Another instance of the emotional factor over-ruling legalism is seen
in the trial of the man who shot Jaures. He was acquitted. . . . Not
Guilty . . . the man who slew one of the best men in Europe. On the
other hand the youth who attempted to assassinate Clemenceau was
sentenced to death, pardoned, and sent to penal servitude. In France
therefore it is a crime to kill a politician of the right, but a virtue
to kill one of the Socialist left.
Abstract justice is a figment. No jury and no judge can be impartial.
The other day a man was charged with striking a Socialist orator with
an ice-pick. The judge lectured the orator on his Bolshevism, and then
gave the accused imprisonment for a short term in the second division.
Suppose that the Bolshevist had used an ice-pick on a Cabinet Minister!
I do not think that our judges and magistrates ever consciously show
partiality. They are an upright class of men, men above suspicion. It
is their unconscious that shows partiality just as mine does. The army
colonels who tried Conscientious Objectors were upright men, but it was
wrong to imagine that they could possibly see the C.O.'s point of view.
So it was with the regular R.A.M.C. doctors. To some of them the
neurotic patient was a swinger of the lead, a malingerer. They had
never heard of the new psychiatry, and the neurotic was a strange
creature to them. Their ignorance supplemented their prejudice, and
they could not possibly have treated these men with justice.
The truth is that we all make up our minds according as our buried
complexes impel us. If I saw a Frenchman fighting a Scot I should take
the Scot's side, because I have a Scot complex. Occasionally our
complexes work in the opposite way. I fancy that the few people who
sided with the Germans in the war were suffering from an "agin the
government" complex, which, if you trace it deep enough is usually
found to be an infantile rebellion against the father. In this case
the State represented the father, and Germany was the outside helper
who should conquer the father (or mother) country. Had Germany won,
the unpatriotic man would immediately have turned his hate against
Prussia, for then Prussia would have been the father substitute.
Our loves and hates and fears are within ourselves. I know a man who
has a nagging wife; she has a constant wish for new things. He bought
her a hat, and for two days she was happy; then she nagged, and he
bought her a dress. Three days later she demanded a necklace, and he
gave her a necklace. He may continue giving her everything she asks
for, but if he buys her a Rolls Royce and a house in Park Lane she will
be a dissatisfied woman, for "the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our
stars but in ourselves." I advised him to spend his money on having
her psycho-analysed.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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