Prejudices, fourth seriesMencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
History
Prejudices, fourth series
Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis)
American essays -- 20th century; American literature -- History and criticism; Literature -- History and criticism
Such a man is not “dead” to religion. He was not born with a congenital
inaptitude for it. He has simply outgrown it, as he has outgrown
poetry, Socialism and love. At adolescence practically all individuals
have attacks of piety, but that is only saying that their powers
of perception, at that age, outrun their knowledge. They observe
the phenomenon, but cannot account for it. Later on, unless their
development is arrested, they gradually emerge from that romantic and
spookish fog, just as they emerge from the hallucinations of secular
romance. I speak here, of course, of individuals genuinely capable of
education--always a small minority. If, as the Army tests of conscripts
showed, nearly 50 per cent. of American adult males never get beyond
the mental development of a twelve-year-old child, then it must be
obvious that a much smaller number get beyond the mental development
of a youth at the end of his teens. I put that number, at a venture,
at 5 per cent. The remaining 95 per cent. never quite free themselves
from religious superstitions. They may no longer believe it is an
act of God every time an individual catches a cold, or sprains his
ankle, or cuts himself shaving, but they are pretty sure to see some
trace of divine intervention in it if he is struck by lightning, or
hanged, or afflicted with leprosy or syphilis. That God causes wars
has been believed by all the Presidents of the United States, save
Grover Cleveland, since Jefferson’s time. During the late war the then
President actually set aside a day for praying to God to stop what He
had started as soon as possible, and on terms favorable to American
investments. This was not done, remember, by a voodoo man in the
Congo forest, but by a sound Presbyterian, a Ph.D. of Johns Hopkins
University, and the best-dressed professor ever seen at Princeton.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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