Prejudices, first seriesMencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
History
Prejudices, first series
Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
American essays -- 20th century; American literature -- History and criticism; Literature -- History and criticism
In this condition of the science it is no wonder that we find it wasting
its chief force upon problems that are petty and idle when they are not
downright and palpably insoluble, and passing over problems that are of
immediate concern to all of us, and that might be quite readily solved,
or, at any rate, considerably illuminated, by an intelligent study of
the data already available. After all, not many of us care a hoot
whether Sir Oliver Lodge and the Indian chief Wok-a-wok-a-mok are happy
in heaven, for not many of us have any hope or desire to meet them
there. Nor are we greatly excited by the discovery that, of twenty-five
freshmen who are hit with clubs, 17¾ will say “Ouch!” and 22⅕ will say
“Damn!”; nor by a table showing that 38.2 per centum of all men accused
of homicide confess when locked up with the carcasses of their victims,
including 23.4 per centum who are innocent; nor by plans and
specifications, by Cagliostro out of Lucrezia Borgia, for teaching poor,
God-forsaken school children to write before they can read and to
multiply before they can add; nor by endless disputes between
half-witted pundits as to the precise difference between perception and
cognition; nor by even longer feuds, between pundits even crazier, over
free will, the subconscious, the endoneurium, the functions of the
corpora quadrigemina, and the meaning of dreams in which one is pursued
by hyenas, process-servers or grass-widows.
Nay; we do not bubble with rejoicing when such fruits of psychological
deep-down-diving and much-mud-upbringing researches are laid before us,
for after all they do not offer us any nourishment, there is nothing in
them to engage our teeth, they fail to make life more comprehensible,
and hence more bearable. What we yearn to know something about is the
process whereby the ideas of everyday are engendered in the skulls of
those about us, to the end that we may pursue a straighter and a safer
course through the muddle that is life. Why do the great majority of
Presbyterians (and, for that matter, of Baptists, Episcopalians, and
Swedenborgians as well) regard it as unlucky to meet a black cat and
lucky to find a pin? What are the logical steps behind the theory that
it is indecent to eat peas with a knife? By what process does an
otherwise sane man arrive at the conclusion that he will go to hell
unless he is baptized by total immersion in water? What causes men to be
faithful to their wives: habit, fear, poverty, lack of imagination, lack
of enterprise, stupidity, religion? What is the psychological basis of
commercial morality? What is the true nature of the vague pooling of
desires that Rousseau called the social contract? Why does an American
regard it as scandalous to wear dress clothes at a funeral, and a
Frenchman regard it as equally scandalous _not_ to wear them? Why is it
that men trust one another so readily, and women trust one another so
seldom? Why are we all so greatly affected by statements that we know
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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