\nAnyhow I find it impossible to think of them as highminded men and\nright-forth statesmen--with their actors' tricks, their devices of the\ncountenance, inventions of gesture and other cunning expedients having\nnothing to do with the matter in hand. Extinction of the orator I hold\nto be the most beneficent possibility of evolution. If Mr. Goss has done\nanything to retard that blessed time when the Bourke Cockrans shall\ncease from troubling and the weary be at rest he is an enemy of his race.\n\n\"What!\" exclaims the thoughtless reader--I have but one--\"are not the\ngreat forensic speeches by the world's famous orators good reading?\nConsidering them merely as literature do you not derive a high and\nrefining pleasure from them?\" I do not: I find them turgid and tumid no\nend. They are bad reading, though they may have been good hearing. In\norder to enjoy them one must have in memory what, indeed, one is seldom\npermitted to forget: that they were addressed to the ear; and in\nimagination one must hold some shadowy simulacrum of the orator himself,\nuttering his work. These conditions being fulfilled there remains for\napplication to the matter of the discourse too little attention to get\nmuch good of it, and the total effect is confusion. Literature by which\nthe reader is compelled to bear in mind the producer and the\ncircumstances under which it was produced can be spared.\n\n\n\n\nNATURA BENIGNA\n\n\nIt is not always on remote islands peopled with pagans that great\ndisasters occur, as memory witnesseth. Nor are the forces of nature\ninadequate to production of a fiercer throe than any that we have known.\nThe situation is this: we are tied by the feet to a fragile shell\nimperfectly confining a force powerful enough under favoring conditions,\nto burst it asunder and set the fragments wallowing and grinding\ntogether in liquid flame, in the blind fury of a readjustment. Nay, it\nneeds no such stupendous cataclysm to depeople this uneasy orb. Let but\na square mile be blown out of the bottom of the sea, or a great rift\nopen there. Is it to be supposed that we would be unaffected in the\naltered conditions generated by a contest between the ocean and the\nearth's molten core? These fatalities are not only possible but in the\nhighest degree probable. It is probable, indeed, that they have occurred\nover and over again, effacing all the more highly organized forms of\nlife, and compelling the slow march of evolution to begin anew. Slow? On\nthe stage of Eternity the passing of races--the entrances and exits of\nLife--are incidents in a brisk and lively drama, following one another\nwith confusing rapidity.\n\nMankind has not found it practicable to abandon and avoid those places\nwhere the forces of nature have been most malign. The track, of the\nWestern tornado is speedily repeopled. San Francisco is still populous,\ndespite its earthquake, Galveston despite its storm, and even the courts\nof Lisbon are not kept by the lion and the lizard. In the Peruvian\nvillage straight downward into whose streets the crew of a United States\nwarship once looked from the crest of a wave that stranded her a half\nmile inland are heard the tinkle of the guitar and the voices of\nchildren at play. There are people living at Herculaneum and Pompeii. On\nthe slopes about Catania the goatherd endures with what courage he may\nthe trembling of the ground beneath his feet as old Enceladus again\nturns over on his other side. As the Hoang-Ho goes back inside its banks\nafter fertilizing its contiguity with hydrate of China-man the living\nagriculturist follows the receding wave, sets up his habitation beneath\nthe broken embankment, and again the Valley of the Gone Away blossoms\nas the rose, its people diving with Death.\n\nThis matter can not be amended: the race exposes itself to peril because\nit can do no otherwise. In all the world there is no city of refuge--no\ntemple in which to take sanctuary, clinging to the horns of the\naltar--no \"place apart\" where, like hunted deer, we can hope to elude\nthe baying pack of Nature's malevolences. The dead-line is drawn at the\ngate of life: Man crosses it at birth. His advent is a challenge to the\nentire pack--earthquake, storm, fire, flood, drought, heat, cold, wild\nbeasts, venomous reptiles, noxious insects, bacilli, spectacular plague\nand velvet-footed household disease--all are fierce and tireless in\npursuit. Dodge, turn and double how he can, there's no eluding them;\nsoon or late some of them have him by the throat and his spirit returns\nto the God who gave it--and gave them.\n\nWe are told that this earth was made for our inhabiting. Our dearly\nbeloved brethren in the faith, our spiritual guides, philosophers and\nfriends of the pulpit, never tire of pointing out the goodness of God in\ngiving us so excellent a place to live in and commending the admirable\nadaptation of all things to our needs.\n\nWhat a fine world it is, to be sure--a darling little world, \"so suited\nto the needs of man.\" A globe of liquid fire, straining within a shell\nrelatively no thicker than that of an egg--a shell constantly cracking\nand in momentary danger of going all to pieces! Three-fourths of this\ndelectable field of human activity are covered with an element in which\nwe can not breathe, and which swallows us by myriads:\n\n  With moldering bones the deep is white\n  From the frozen zones to the tropic bright.\n\nOf the other one-fourth more than one-half is uninhabitable by reason of\nclimate. On the remaining one-eighth we pass a comfortless and\nprecarious existence in disputed occupancy with countless ministers of\ndeath and pain--pass it in fighting for it, tooth and nail, a hopeless\nbattle in which we are foredoomed to defeat. Everywhere death, terror,\nlamentation and the laughter that is more terrible than tears--the fury\nand despair of a race hanging on to life by the tips of its fingers. And\nthe prize for which we strive, \"to have and to hold\"--what is it? A\nthing that is neither enjoyed while had, or missed when lost. So\nworthless it is, so unsatisfying, so inadequate to purpose, so false to\nhope and at its best so brief, that for consolation and compensation we\nset up fantastic faiths of an aftertime in a better world from which no\nconfirming whisper has ever reached us across the void. Heaven is a\nprophecy uttered by the lips of despair, but Hell is an inference from\nanalogy.\n\n\n\n\nTHE DEATH PENALTY\n\n\nI\n\n\"Down with the gallows!\" is a cry not unfamiliar in America. There is\nalways a movement afoot to make odious the just principle; of \"a life\nfor a life\"--to represent it as \"a relic of barbarism,\" \"a usurpation of\nthe divine authority,\" and the rest of it. The law making murder\npunishable by death is as purely a measure of self-defense as is the\ndisplay of a pistol to one diligently endeavoring to kill without\nprovocation. It is in precisely the same sense an admonition, a warning\nto abstain from crime. Society says by that law: \"If you kill one of us\nyou die,\" just as by display of the pistol the individual whose life is\nattacked says: \"Desist or be shot.\" To be effective the warning in\neither case must be more than an idle threat. Even the most unearthly\nreasoner among the anti-hanging unfortunates would hardly expect to\nfrighten away an assassin who knew the pistol to be unloaded. Of course\nthese queer illogicians can not be made to understand that their\nposition commits them to absolute non-resistance to any kind of\naggression; and that is fortunate for the rest of us, for if as\nChristians they frankly and consistently took that ground we should be\nunder the miserable necessity of respecting them.\n\nWe have good reason to hold that the horrible prevalence of murder in\nthis country is due to the fact that we do not execute our laws--that\nthe death penalty is threatened but not inflicted--that the pistol is\nnot loaded. In civilized countries where there is enough respect for the\nlaws to administer them, there is enough to obey them. While man still\nhas as much of the ancestral brute as his skin can hold without cracking\nwe shall have thieves and demagogues and anarchists and assassins and\npersons with a private system of lexicography who define murder as\ndisease and hanging as murder, but in all this welter of crime and\nstupidity are areas where human life is comparatively secure against the\nhuman hand. It is at least a significant coincidence that in these the\ndeath penalty for murder is fairly well enforced by judges who do not\nderive any part of their authority from those for whose restraint and\npunishment they hold it. Against the life of one guiltless person the\nlives of ten thousand murderers count for nothing; their hanging is a\npublic good, without reference to the crimes that disclose their\ndeserts. If we could discover them by other signs than their bloody\ndeeds they should be hanged anyhow. Unfortunately we must have a death\nas evidence. The scientist who will tell us how to recognize the\npotential assassin, and persuade us to kill him, will be the greatest\nbenefactor of his century.\n\nWhat would these enemies of the gibbet have--these lineal descendants\nof the drunken mobs that hooted the hangman at Tyburn Tree; this progeny\nof criminals, which has so defiled with the mud of its animosity the\nnoble office of public executioner that even \"in this enlightened age\"\nhe shirks his high duty, entrusting it to a hidden or unnamed\nsubordinate? If murder is unjust of what importance is it whether its\npunishment by death be just or not?--nobody needs to incur it. Men are\nnot drafted for the death penalty; they volunteer. \"Then it is not\ndeterrent,\" mutters the gentleman whose rude forefather hooted the\nhangman. Well, as to that, the law which is to accomplish more than a\npart of its purpose must be awaited with great patience. Every murder\nproves that hanging is not altogether deterrent; every hanging, that it\nis somewhat deterrent--it deters the person hanged. A man's first murder\nis his crime, his second is ours.\n\nThe socialists, it seems, believe with Alphonse Karr, in the expediency\nof abolishing the death penalty; but apparently they do not hold, with\nhim, that the assassins should begin. They want the state to begin,\nbelieving that the magnanimous example will effect a change of heart in\nthose about to murder. This, I take it, is the meaning of their\nassertion that death penalties have not the deterring influence that\nimprisonment for life carries. In this they obviously err: death deters\nat least the person who suffers it--he commits no more murder; whereas\nthe assassin who is imprisoned for life and immune from further\npunishment may with impunity kill his keeper or whomsoever he may be\nable to get at. Even as matters now are, incessant vigilance is required\nto prevent convicts in prison from murdering their attendants and one\nanother. How would it be if the \"life-termer\" were assured against any\nadditional inconvenience for braining a guard occasionally, or\nstrangling a chaplain now and then? A penitentiary may be described as a\nplace of punishment and reward; and under the system proposed, the\ndifference in desirableness between a sentence and an appointment would\nbe virtually effaced. To overcome this objection a life sentence would\nhave to mean solitary confinement, and that means insanity. Is that what\nthese gentlemen propose to substitute for death?\n\nThe death penalty, say these amiables and futilitarians, creates\nblood-thirstiness in the unthinking masses and defeats its own ends--is\nitself a cause of murder, not a check. These gentlemen are themselves of\n\"the unthinking masses\"--they do not know how to think. Let them try to\ntrace and lucidly expound the chain of motives lying between the\nknowledge that a murderer has been hanged and the wish to commit a\nmurder. How, precisely, does the one beget the other? By what unearthly\nprocess of reasoning does a man turning away from the gallows persuade\nhimself that it is expedient to incur the danger of hanging? Let us have\npointed out to us the several steps in that remarkable mental progress.\nObviously, the thing is absurd; one might as reasonably say that\ncontemplation of a pitted face will make a man wish to go and catch\nsmallpox, or the spectacle of an amputated limb on the scrap-heap of a\nhospital tempt him to cut off his arm or renounce his leg.\n\n\"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,\" say the opponents of the\ndeath penalty, \"is not justice; it is revenge and unworthy of a\nChristian civilization.\" It is exact justice: nobody can think of\nanything more accurately just than such punishments would be, whatever\nthe motive in awarding them. Unfortunately such a system is not\npracticable, but he who denies its justice must deny also the justice of\na bushel of corn for a bushel of corn, a dollar for a dollar, service\nfor service. We can not undertake by such clumsy means as laws and\ncourts to do to the criminal exactly what he has done to his victim,\nbut to demand a life for a life is simple, practicable, expedient and\n(therefore) right.\n\n\"Taking the life of a murderer does not restore the life he took,\ntherefore it is a most illogical punishment. Two wrongs do not make a\nright.\"\n\nHere's richness! Hanging an assassin is illogical because it does not\nrestore the life of his victim; incarceration is logical; therefore,\nincarceration does--_quod, erat demonstrandum._\n\nTwo wrongs certainly do not make a right, but the veritable thing in\ndispute is whether taking the life of a life-taker is a wrong. So naked\nand unashamed an example of _petitio principii_ would disgrace a debater\nin a pinafore. And these wonder-mongers have the effrontery to babble of\n\"logic\"! Why, if one of them were to meet a syllogism in a lonely road\nhe would run away in a hundred and fifty directions as hard as ever he\ncould hoof it. One is almost ashamed to dispute with such intellectual\ncloutlings.\n\nWhatever an individual may rightly do to protect himself society may\nrightly do to protect him, for he is a part of itself. If he may rightly\ntake life in defending himself society may rightly take life in\ndefending him. If society may rightly take life in defending him it may\nrightly threaten to take it. Having rightly and mercifully threatened to\ntake it, it not only rightly may take it, but expediently must.\n\n\nII\n\nThe law of a life for a life does not altogether prevent murder. No law\ncan altogether prevent any form of crime, nor is it desirable that it\nshould. Doubtless God could so have created us that our sense of right\nand justice could have existed without contemplation of injustice and\nwrong; as doubtless he could so have created us that we could have felt\ncompassion without a knowledge of suffering; but he did not. Constituted\nas we are, we can know good only by contrast with evil. Our sense of sin\nis what our virtues feed upon; in the thin air of universal morality the\naltar-fires of honor and the beacons of conscience could not be kept\nalight. A community without crime would be a community without warm and\nelevated sentiments--without the sense of justice, without generosity,\nwithout courage, without mercy, without magnanimity--a community of\nsmall, smug souls, uninteresting to God and uncoveted by the Devil. We\ncan have, and do have, too much crime, no doubt; what the wholesome\nproportion is none can tell. Just now we are running a good deal to\nmurder, but he who can gravely attribute that phenomenon, or any part of\nit, to infliction of the death penalty, instead of to virtual immunity\nfrom any penalty at all, is justly entitled to the innocent satisfaction\nthat comes of being a simpleton.\n\n\nIII\n\nThe New Woman is against the death penalty, naturally, for she is hot\nand hardy in the conviction that whatever is is wrong. She has visited\nthis world in order to straighten things about a bit, and is in distress\nlest the number of things be insufficient to her need. The matter is\nimportant variously; not least so in its relation to the new heaven and\nthe new earth that are to be the outcome of woman suffrage. There can be\nno doubt that the vast majority of women have sentimental objections to\nthe death penalty that quite outweigh such practical considerations in\nits favor as they can be persuaded to comprehend. Aided by the minority\nof men afflicted by the same mental malady, they will indubitably effect\nits abolition in the first lustrum of their political \"equality.\" The\nNew Woman will scarcely feel the seat of power warm beneath her before\ngiving to the assassin's \"unhand me, villain!\" the authority of law. So\nwe shall make again the old experiment, discredited by a thousand\nfailures, of preventing crime by tenderness to caught criminals. And the\ncriminal uncaught will treat us to a quantity and quality of crime\nnotably augmented by the Christian spirit of the new _regime_.\n\n\nIV\n\nAs to painless execution, the simple and practical way to make them both\njust and expedient is the adoption by murderers of a system of painless\nassassinations. Until this is done there seems to be no call to\nrenounce the wholesome discomfort of the style of executions endeared to\nus by memories and associations of the tenderest character. There is, I\nfancy, a shaping notion in the observant mind that the penologists and\ntheir allies have gone about as far as they can safely be permitted to\ngo in the direction of a softer suasion of the criminal nature toward\ngood behavior. The modern prison has become a rather more comfortable\nhabitation than the dangerous classes are accustomed to at home. Modern\nprison life has in their eyes something of the charm and glamor of an\nideal existence, like that in the Happy Valley from which Rasselas had\nthe folly to escape. Whatever advantages to the public may be secured by\nabating the rigors of imprisonment and inconveniences incident to\nexecution, there is this objection: it makes them less deterrent. Let\nthe penologers and philanthropers have their way and even hanging might\nbe made so pleasant and withal so interesting a social distinction that\nit would deter nobody but the person hanged. Adopt the euthanasian\nmethod of electricity, asphyxia by smothering in rose-leaves, or slow\npoisoning with rich food, and the death penalty may come to be regarded\nas the object of a noble ambition to the _bon vivant_, and the rising\nyoung suicide may go and kill somebody else instead of himself, in order\nto receive from the public executioner a happier dispatch than his own\n'prentice hand can assure him.\n\nBut the advocates of agreeable pains and penalties tell us that in the\ndarker ages, when cruel and degrading punishment was the rule, and was\nfreely inflicted for every light infraction of the law, crime was more\ncommon than it is now; and in this they appear to be right. But one and\nall, they overlook a fact equally obvious and vastly significant, that\nthe intellectual, moral and social condition of the masses was very low.\nCrime was more common because ignorance was more common, poverty was\nmore common, sins of authority, and therefore hatred of authority, were\nmore common. The world of even a century ago was a different world from\nthe world of today, and a vastly more uncomfortable one. The popular\nadage to the contrary notwithstanding, human nature was not by a long\ncut the same then that it is now. In the very ancient time of that early\nEnglish king, George III, when women were burned at the stake in public\nfor various offenses and men were hanged for \"coining\" and children for\ntheft, and in the still remoter period (_circa_ 1530), when prisoners\nwere boiled in several waters, divers sorts of criminals were\ndisemboweled and some are thought to have undergone the _peine forte et\ndure_ of cold-pressing (an infliction which the pen of Hugo has since\nmade popular--in literature)--in these wicked old days crime flourished,\nnot because of the law's severity, but in spite of it. It is possible\nthat our law-making ancestors understood the situation as it then was a\ntrifle better than we can understand it on the hither side of this gulf\nof years, and that they were not the reasonless barbarians that we\nthink them to have been. And if they were, what must have been the\nunreason and barbarity of the criminal element with which they had to\ndeal?\n\nI am far from thinking that severity of punishment can have the same\nrestraining effect as probability of some punishment being inflicted;\nbut if mildness of penalty is to be superadded to difficulty of\nconviction, and both are to be mounted upon laxity in detection, the\npile will be complete indeed. There is a peculiar fitness, perhaps, in\nthe fact that all these pleas for comfortable punishment should be urged\nat a time when there appears to be a general disposition to inflict no\npunishment at all. There are, however, still a few old-fashioned persons\nwho hold it obvious that one who is ambitious to break the laws of his\ncountry will not with so light a heart and so airy an indifference incur\nthe peril of a harsh penalty as he will the chance of one more nearly\nresembling that which he would himself select.\n\n\nV\n\nAfter lying for more than a century dead I was revived, dowered with a\nnew body, and restored to society. The first thing of interest that I\nobserved was an enormous building, covering a square mile of ground. It\nwas surrounded on all sides by a high, strong wall of hewn stone upon\nwhich armed sentinels paced to and fro. In one face of the wall was a\nsingle gate of massive iron, strongly guarded. While admiring the\nCyclopean architecture of the \"reverend pile\" I was accosted by a man in\nuniform, evidently the warden, with a cheerful salutation.\n\n\"Colonel,\" I said, \"pray tell me what is this building.\"\n\n\"This,\" said he, \"is the new state penitentiary. It is one of twelve,\nall alike.\"\n\n\"You surprise me,\" I replied. \"Surely the criminal element must have\nincreased enormously.\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed,\" he assented; \"under the Reform _regime_, which began in\nyour day, crime became so powerful, bold and fierce that arrests were no\nlonger possible and the prisons then in existence were soon overcrowded.\nThe state was compelled to erect others of greater capacity.\"\n\n\"But, Colonel,\" I protested, \"if the criminals were too bold and\npowerful to be taken into custody, of what use are the prisons? And how\nare they crowded?\"\n\nHe fixed upon me a look that I could not fail to interpret as expressing\na doubt of my sanity. \"What!\" he said, \"is it possible that the modern\npenology is unknown to you? Do you suppose we practice the antiquated\nand ineffective method of shutting up the rascals? Sir, the growth of\nthe criminal element has, as I said, compelled the erection of more and\nlarger prisons. We have enough to hold comfortably all the honest men\nand women of the state. Within these protecting walls they carry on all\nthe necessary vocations of life excepting commerce. That is necessarily\nin the hands of the rogues, as before.\"\n\n\"Venerated representative of Reform,\" I exclaimed, wringing his hand\nwith effusion, \"you are Knowledge, you are History, you are the Higher\nEducation! We must talk further. Come, let us enter this benign edifice;\nyou shall show me your dominion and instruct me in the rules. You shall\npropose me as an inmate.\"\n\nI walked rapidly to the gate. When challenged by the sentinel, I turned\nto summon my instructor. He was nowhere visible. I turned again to look\nat the prison. Nothing was there: desolate and forbidding, as about the\nbroken statue of Ozymandias.\n\nThe lone and level sands stretched far away.\n\n\n\n\nIMMORTALITY\n\n\nThe desire for life everlasting has commonly been affirmed to be\nuniversal--at least that is the view taken by those unacquainted with\nOriental faiths and with Oriental character. Those of us whose knowledge\nis a trifle wider are not prepared to say that the desire is universal\nnor even general.\n\nIf the devout Buddhist, for example, wishes to \"live always,\" he has not\nsucceeded in very clearly formulating the desire. The sort of thing that\nhe is pleased to hope for is not what we should call life, and not what\nmany of us would care for.\n\nWhen a man says that everybody has \"a horror of annihilation,\" we may\nbe very sure that he has not many opportunities for observation, or that\nhe has not availed himself of all that he has. Most persons go to sleep\nrather gladly, yet sleep is virtual annihilation while it lasts; and if\nit should last forever the sleeper would be no worse off after a million\nyears of it than after an hour of it. There are minds sufficiently\nlogical to think of it that way, and to them annihilation is not a\ndisagreeable thing to contemplate and expect.\n\nIn this matter of immortality, people's beliefs appear to go along with\ntheir wishes. The man who is content with annihilation thinks he will\nget it; those that want immortality are pretty sure they are immortal;\nand that is a very comfortable allotment of faiths. The few of us that\nare left unprovided for are those who do not bother themselves much\nabout the matter, one way or another.\n\nThe question of human immortality is the most momentous that the mind is\ncapable of conceiving. If it is a fact that the dead live all other\nfacts are in comparison trivial and without interest. The prospect of\nobtaining certain knowledge with regard to this stupendous matter is not\nencouraging. In all countries but those in barbarism the powers of the\nprofoundest and most penetrating intelligences have been ceaselessly\naddressed to the task of glimpsing a life beyond this life; yet today no\none can truly say that he knows. It is as much a matter of faith as ever\nit was.\n\nOur modern Christian nations profess a passionate hope and belief in\nanother world, yet the most popular writer and speaker of his time, the\nman whose lectures drew the largest audiences, the work of whose pen\nbrought him the highest rewards, was he who most strenuously strove to\ndestroy the ground of that hope and unsettle the foundations of that\nbelief.\n\nThe famous and popular Frenchman, Professor of Spectacular Astronomy,\nCamille Flammarion, affirms immortality because he has talked with\ndeparted souls who said that it was true. Yes, monsieur, but surely you\nknow the rule about hearsay evidence. We Anglo-Saxons are very\nparticular about that.\n\nM. Flammarion says:\n\n\"I don't repudiate the presumptive arguments of schoolmen. I merely\nsupplement them with something positive. For instance, if you assumed\nthe existence of God this argument of the scholastics is a good one. God\nhas implanted in all men the desire of perfect happiness. This desire\ncannot be satisfied in our lives here. If there were not another life\nwherein to satisfy it then God would be a deceiver. _Voila tout_.\"\n\nThere is more: the desire of perfect happiness does not imply\nimmortality, even if there is a God, for\n\n(1) God may not have implanted it, but merely suffers it to exist, as he\nsuffers sin to exist, the desire of wealth, the desire to live longer\nthan we do in this world. It is not held that God implanted all the\ndesires of the human heart. Then why hold that he implanted that of\nperfect happiness?\n\n(2) Even if he did--even if a divinely implanted desire entail its own\ngratification--even if it cannot be gratified in this life--that does\nnot imply immortality. It implies _only_ another life long enough for\nits gratification just once. An eternity of gratification is not a\nlogical inference from it.\n\n(3) Perhaps God _is_ \"a deceiver;\" who knows that he is not? Assumption\nof the existence of a God is one thing; assumption of the existence of a\nGod who is honorable and candid according to our conception of honor and\ncandor is another.\n\n(4) There may be an honorable and candid God. He may have implanted in\nus the desire of perfect happiness. It may be--it is--impossible to\ngratify that desire in this life. Still, another life is not implied,\nfor God may not have intended us to draw the inference that he is going\nto gratify it. If omniscient and omnipotent, God must be held to have\nintended whatever occurs, but no such God is assumed in M. Flammarion's\nillustration, and it may be that God's knowledge and power are limited,\nor that one of them is limited.\n\nM. Flammarion is a learned, if somewhat theatrical, astronomer. He has a\ntremendous imagination, which naturally is more at home in the marvelous\nand catastrophic than in the orderly regions of familiar phenomena. To\nhim the heavens are an immense pyrotechnicon and he is the master of the\nshow and sets off the fireworks. But he knows nothing of logic, which is\nthe science of straight thinking, and his views of things have\ntherefore no value; they are nebulous.\n\nNothing is clearer than that our pre-existence is a dream, having\nabsolutely no basis in anything that we know or can hope to know. Of\nafter-existence there is said to be evidence, or rather testimony, in\nassurances of those who are in present enjoyment of it--if it is\nenjoyable. Whether this testimony has actually been given--and it is the\nonly testimony worth a moment's consideration--is a disputed point. Many\npersons living this life profess to have received it. But nobody\nprofesses, or ever has professed, to have received a communication of\nany kind from one in actual experience of the fore-life. \"The souls as\nyet ungarmented,\" if such there are, are dumb to question. The Land\nbeyond the Grave has been, if not observed, yet often and variously\ndescribed: if not explored and surveyed, yet carefully charted. From\namong so many accounts of it that we have, he must be fastidious indeed\nwho cannot be suited. But of the Fatherland that spreads before the\ncradle--the great Heretofore, wherein we all dwelt if we are to dwell in\nthe Hereafter, we have no account. Nobody professes knowledge of that.\nNo testimony reaches our ears of flesh concerning its topographical or\nother features; no one has been so enterprising as to wrest from its\nactual inhabitants any particulars of their character and appearance.\nAnd among educated experts and professional proponents of worlds to be\nthere is a general denial of its existence.\n\nI am of their way of thinking about that. The fact that we have no\nrecollection of a former life is entirely conclusive of the matter. To\nhave lived an unrecollected life is impossible and unthinkable, for\nthere would be nothing to connect the new life with the old--no thread\nof continuity--nothing that persisted from the one life to the other.\nThe later birth would be that of another person, an altogether different\nbeing, unrelated to the first--a new John Smith succeeding to the late\nTom Jones.\n\nLet us not be misled here by a false analogy. Today I may get a thwack\no' the mazzard which will give me an intervening season of\nunconsciousness between yesterday and to-morrow. Thereafter I may live to\na green old age with no recollection of anything that I knew, or did, or\nwas before the accident; yet I shall be the same person, for between the\nold life and the new there will be a _nexus_, a thread of continuity,\nsomething spanning the gulf from the one state to the other, and the\nsame in both--namely, my body with its habits, capacities and powers.\nThat is I; that identifies me to others as my former self--authenticates\nand credentials me as the person that incurred the cranial mischance,\ndislodging memory.\n\nBut when death occurs _all_ is dislodged if memory is; for between two\nmerely mental or spiritual existences memory is the only _nexus_\nconceivable; consciousness of identity is the only identity. To live\nagain without memory of having lived before is to live another.\nRe-existence without recollection is absurd. There is nothing to\nre-exist.\n\n\n\n\nEMANCIPATED WOMAN\n\n\nWhat I should like to know is, how \"the enlargement of woman's sphere\"\nby her entrance into various activities of commercial, professional and\nindustrial life benefits the sex. It may please Helen Gougar and satisfy\nher sense of logical accuracy to say, as she does: \"We women must work\nin order to fill the places left vacant by liquor-drinking men.\" But who\nfilled these places before? Did they remain vacant, or were there then\ndisappointed applicants, as now? If my memory serves, there has been no\ntime in the period that it covers when the supply of workers--abstemious\nmale workers--was not in excess of the demand. That it has always been\nso is sufficiently attested by the universally inadequate wage rate.\n\nEmployers seldom fail, and never for long, to get all the workmen they\nneed. The field into which women have put their sickles was already\novercrowded with reapers. Whatever employment women have obtained has\nbeen got by displacing men--who would otherwise be supporting women.\nWhere is the general advantage? We may shout \"high tariff,\" \"combination\nof capital,\" \"demonetization of silver,\" and what not, but if searching\nfor the cause of augmented poverty and crime, \"industrial discontent\"\nand the tramp evil, instead of dogmatically expounding it, we should\ntake some account of this enormous, sudden addition to the number of\nworkers seeking work. If any one thinks that within the brief period of\na generation the visible supply of labor can be enormously augmented\nwithout profoundly affecting the stability of things and disastrously\ntouching the interests of wage-workers let no rude voice dispel his\ndream of such maleficent agencies as his slumbrous understanding may joy\nto affirm. And let our Widows of Ashur unlung themselves in advocacy of\nquack remedies for evils of which themselves are cause; it remains true\nthat when the contention of two lions for one bone is exacerbated by the\naccession of a lioness the squabble is not composable by stirring up\nsome bears in the cage adjacent.\n\nIndubitably a woman is under no obligation to sacrifice herself to the\ngood of her sex by foregoing needed employment in the hope that it may\nfall to a man gifted with dependent women. Nevertheless our\ncongratulations are more intelligent when bestowed upon her individual\nhead than when sifted into the hair of all Eve's daughters. This is a\nworld of complexities, in which the lines of interest are so\nintertangled as frequently to transgress that of sex; and one ambitious\nto help but half the race may profitably know that every effort to that\nend provokes a counterbalancing mischief. The \"enlargement of woman's\nopportunities\" has benefited individual women. It has not benefited the\nsex as a whole, and has distinctly damaged the race. The mind that can\nnot discern a score of great and irreparable general evils distinctly\ntraceable to \"emancipation of woman\" is as impregnable to the light as a\ntoad in a rock.\n\nA marked demerit of the new order of things--the _regime_ of female\ncommercial service--is that its main advantage accrues, not to the race,\nnot to the sex, not to the class, not to the individual woman, but to\nthe person of least need and worth--the male employer. (Female employers\nin any considerable number there will not be, but those that we have\ncould give the male ones profitable instruction in grinding the faces of\ntheir employees.) This constant increase of the army of labor--always and\neverywhere too large for the work in sight--by accession of a new\ncontingent of natural oppressibles makes the very teeth of old Munniglut\nthrill with a poignant delight. It brings in that situation known as two\nlaborers seeking one job--and one of them a person whose bones he can\neasily grind to make his bread; and Munniglut is a miller of skill and\nexperience, dusted all over with the evidence of his useful craft. When\nHeaven has assisted the Daughters of Hope to open to women a new \"avenue\nof opportunities\" the first to enter and walk therein, like God in the\nGarden of Eden, is the good Mr. Munniglut, contentedly smoothing the\nfolds out of the superior slope of his paunch, exuding the peculiar\naroma of his oleaginous personality and larding the new roadway with\nthe overflow of a righteousness stimulated to action by relish of his\nown identity. And ever thereafter the subtle suggestion of a fat\nphilistinism lingers along that path of progress like an assertion of a\npossessory right.\n\nIt is God's own crystal truth that in dealing with women unfortunate\nenough to be compelled to earn their own living and fortunate enough to\nhave wrested from Fate an opportunity to do so, men of business and\naffairs treat them with about the same delicate consideration that they\nshow to dogs and horses of the inferior breeds. It does not commonly\noccur to the wealthy \"professional man,\" or \"prominent merchant,\" to be\nashamed to add to his yearly thousands a part of the salary justly due\nto his female bookkeeper or typewriter, who sits before him all day with\nan empty belly in order to have an habilimented back. He has a vague,\nhazy notion that the law of supply and demand is mandatory, and that in\nsubmitting himself to it by paying her a half of what he would have to\npay a man of inferior efficiency he is supplying the world with a noble\nexample of obedience. I must take the liberty to remind him that the law\nof supply and demand is not imperative; it is not a statute but a\nphenomenon. He may reply: \"It is imperative; the penalty for\ndisobedience is failure. If I pay more in salaries and wages than I need\nto, my competitor will not; and with that advantage he will drive me\nfrom the field.\" If his margin of profit is so small that he must eke it\nout by coining the sweat of his workwomen into nickels I've nothing to\nsay to him. Let him adopt in peace the motto, \"I cheat to eat.\" I do not\nknow why he should eat, but Nature, who has provided sustenance for the\nworming sparrow, the sparrowing owl and the owling eagle, approves the\nneedy man of prey and makes a place for him at table.\n\nHuman nature is pretty well balanced; for every lacking virtue there is\na rough substitute that will serve at a pinch--as cunning is the wisdom\nof the unwise, and ferocity the courage of the coward. Nobody is\naltogether bad; the scoundrel who has grown rich by underpaying workmen\nin his factory will sometimes endow an asylum for indigent seamen. To\noppress one's own workmen, and provide for the workmen of a neighbor--to\nskin those in charge of one's own interests while cottoning and oiling\nthe residuary product of another's skinnery--that is not very good\nbenevolence, nor very good sense, but it serves in place of both. The\nman who eats _pate de fois gras_ in the sweat of his girl cashier's\nface, or wears purple and fine linen in order that his typewriter may\nhave an eocene gown and a pliocene hat, seems a tolerably satisfactory\nspecimen of the genus thief; but let us not forget that in his own\nhome--a fairly good one--he may enjoy and merit that highest and most\nhonorable title on the scroll of woman's favor, \"a good provider.\" One\nhaving a claim to that glittering distinction should enjoy immunity from\nthe coarse and troublesome question, \"From whose backs and bellies do\nyou provide?\"\n\nSo much for the material results to the sex. What are the moral results?\nOne does not like to speak of them, particularly to those who do not and\ncan not know--to good women in whose innocent minds female immorality is\ninseparable from flashy gowning and the painted face; to foolish,\nbook-taught men who honestly believe in some protective sanctity that\nhedges womanhood. If men of the world with years enough to have lived\nout of the old _regime_ into the new would testify in this matter there\nwould ensue a great rattling of dry bones in bodices of reform-ladies.\nNay, if the young man about town, knowing nothing of how things were in\nthe \"dark backward and absym of time,\" but something of the moral\ndistance between even so free-running a creature as the society girl and\nthe average working girl of the factory, the shop and the office, would\nspeak out (under assurance of immunity from prosecution) his testimony\nwould be a surprise to the cartilaginous virgins, blowsy matrons, acrid\nrelicts and hairy males of Emancipation. It would pain, too, some very\nworthy but unobservant persons not in sympathy with \"the cause.\"\n\nCertain significant facts are within the purview of all but the very\nyoung and the comfortably blind. To the woman of to-day the man of\nto-day is imperfectly polite. In place of reverence he gives her\n\"deference\"; to the language of compliment has succeeded the language of\nraillery. Men have almost forgotten how to bow. Doubtless the advanced\nfemale prefers the new manner, as may some of her less forward sisters,\nthinking it more sincere. It is not; our giddy grandfather talked\nhigh-flown nonsense because his heart had tangled his tongue. He treated\nhis woman more civilly than we ours because he loved her better. He\nnever had seen her on the \"rostrum\" and in the lobby, never had heard\nher in advocacy of herself, never had read her confessions of his sins,\nnever had felt the stress of her competition, nor himself assisted by\ndaily personal contact in rubbing the bloom off her. He did not know\nthat her virtues were due to her secluded life, but thought, dear old\nboy, that they were a gift of God.\n\n\n\n\nA MAD WORLD\n\n\nLet us suppose that in tracing its cycloidal curves through the\nunthinkable reaches of space traversed by the solar system our planet\nshould pass through a \"belt\" of attenuated matter having the property of\ndementing us! It is a conception easily enough entertained. That space\nis full of malign conditions incontinuously distributed; that we are at\none time traversing a zone comparatively innocuous and at another\nspinning through a region of infection; that away behind us in the wake\nof our swirling flight are fields of plague and pain still agitated by\nour passage through them,--all this is as good as known. It is almost as\ncertain as it is that in our little annual circle round the sun are\npoints at which we are stoned and brick-batted like a pig in a\npotato-patch--pelted with little nodules of meteoric metal flung like\ngravel, and bombarded with gigantic masses hurled by God knows what?\nWhat strange adventures await us in those yet untraveled regions toward\nwhich we speed?--into what malign conditions may we not at any time\nplunge?--to the strength and stress of what frightful environment may\nwe not at last succumb? The subject lends itself readily enough to a\njest, but I am not jesting: it is really altogether probable that our\nsolar system, racing through space with inconceivable velocity, will one\nday enter a region charged with something deleterious to the human\nbrain, minding us all mad-wise.\n\nBy the way, dear reader, did you ever happen to consider the possibility\nthat you are a lunatic, and perhaps confined in an asylum? It seems to\nyou that you are not--that you go with freedom where you will, and use a\nsweet reasonableness in all your works and ways; but to many a lunatic\nit seems that he is Rameses II, or the Holkar of Indore. Many a plunging\nmaniac, ironed to the floor of a cell, believes himself the Goddess of\nLiberty careering gaily through the Ten Commandments in a chariot of\ngold. Of your own sanity and identity you have no evidence that is any\nbetter than he has of his. More accurately, I have none of mine; for\nanything I know, you do not exist, nor any one of all the things with\nwhich I think myself familiarly conscious. All may be fictions of my\ndisordered imagination. I really know of but one reason for doubting\nthat I am an inmate of an asylum for the insane--namely, the probability\nthat there is nowhere any such thing as an asylum for the insane.\n\nThis kind of speculation has charms that get a good neck-hold upon\nattention. For example, if I am really a lunatic, and the persons and\nthings that I seem to see about me have no objective existence, what an\ningenious though disordered imagination I must have! What a clever\n_coup_ it was to invent Mr. Rockefeller and clothe him with the\nattribute of permanence! With what amusing qualities I have endowed my\nlaird of Skibo, philanthropist. What a masterpiece of creative humor is\nmy Fatty Taft, statesman, taking himself seriously, even solemnly, and\npersuading others to do the same! And this city of Washington, with its\nmotley population of silurians, parvenoodles and scamps pranking\nunashamed in the light of day, and its saving contingent of the forsaken\nrighteous, their seed begging bread,--did Rabelais' exuberant fancy ever\nconceive so--but Rabelais is, perhaps, himself a conception.\n\nSurely he is no common maniac who has wrought out of nothing the\nhistory, the philosophies, sciences, arts, laws, religions, politics and\nmorals of this imaginary world. Nay, the world itself, tumbling uneasily\nthrough space like a beetle's ball, is no mean achievement, and I am\nproud of it. But the mental feat in which I take most satisfaction, and\nwhich I doubt not is most diverting to my keepers, is that of creating\nMr. W.R. Hearst, pointing his eyes toward the White House and endowing\nhim with a perilous Jacksonian ambition to defile it. The Hearst is\ndistinctly a treasure.\n\nOn the whole, I have done, I think, tolerably well, and when I\ncontemplate the fertility and originality of my inventions, the queer\nunearthliness and grotesque actions of the characters whom I have\nevolved, isolated and am cultivating, I cannot help thinking that if\nHeaven had not made me a lunatic my peculiar talent might have made me\nan entertaining writer.\n\n\n\n\nEPIGRAMS OF A CYNIC\n\n\nIf every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day\nthe country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike\nhypocrites of Canada.\n\nTo Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the same as the Spirit of Evil,\nand to pictures of the latter it appends a tail to represent the note of\ninterrogation.\n\n\"Immoral\" is the judgment of the stalled ox on the gamboling lamb.\n\nIn forgiving an injury be somewhat ceremonious, lest your magnanimity be\nconstrued as indifference.\n\nTrue, man does not know woman. But neither does woman.\n\nAge is provident because the less future we have the more we fear it.\n\nReason is fallible and virtue invincible; the winds vary and the needle\nforsakes the pole, but stupidity never errs and never intermits. Since\nit has been found that the axis of the earth wabbles, stupidity is\nindispensable as a standard of constancy.\n\nIn order that the list of able women may be memorized for use at\nmeetings of the oppressed sex, Heaven has considerately made it brief.\n\nFirmness is my persistency; obstinacy is yours.\n\n  A little heap of dust,\n  A little streak of rust,\n  A stone without a name--\n  Lo! hero, sword and fame.\n\nOur vocabulary is defective; we give the same name to woman's lack of\ntemptation and man's lack of opportunity.\n\n\"You scoundrel, you have wronged me,\" hissed the philosopher. \"May you\nlive forever!\"\n\nThe man who thinks that a garnet can be made a ruby by setting it in\nbrass is writing \"dialect\" for publication.\n\n\"Who art thou, stranger, and what dost thou seek?\" \"I am Generosity, and\nI seek a person named Gratitude.\" \"Then thou dost not deserve to find\nher.\" \"True. I will go about my business and think of her no more. But\nwho art thou, to be so wise?\" \"I am Gratitude--farewell forever.\"\n\nThere was never a genius who was not thought a fool until he disclosed\nhimself; whereas he is a fool then only.\n\nThe boundaries that Napoleon drew have been effaced; the kingdoms that\nhe set up have disappeared. But all the armies and statecraft of Europe\ncannot unsay what you have said.\n\n  Strive not for singularity in dress;\n  Fools have the more and men of sense the less.\n  To look original is not worth while,\n  But be in mind a little out of style.\n\nA conqueror arose from the dead. \"Yesterday,\" he said, \"I ruled half the\nworld.\" \"Please show me the half that you ruled,\" said an angel,\npointing out a wisp of glowing vapor floating in space. \"That is the\nworld.\"\n\n\"Who art thou, shivering in thy furs?\" \"My name is Avarice. What is\nthine?\" \"Unselfishness.\" \"Where is thy clothing, placid one?\" \"Thou art\nwearing it.\"\n\nTo be comic is merely to be playful, but wit is a serious matter. To\nlaugh at it is to confess that you do not understand.\n\nIf you would be accounted great by your contemporaries, be not too much\ngreater than they.\n\nTo have something that he will not desire, nor know that he has--such is\nthe hope of him who seeks the admiration of posterity. The character of\nhis work does not matter; he is a humorist.\n\nWomen, and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact.\n\nTo fatten pigs, confine and feed them; to fatten rogues, cultivate a\ngenerous disposition.\n\nEvery heart is the lair of a ferocious animal. The greatest wrong that\nyou can put upon a man is to provoke him to let out his beast.\n\nWhen two irreconcilable propositions are presented for assent the safest\nway is to thank Heaven that we are not as the unreasoning brutes, and\nbelieve both.\n\nTruth is more deceptive than falsehood, for it is more frequently\npresented by those from whom we do not expect it, and so has against it\na numerical presumption.\n\nA bad marriage is like an electrical thrilling machine: it makes you\ndance, but you can't let go.\n\nMeeting Merit on a street-crossing, Success stood still. Merit stepped\noff into the mud and went around him, bowing his apologies, which\nSuccess had the grace to accept.\n\n\"I think,\" says the philosopher divine, \"Therefore I am.\" Sir, here's a\nsurer sign: We know we live, for with our every breath we feel the fear\nand imminence of death.\n\nThe first man you meet is a fool. If you do not think so ask him and he\nwill prove it.\n\nHe who would rather inflict injustice than suffer it will always have\nhis choice, for no injustice can be done to him.\n\nThere are as many conceptions of a perfect happiness hereafter as there\nare minds that have marred their happiness here.\n\nWe yearn to be, not what we are, but what we are not. If we were\nimmortal we should not crave immortality.\n\nA rabbit's foot may bring good luck to you, but it brought none to the\nrabbit.\n\nBefore praising the wisdom of the man who knows how to hold his tongue\nascertain if he knows how to hold his pen.\n\nThe most charming view in the world is obtained by introspection.\n\nLove is unlike chess, in that the pieces are moved secretly and the\nplayer sees most of the game. But the looker-on has one incomparable\nadvantage: he is not the stake.\n\nIt is not for nothing that tigers choose to hide in the jungle, for\ncommerce and trade are carried on, mostly, in the open.\n\nWe say that we love, not whom we will, but whom we must. Our judgment\nneed not, therefore, go to confession.\n\nOf two kinds of temporary insanity, one ends in suicide, the other in\nmarriage.\n\nIf you give alms from compassion, why require the beneficiary to be \"a\ndeserving object?\" No other adversity is so sharp as destitution of\nmerit.\n\nBereavement is the name that selfishness gives to a particular\nprivation.\n\n  O proud philanthropist, your hope is vain\n  To get by giving what you lost by gain.\n  With every gift you do but swell the cloud\n  Of witnesses against you, swift and loud--\n  Accomplices who turn and swear you split\n  Your life: half robber and half hypocrite.\n  You're least unsafe when most intact you hold\n  Your curst allotment of dishonest gold.\n\nThe highest and rarest form of contentment is approval of the success of\nanother.\n\n  If Inclination challenge, stand and fight--\n  From Opportunity the wise take flight.\n\nWhat a woman most admires in a man is distinction among men. What a man\nmost admires in a woman is devotion to himself.\n\nThose who most loudly invite God's attention to themselves when in peril\nof death are those who should most fervently wish to escape his\nobservation.\n\nWhen you have made a catalogue of your friend's faults it is only fair\nto supply him with a duplicate, so that he may know yours.\n\nHow fascinating is Antiquity!--in what a golden haze the ancients lived\ntheir lives! We, too, are ancients. Of our enchanting time Posterity's\ngreat poets will sing immortal songs, and its archaeologists will\nreverently uncover the foundations of our palaces and temples. Meantime\nwe swap jack-knives.\n\nObserve, my son, with how austere a virtue the man without a cent puts\naside the temptation to manipulate the market or acquire a monopoly.\n\nFor study of the good and the bad in woman two women are a needless\nexpense.\n\n  \"There's no free will,\" says the philosopher;\n    \"To hang is most unjust.\"\n  \"There is no free will,\" assents the officer;\n    \"We hang because we must.\"\n\nHope is an explorer who surveys the country ahead. That is why we know\nso much about the Hereafter and so little about the Heretofore.\n\nRemembering that it was a woman who lost the world, we should accept the\nact of cackling geese in saving Rome as partial reparation.\n\nThere are two classes of women who may do as they please; those who are\nrich and those who are poor. The former can count on assent, the latter\non inattention.\n\nWhen into the house of the heart Curiosity is admitted as the guest of\nLove she turns her host out of doors.\n\nHappiness has not to all the same name: to Youth she is known as the\nFuture; Age knows her as the Dream.\n\n\"Who art thou, there in the mire?\" \"Intuition. I leaped all the way\nfrom where thou standest in fear on the brink of the bog.\" \"A great\nfeat, madam; accept the admiration of Reason, sometimes known as\nDryfoot.\"\n\nIn eradicating an evil, it makes a difference whether it is uprooted or\nrooted up. The difference is in the reformer.\n\nThe Audible Sisterhood rightly affirms the equality of the sexes: no man\nis so base but some woman is base enough to love him.\n\nHaving no eyes in the back of the head, we see ourselves on the verge of\nthe outlook. Only he who has accomplished the notable feat of turning\nabout knows himself the central figure in the universe.\n\nTruth is so good a thing that falsehood can not afford to be without it.\n\nIf women did the writing of the world, instead of the talking, men would\nbe regarded as the superior sex in beauty, grace and goodness.\n\nLove is a delightful day's journey. At the farther end kiss your\ncompanion and say farewell.\n\nLet him who would wish to duplicate his every experience prate of the\nvalue of life.\n\nThe game of discontent has its rules, and he who disregards them cheats.\nIt is not permitted to you to wish to add another's advantages or\npossessions to your own; you are permitted only to wish to be another.\n\nThe creator and arbiter of beauty is the heart; to the male rattlesnake\nthe female rattlesnake is the loveliest thing in nature.\n\nThought and emotion dwell apart. When the heart goes into the head there\nis no dissension; only an eviction.\n\nIf you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it.\n\n\"Where goest thou, Ignorance?\" \"To fortify the mind of a maiden against\na peril.\" \"I am going thy way. My name is Knowledge.\" \"Scoundrel! Thou\nart the peril.\"\n\nA prude is one who blushes modestly at the indelicacy of her thoughts\nand virtuously flies from the temptation of her desires.\n\nThe man who is always taking you by the hand is the same who if you were\nhungry would take you by the cafe.\n\nWhen a certain sovereign wanted war he threw out a diplomatic\nintimation; when ready, a diplomat.\n\nIf public opinion were determined by a throw of the dice, it would in\nthe long run be half the time right.\n\nThe gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the\nbusiness known as gambling.\n\nA virtuous widow is the most loyal of mortals; she is faithful to that\nwhich is neither pleased nor profited by her fidelity.\n\nOf one who was \"foolish\" the creators of our language said that he was\n\"fond.\" That we have not definitely reversed the meanings of the words\nshould be set down to the credit of our courtesy.\n\nRioting gains its end by the power of numbers. To a believer in the\nwisdom and goodness of majorities it is not permitted to denounce a\nsuccessful mob.\n\n  Artistically set to grace\n  The wall of a dissecting-place,\n  A human pericardium\n  Was fastened with a bit of gum,\n  While, simply underrunning it,\n  The one word, \"Charity,\" was writ\n  To show the student band that hovered\n  About it what it once had covered.\n\nVirtue is not necessary to a good reputation, but a good reputation is\nhelpful to virtue.\n\nWhen lost in a forest go always down hill. When lost in a philosophy or\ndoctrine go up-ward.\n\nWe submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled\nto call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.\n\nPascal says that an inch added to the length of Cleopatra's nose would\nhave changed the fortunes of the world. But having said this, he has\nsaid nothing, for all the forces of nature and all the power of\ndynasties could not have added an inch to the length of Cleopatra's\nnose.\n\nOur luxuries are always masquerading as necessaries. Woman is the only\nnecessary having the boldness and address to compel recognition as a\nluxury.\n\n\"I am the seat of the affections,\" said the heart. \"Thank you,\" said the\njudgment, \"you save my face.\"\n\n\"Who art thou that weepest?\" \"Man.\" \"Nay, thou art Egotism. I am the\nScheme of the Universe. Study me and learn that nothing matters.\" \"Then\nhow does it happen that I weep?\"\n\nA slight is less easily forgiven than an injury, because it implies\nsomething of contempt, indifference, an overlooking of our importance;\nwhereas an injury presupposes some degree of consideration. \"The\nblackguards!\" said a traveler whom Sicilian brigands had released\nwithout ransom; \"did they think me a person of no consequence?\"\n\nThe people's plaudits are unheard in hell.\n\nGenerosity to a fallen foe is a virtue that takes no chances.\n\nIf there was a world before this we must all have died impenitent.\n\nWe are what we laugh at. The stupid person is a poor joke, the clever, a\ngood one.\n\nIf every man who resents being called a rogue resented being one this\nwould be a world of wrath.\n\nForce and charm are important elements of character, but it counts for\nlittle to be stronger than honey and sweeter than a lion.\n\n  Grief and discomfiture are coals that cool:\n  Why keep them glowing with thy sighs, poor fool?\n\nA popular author is one who writes what the people think. Genius invites\nthem to think something else.\n\nAsked to describe the Deity, a donkey would represent him with long ears\nand a tail. Man's conception is higher and truer: he thinks of him as\nsomewhat resembling a man.\n\nChristians and camels receive their burdens kneeling.\n\nThe sky is a concave mirror in which Man sees his own distorted image\nand seeks to propitiate it.\n\nHonor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long in the land,\nbut do not hope that the life insurance companies will offer thee\nspecial rates.\n\nPersons who are horrified by what they believe to be Darwin's theory of\nthe descent of Man from the Ape may find comfort in the hope of his\nreturn.\n\nA strong mind is more easily impressed than a weak; you shall not so\nreadily convince a fool that you are a philosopher as a philosopher that\nyou are a fool.\n\nA cheap and easy cynicism rails at everything. The master of the art\naccomplishes the formidable task of discrimination.\n\nWhen publicly censured our first instinct is to make everybody a\ncodefendant.\n\n  O lady fine, fear not to lead\n    To Hymen's shrine a clown:\n  Love cannot level up, indeed,\n    But he can level down.\n\nMen are polygamous by nature and monogamous for opportunity. It is a\nfaithful man who is willing to be watched by a half-dozen wives.\n\nThe virtues chose Modesty to be their queen. \"I did not know that I was\na virtue,\" she said. \"Why did you not choose Innocence?\" \"Because of her\nignorance,\" they replied. \"She knows nothing but that she is a virtue.\"\n\nIt is a wise \"man's man\" who knows what it is that he despises in a\n\"ladies' man.\"\n\nIf the vices of women worshiped their creators men would boast of the\nadoration they inspire.\n\nThe only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of\nconformity.\n\nSlang is the speech of him who robs the literary garbage carts on their\nway to the dumps.\n\nA woman died who had passed her life in affirming the superiority of her\nsex. \"At last,\" she said, \"I shall have rest and honors.\" \"Enter,\" said\nSaint Peter; \"thou shalt wash the faces of the dear little cherubim.\"\n\nTo woman a general truth has neither value nor interest unless she can\nmake a particular application of it. And we say that women are not\npractical!\n\nThe ignorant know not the depth of their ignorance, but the learned know\nthe shallowness of their learning.\n\nHe who relates his success in charming woman's heart may be assured of\nhis failure to charm man's ear.\n\n  What poignant memories the shadows bring\n  What songs of triumph in the dawning ring!\n  By night a coward and by day a king.\n\nWhen among the graves of thy fellows, walk with circumspection; thine\nown is open at thy feet.\n\nAs the physiognomist takes his own face as the highest type and\nstandard, so the critic's theories are imposed by his own limitations.\n\n\"Heaven lies about us in our infancy,\" and our neighbors take up the\ntale as we mature.\n\n  \"My laws,\" she said, \"are of myself a part:\n    I read them by examining my heart.\"\n  \"True,\" he replied; \"like those to Moses known,\n    Thine also are engraven upon stone.\"\n\nLove is a distracted attention: from contemplation of one's self one\nturns to consider one's dream.\n\n\"Halt!--who goes there?\" \"Death.\" \"Advance, Death, and give the\ncountersign.\" \"How needless! I care not to enter thy camp tonight. Thou\nshalt enter mine.\" \"What! I a deserter?\" \"Nay, a great soldier. Thou\nshalt overcome all the enemies of mankind.\" \"Who are they?\" \"Life and\nthe Fear of Death.\"\n\nThe palmist looks at the wrinkles made by closing the hand and says they\nsignify character. The philosopher reads character by what the hand most\nloves to close upon.\n\n  Ah, woe is his, with length of living cursed,\n  Who, nearing second childhood, had no first.\n  Behind, no glimmer, and before no ray--\n  A night at either end of his dark day.\n\nA noble enthusiasm in praise of Woman is not incompatible with a\nspirited zeal in defamation of women.\n\nThe money-getter who pleads his love of work has a lame defense, for\nlove of work at money-getting is a lower taste than love of money.\n\nHe who thinks that praise of mediocrity atones for disparagement of\ngenius is like one who should plead robbery in excuse of theft.\n\nThe most disagreeable form of masculine hypocrisy is that which finds\nexpression in pretended remorse for impossible gallantries.\n\nAny one can say that which is new; any one that which is true. For that\nwhich is both new and true we must go duly accredited to the gods and\nawait their pleasure.\n\nThe test of truth is Reason, not Faith; for to the court of Reason must\nbe submitted even the claims of Faith.\n\n\"Whither goest thou?\" said the angel. \"I know not.\" \"And whence hast\nthou come?\" \"I know not.\" \"But who art thou?\" \"I know not.\" \"Then thou\nart Man. See that thou turn not back, but pass on to the place whence\nthou hast come.\"\n\nIf Expediency and Righteousness are not father and son they are the most\nharmonious brothers that ever were seen.\n\nTrain the head, and the heart will take care of itself; a rascal is one\nwho knows not how to think.\n\n  Do you to others as you would\n    That others do to you;\n  But see that you no service good\n  Would have from others that they could\n    Not rightly do.\n\nTaunts are allowable in the case of an obstinate husband: balky horses\nmay best be made to go by having their ears bitten.\n\nAdam probably regarded Eve as the woman of his choice, and exacted a\ncertain gratitude for the distinction of his preference.\n\nA man is the sum of his ancestors; to reform him you must begin with a\ndead ape and work downward through a million graves. He is like the\nlower end of a suspended chain; you can sway him slightly to the right\nor the left, but remove your hand and he falls into line with the other\nlinks.\n\nHe who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity. A fool is a\nnatural proselyte, but he must be caught young, for his convictions,\nunlike those of the wise, harden with age.\n\nThese are the prerogatives of genius: To know without having learned; to\ndraw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of\nthings.\n\nAlthough one love a dozen times, yet will the latest love seem the\nfirst. He who says he has loved twice has not loved once.\n\nMen who expect universal peace through invention of destructive weapons\nof war are no wiser than one who, noting the improvement of agricultural\nimplements, should prophesy an end to the tilling of the soil.\n\nTo parents only, death brings an inconsolable sorrow. When the young die\nand the old live, nature's machinery is working with the friction that\nwe name grief.\n\nEmpty wine bottles have a bad opinion of women.\n\nCivilization is the child of human ignorance and conceit. If Man knew\nhis insignificance in the scheme of things he would not think it worth\nwhile to rise from barbarity to enlightenment. But it is only through\nenlightenment that he can know.\n\nAlong the road of life are many pleasure resorts, but think not that by\ntarrying in them you will take more days to the journey. The day of your\narrival is already recorded.\n\nThe most offensive egotist is he that fears to say \"I\" and \"me.\" \"It\nwill probably rain\"--that is dogmatic. \"I think it will rain\"--that is\nnatural and modest. Montaigne is the most delightful of essayists\nbecause so great is his humility that he does not think it important\nthat we see not Montaigne. He so forgets himself that he employs no\nartifice to make us forget him.\n\n  On fair foundations Theocrats unwise\n  Rear superstructures that offend the skies.\n  \"Behold,\" they cry, \"this pile so fair and tall!\n  Come dwell within it and be happy all.\"\n  But they alone inhabit it, and find,\n  Poor fools, 'tis but a prison for the mind.\n\nIf thou wilt not laugh at a rich man's wit thou art an anarchist, and if\nthou take not his word thou shalt take nothing that he hath. Make haste,\ntherefore, to be civil to thy betters, and so prosper, for prosperity is\nthe foundation of the state.\n\nDeath is not the end; there remains the litigation over the estate.\n\nWhen God makes a beautiful woman, the devil opens a new register.\n\nWhen Eve first saw her reflection in a pool, she sought Adam and accused\nhim of infidelity.\n\n\"Why dost thou weep?\" \"For the death of my wife. Alas! I shall never\nagain see her!\" \"Thy wife will never again see thee, yet she does not\nweep.\"\n\nWhat theology is to religion and jurisprudence to justice, etiquette is\nto civility.\n\n\"Who art thou that despite the piercing cold and thy robe's raggedness\nseemest to enjoy thyself?\" \"Naught else is enjoyable--I am Contentment.\"\n\"Ha! thine must be a magic shirt. Off with it! I shiver in my fine\nattire.\" \"I have no shirt. Pass on, Success.\"\n\nIgnorance when inevitable is excusable. It may be harmless, even\nbeneficial; but it is charming only to the unwise. To affect a spurious\nignorance is to disclose a genuine.\n\nBecause you will not take by theft what you can have by cheating, think\nnot yours is the only conscience in the world. Even he who permits you\nto cheat his neighbor will shrink from permitting you to cheat himself.\n\n\"God keep thee, stranger; what is thy name?\" \"Wisdom. And thine?\"\n\"Knowledge. How does it happen that we meet?\" \"This is an intersection\nof our paths.\" \"Will it ever be decreed that we travel always the same\nroad?\" \"We were well named if we knew.\"\n\nNothing is more logical than persecution. Religious tolerance is a kind\nof infidelity.\n\nConvictions are variable; to be always consistent is to be sometimes\ndishonest.\n\nThe philosopher's profoundest conviction is that which he is most\nreluctant to express, lest he mislead.\n\nWhen exchange of identities is possible, be careful; you may choose a\nperson who is willing.\n\nThe most intolerant advocate is he who is trying to convince himself.\n\nIn the Parliament of Otumwee the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed a\ntax on fools. \"The right honorable and generous gentleman,\" said a\nmember, \"forgets that we already have it in the poll tax.\"\n\n\"Whose dead body is that?\" \"Credulity's.\" \"By whom was he slain?\"\n\"Credulity.\" \"Ah, suicide.\" \"No, surfeit. He dined at the table of\nScience, and swallowed all that was set before him.\"\n\nDon't board with the devil if you wish to be fat.\n\nPray do not despise your delinquent debtor; his default is no proof of\npoverty.\n\nCourage is the acceptance of the gambler's chance: a brave man bets\nagainst the game of the gods.\n\n\"Who art thou?\" \"A philanthropist. And thou?\" \"A pauper.\" \"Away! you\nhave nothing to relieve my needs.\"\n\nYouth looks forward, for nothing is behind! Age backward, for nothing is\nbefore.","title":"A Cynic Looks at Life","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":15593}