The peculiar and distinguishing feature of his mind is that life is
presented to it in stark and rigid outline. He is blandly unconscious
of distinctions; he has no perception of proportions, no knowledge of
values, in a word, no sense of humor. His world is made up of wholly
unrelated antitheses. There are no shades or shadows, no gradations,
no delicate and subtle relativities. A thing is either black or white,
good or bad. A deed is either moral or immoral, a virtue or a crime.
It is all very simple. All acts of which he does not himself approve
are evil; all who do not think and act as he thinks and acts, are bad.
If you do not know when a deed, or an opinion is wrong, he will tell
you; and if you doubt him or differ with him, you are bad, and it is
time to call in the police. “Whenever the Commons has nothing else
to do,” said the wise old member of Parliament, “it can always make
a new crime.” Statutes are thus enacted, as the saying is, against
all evils, great and small, and the greater the evil, of course, the
greater the moral triumph expressed by the mere enactment. But because
of certain contrarieties in nature and a certain obstreperous quality
in human nature and a general complexity in life as a whole these legal
fulminations are frequently triumphs only in theory, and in practice
often intensify the very ills they seek to cure. As the witty Remy de
Gourmont says: _Quand la morale triomphe il se passes des choses très
vilaines._
The more intensively developed specimen of the type will not overtly
sin himself, but he loves to inspect those who do, and to peer at
them, and to wonder how they could ever have the courage to do it; he
likes to imagine their sensations, and to note each one of them as it
was developed in the interesting experience. And hence the psychic
lasciviousness of those who are constantly reporting plays and pictures
as fit for the censor they are always clamoring for. Sometimes they
go slumming as students of the evils of society. They are like pious
uncles who never swear themselves under any circumstances, but relate
stories of other men who do, recite their delightful experiences and
roll out the awful oaths with which the profane gave vent to their
feelings with a relish that is no doubt a relief to their own.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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