XVII. MISCELLANEOUS NOTES
1
Martyrs
TO die for an idea: it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true! Searching history, I can find no such case. All the great martyrs of the books died for sheer nonsense—often for trivial matters of doctrine and ceremonial, too absurd to be stated in plain terms. But what of the countless thousands who have perished in the wars, fighting magnificently for their country? Well, show me one who knew precisely what the war he died in was about, and could put it into a simple and plausible proposition.
2
The Ancients
The theory that the ancient Greeks and Romans were men of a vast and ineffable superiority runs aground on the fact that they were great admirers of oratory. No other art was so assiduously practiced among them. To-day we venerate the architecture of Greece far more than we venerate its orators, but the Greeks themselves put the orators first, and so much better records of them are preserved to-day. But oratory, as a matter of fact, is the most primitive and hence the lowest of all the arts. Where is it most respected to-day? Among savages, in and out of civilization. The yokels of the open spaces flock by the thousand to hear imbeciles yawp and heave; the city proletariat glues its ears to the radio every night. But what genuinely civilized man would turn out to hear even the champion orator of the country? Dozens of the most eminent professors of the art show off their tricks every day in the United States Senate. Yet the galleries of the Senate, save when news goes out that some Senator is stewed and about to make an ass of himself, are occupied only by Negroes who have come in to get warm, and hand-holding bridal couples from rural North Carolina and West Virginia.
3
Jack Ketch as Eugenist
Has any historian ever noticed the salubrious effect, on the English character, of the frenzy for hanging that went on in England during the Eighteenth Century? When I say salubrious, of course, I mean in the purely social sense. At the end of the Seventeenth Century the Englishman was still one of the most turbulent and lawless of civilized men; at the beginning of the Nineteenth he was the most law-abiding; i. e., the most docile. What worked the change in him? I believe that it was worked by the rope of Jack Ketch. During the Eighteenth Century the lawless strain was simply choked out of the race. Perhaps a third of those in whose veins it ran were actually hanged; the rest were chased out of the British Isles, never to return. Some fled to Ireland, and revivified the decaying Irish race: in practically all the Irish rebels of the past century there have been plain traces of English blood. Others went to the Dominions. Yet others came to the United States, and after helping to conquer the Western wilderness, begat the yeggman, Prohibition agents, footpads and hijackers of to-day.
The murder rate is very low in England, perhaps the lowest in the world. It is low because nearly all the potential ancestors of murderers were hanged or exiled in the Eighteenth Century. Why is it so high in the United States? Because most of the potential ancestors of murderers, in the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, were not hanged. And why did they escape? For two plain reasons. First, the existing government was too weak to track them down and execute them, especially in the West. Second, the qualities of daring and enterprise that went with their murderousness were so valuable that it was socially profitable to overlook their homicides. In other words, the job of occupying and organizing the vast domain of the new Republic was one that demanded the aid of men who, among other things, occasionally butchered their fellow men. The butchering had to be winked at in order to get their help. Thus the murder rate, on the frontier, rose to unprecedented heights, while the execution rate remained very low. Probably 100,000 men altogether were murdered in the territory west of the Ohio between 1776 and 1865; probably not 100 murderers were formally executed. When they were punished at all, it was by other murderers—and this left the strain unimpaired.
4
Heroes
Of human eminence there are obviously two varieties: that which issues out of the inner substance of the eminent individual and that which comes to him, either partially or wholly, from without. It is not difficult to recognize men at the two extremes. No sane person would argue seriously that the eminence of such a man, say, as Richard Wagner was, in any plausible sense, accidental or unearned. Wagner created “Tristan und Isolde” out of his own inherent substance. Allowing everything for the chances of his education and environment, the massive fact remains that no other man of the same general education and environment has ever created anything even remotely comparable to it. Wagner deserved the eminence that came to him quite as certainly as the Lord God Jehovah deserves that which attaches to Him. He got it by differing sharply from other men, and enormously for the better, and by laboring colossally and incessantly to make that difference visible. At the other extreme lies such a fellow, say, as young John D. Rockefeller. He is, by all ordinary standards, an eminent man. When he says anything the newspapers report it in full. If he fell ill of gallstones to-morrow, or eloped with a lady Ph.D., or fell off the roof of his house, or was taken in a rum raid the news would be telegraphed to all parts of the earth and at least a billion human beings would show some interest in it. And if he went to Washington and pulled the White House bell he would be let in infallibly, even if the Heir of Lincoln had to quit a saxophone lesson to see him. But it must be obvious that young John’s eminence, such as it is, is almost purely fortuitous and unearned. He is attended to simply because he happens to be the son of old John, and hence heir to a large fortune. So far as the records show, he has never said anything in his life that was beyond the talents of a Rotary Club orator or a newspaper editorial writer, or done anything that would have strained an intelligent bookkeeper. He is, to all intents and purposes, a vacuum, and yet he is known to more people, and especially to more people of means, than Wagner, and admired and envied vastly more by all classes.
Between Wagner and young John there are infinite gradations, and sometimes it is a hard matter to distinguish between them. To most Americans, I daresay, a Harding or a Coolidge appears to enjoy an eminence that is not only more gaudy but also more solid than that of, say, an Einstein. When Einstein visited the United States, a few years ago, he was taken to see Harding as a sort of treat, and many worthy patriots, no doubt, regarded it as somewhat too rich for him, an enemy alien and a Jew. If Thomas Hardy came here to-morrow, his publisher would undoubtedly try to get an invitation to the White House for him, not merely to advertise his books but also to honor the man. Yet it must be plain that the eminence of Coolidge, however vastly it may be whooped up by gentlemen of enlightened self-interest, is actually greatly inferior to that of either Einstein or Hardy. These men owe whatever fame they have to actual accomplishments. There is no doubt whatever that what they have is wholly theirs. They owe nothing to anyone, and no conceivable series of accidents could have made them what they are. If superiority exists among men, then they are indubitably superior. But is there any sign of superiority in Coolidge? I can find none. His eminence is due entirely to two things: first, a series of accidents, and secondly, the possession of qualities that, in themselves, do not mark a superior man, but an inferior. He is a cheap, sordid and grasping politician, a seeker of jobs all his life, willing to do almost anything imaginable to get them. He has never said a word worth hearing, or done a thing requiring genius, or even ordinary skill. Put into his place and given the opportunities that have arisen before him in a long succession, any other ninth-rate lawyer in the land could have got as far as he has got.
Now for my point. It is, in brief, that the public estimation of eminence runs almost directly in inverse ratio to its genuineness. That is to say, the sort of eminence that the mob esteems most highly is precisely the sort that has least grounding in solid worth and honest accomplishment. And the reason therefor is not far to seek. The kind of eminence that it admires is simply the kind that it can understand—the kind that it can aspire to. The very puerility of a Coolidge, in fact, is one of the principal causes of the admiration he excites. What he has done in the world is within the capacities, given luck enough, of any John Smith. His merits, such as they are, are almost universal, and hence perfectly comprehensible. But what a Wagner or an Einstein does is wholly beyond the understanding of an ordinary ignoramus, and so it is impossible for the ignoramus to admire it. Worse, it tends to arouse his suspicion, and hence his animosity. He is not merely indifferent to the merits of a Wagner; he will, if any attempt is made to force them upon his attention, challenge them sharply. What he admires fundamentally, in other words, is himself, and in a Coolidge, a Harding, a baseball pitcher, a movie actor, an archbishop, or a bank president he can see himself. He can see himself, too, though perhaps more dimly, in a Dewey, a Pershing, a Rockefeller or a Jack Dempsey. But he can no more see himself in a Wagner or an Einstein than he can see himself on the throne of the Romanoffs, and so he suspects and dislikes such men, as he suspects and dislikes Romanoffs.
Unluckily, it is one thing to denounce his stupidity, and quite another thing to escape its consequences. The history of mankind is peopled chiefly, not with the genuinely great men of the race, but with the flashy and hollow fellows who appealed to the mob. Every American remembers vividly the contribution that Theodore Roosevelt made to the building of the Panama Canal—a contribution that might have been made by any other American thrown fortuitously into his place, assuming only that the substitute shared his normal American lack of a sense of honor. But who remembers the name of the man who actually designed the canal? I turn to the New International Encyclopedia and find nine whole pages about the canal, with many drawings. There is eloquent mention of Col. Goethals—who simply carried out the designer’s plans. There is mention, too, of Col. Gorgas—whose sanitary work was a simple application of other men’s ideas. There is ample space for Roosevelt, and his blackjacking of Colombia. But so far as I can find, the name of the designer is not there. The mob did not admire him, and so history has overlooked him.
5
An Historic Blunder
The Southern gentry made a thumping mistake when, after the Civil War, they disfranchised the blacks. Had they permitted the latter to vote, they would have retained political control of all the Southern States, for the blacks, like the peasants everywhere else, would have followed their natural masters. As it was, control quickly passed to the poor white trash, who still maintain it, though many of them have ceased to be poor. The gentry struggle in vain to get back in the saddle; they lack the votes to achieve the business unaided, and the blacks, who were ready to follow them in 1870, are now incurably suspicious of them. The result is that politics in the South remain fathomlessly swinish. Every civilized Southerner knows it and is ashamed of it, but the time has apparently passed to do anything about it. To get rid of its Bleases, Mayfields, Slemps, Peays and Vardamans, the South must wait until the white trash are themselves civilized. This is a matter demanding almost as much patience as the long vigil of the Seventh Day Adventists.
6
On Cynicism
One of the most curious of human delusions lies in the theory that cynics are unhappy men—that cynicism makes for a general biliousness and malaise. It is a false deduction, I believe, from the obvious fact that cynics make other men unhappy. But they are themselves among the most comfortable and serene of mammals; perhaps only bishops, pet dogs and actors are happier. For what a cynic believes, though it may be too dreadful to be put into formal words, at least usually has the merit of being true—and truth is ever a rock, hard and harsh, but solid under the feet. A cynic is chronically in the position of a wedding guest who has known the bride for nine years, and has had her confidence. He is a great deal less happy, theoretically, than the bridegroom. The bridegroom, beautifully barbered and arrayed, is about to launch into the honeymoon. But the cynic looks ahead two weeks, two months, two years. Such, to borrow a phrase from the late Dr. Eliot, are the durable satisfactions of life.
7
Music and Sin
Among Christian workers and other intellectual cripples the delusion seems to persist that jazz is highly aphrodisiacal. I never encounter a sermon on the subject without finding it full of dark warnings to parents, urging them to keep their nubile daughters out of the jazz palaces on the ground that the voluptuous music will inflame their passions and so make them easy prey to bond salesmen, musicians and other such carnal fellows. All this seems to me to be nonsense. Jazz, in point of fact, is not voluptuous at all. Its monotonous rhythm and puerile tunes make it a sedative rather than a stimulant. If it is an aphrodisiac, then the sound of riveting is also an aphrodisiac. What fetches the flappers who come to grief in the jazz parlors is not the music at all, but the alcohol. Drinking it out of flasks in the washrooms, they fail to keep the dose in harmony with their natural resistance, and so they lose control of their faculties, and what follows is lamentable. Jazz, which came in with Prohibition, gets the blame that belongs to its partner. In the old days, when it was uncommon for refined women to get drunk at dances, it would have been quite harmless. To-day even Chopin’s funeral march would be dangerous.
The truth is that jazz is probably the least voluptuous variety of music commonly heard in Christendom. There are plenty of Methodist hymns that are ten times as aphrodisiacal, and the fact is proved by the scandals that follow every camp-meeting. In most parts of the United States, indeed, the Methodists have begun to abandon camp-meetings as subversive of morality. Where they still flourish it is not unusual for even the rev. clergy to be taken in byzantine practices. But so-called good music is yet worse than the Methodist hymns. Has the world so soon forgotten James Huneker’s story of the prudent opera mamma who refused to let her daughter sing Isolde, on the ground that no woman could ever get through the second act without forgetting God? That second act, even so, is much overestimated. There are piano pieces of Chopin that are a hundred times worse; if the Comstocks really had any sense, they would forbid their performance. And what of the late Puccini? If “La Bohème” is not an aphrodisiac, then what is it? Yet it is sung publicly all over the world. Only in Atlanta, Ga., is there a law against it, and even that law was probably inspired by the fact that it was written by a Catholic and not by the fact that it has brought hundreds of thousands of Christian women to the edge of the abyss.
Old Ludwig himself was not without guilt. His “Egmont” overture is a gross and undisguised appeal to the medulla oblongata. And what of his symphonies and quartettes? The last movement of his Eroica is not only voluptuous to the last degree; it is also Bolshevistic. Try to play it with your eyes on a portrait of Dr. Coolidge. You will find the thing as impossible as eating ice-cream on roast beef. At the time of its first performance in Vienna the moral sense of the community was so greatly outraged that Beethoven had to get out of town for a while. I pass over Wagner, whose “Tristan und Isolde” was probably his most decorous work, despite Huneker—think of “Parsifal”!—and come to Richard Strauss. Here I need offer no argument: his “Salomé” and “Elektra” have been prohibited by the police, at one time or another, in nearly every country in the world. I believe that “Der Rosenkavalier” is still worse, though the police leave it unmolested. Compare its first act to the most libidinous jazz ever heard of on Broadway. It is like comparing vodka to ginger-pop. No woman who hears it is ever the same again. She may remain within the law, but her thoughts are wayward henceforth. Into her ear the sirens have poured their abominable song. She has been beset by witches. There is a sinister glitter in her eye.
8
The Champion
Of the forty-eight sovereign States of this imperial Federation, which is the worst? In what one of them is a civilized man most uncomfortable? Over half the votes, if the question were put to a vote, would probably be divided between California and Tennessee. Each in its way, is almost unspeakable. Tennessee, of course, has never been civilized, save in a small area; even in the earliest days of the Republic it was regarded as barbaric by its neighbors. But California, at one time, promised to develop a charming and enlightened civilization. There was a touch of tropical balm in its air, and a touch of Latin and oriental color in its ideas. Like Louisiana, it seemed likely to resist Americanization for many years; perhaps forever. But now California, the old California, is simply extinct. What remains is an Alsatia of retired Ford agents and crazy fat women—a paradise of 100% Americanism and the New Thought. Its laws are the most extravagant and idiotic ever heard of in Christendom. Its public officers, and particularly its judges, are famous all over the world for their imbecilities. When one hears of it at all, one hears that some citizen has been jailed for reading the Constitution of the United States, or that some new swami in a yellow bed-tick has got all the realtors’ wives of Los Angeles by the ears. When one hears of it further, it is only to learn that some obscure movie lady in Hollywood has murdered another lover. The State is run by its Chambers of Commerce, which is to say, by the worst variety of resident shysters. No civilized man ever seems to take any part in its public life. Not an idea comes out of it—that is, not an idea beyond the grasp of a Kiwanis Club secretary, a Christian Science sorcerer, or a grand goblin of the American Legion. Twice, of late, it has offered the country candidates for the presidency. One was the Hon. Hiram Johnson and the other was the Hon. William Gibbs McAdoo! Only Vermont can beat that record.
The minority of civilized Californians—who lately, by the way, sent out a call from Los Angeles for succor, as if they were beset by wolves!—commonly lay the blame for this degeneration of a once-proud commonwealth upon the horde of morons that has flowed in from Iowa, Nebraska and the other cow-States, seeking relief from the bitter climate of the steppes. The California realtors have been luring in these hinds for a generation past, and they now swarm in all the southern towns, especially Los Angeles. They come in with their savings, are swindled and sent home, and so make room for more. While they remain and have any part of their money left, they patronize the swamis, buy oil stock, gape at the movie folk, and pack the Methodist churches. Unquestionably, the influence of such vacuums has tended to degrade the general tone of California life; what was once a Spanish fiesta is now merely an upper Mississippi valley street-carnival. But it is not to be forgotten that the Native Sons have gone down the chute with the newcomers—that there is no more sign of intellectual vigor in the old stock than there is in the new stock. A few intransigeants hold out against the tide of 100% Americanism, but only a few. The rest bawl against the Reds as loudly as any Iowa steer-stuffer.
The truth is that it is unjust to blame Iowa for the decay of California, for Iowa itself is now moving up, not down. And so is Nebraska. A few years ago both States were as sterile, intellectually, as Spain, but both are showing signs of progress to-day, and in another generation or two, as the Prohibition lunacy passes and the pall of Methodism begins to lift, they will probably burst into very vigorous activity. Some excellent stock is in them; it is very little contaminated by what is called Anglo-Saxon blood. Iowa, even to-day, is decidedly more civilized than California. It is producing more ideas, and, more important still, it is carrying on a much less violent war against ideas. I doubt that any man who read the Constitution in Davenport or Des Moines would be jailed for it, as Upton Sinclair (or one of his friends) was in Pasadena. The American Legion would undoubtedly protest, but the police would probably do nothing, for the learned judges of the State would not entertain the charge.
Thus California remains something of a mystery. The whole United States, of course, has been going downhill since the beginning of the century, but why should one State go so much faster than the others? Is the climate to blame? Hardly. The climate of San Francisco is thoroughly un-Californian, and yet San Francisco is almost as dead as Los Angeles. It was there, indeed, that that California masterpiece, the Mooney case, was staged; it was here that the cops made three efforts to convict poor Fatty Arbuckle of murder in the first-degree; it was there that the late Dr. Abrams launched a quackery that went Mother Eddy one better. San Francisco, once the home of Mark Twain and Bret Harte, is now ravaged by Prohibition enforcement officers. But if the climate is not to blame, then what is? Why should a great State, lovely physically and of romantic history, so violently renounce all sense and decency? What has got into it? God alone knows!
9
Honor in America
Some time ago I enjoyed the distinguished honor of entertaining an American university professor in my house. The fellow had a resilient gullet, and in the course of the evening we got down a quart of Scotch. Made expansive by the liquor, he told me this story:
A short while before, at his university, one of the professors gave a booze party for a group of colleagues, including the president of the institution. It was warm weather, and they sat on the veranda, guzzling moonshine and ginger-ale. There was so much chatter that they didn’t hear a student coming up the path. Suddenly he was on them, and they almost fainted....
At this point I asked why they were alarmed.
“Well,” said my visitor, “suppose the student had turned out to be a Christian? He would have blabbed, and then our host would have lost his chair. The president would have been forced to cashier him.”
“But the president,” I argued, “was a guest in the man’s house. How could he have dismissed him?”
“What else would there have been for him to do?” asked the professor.
“Resign at once,” I replied. “Wasn’t he under the obligations of a guest? Wasn’t he particeps criminis? How could he separate himself from his host? How could he sit as judge upon his host, even if only formally?”
But the professor couldn’t see the point. I began to fear that he was in his cups, but it soon appeared that he was quite clear. We argued for half an hour: he was still unable to see the point. The duty of a president to enforce an unwilling and dishonest obedience to an absurd law—this duty was superior to his duty as a guest, i. e., it was superior to his obligation as a man of honor! We passed on to another point.
“What of the student?” I asked. “I take it that he turned out to be a gentleman. Suppose he had been a Christian? Suppose he had blabbed? What would the other boys have done to him?”
The professor stared at me blankly.
“Nothing,” he said at length. “After all, we were boozing.”
This professor, I should add, was a man of the old American stock—in fact, a fellow very proud of his colonial ancestry. When he got back to his university he joined in signing a public statement that Prohibition was a great success there.
I proceed to another case. One day in the Summer of 1924, during the Republican National Convention at Cleveland, I met an eminent American publicist in a hotel lobby there. He told me at once that he was suffering from a dreadful bellyache. I had a jug in my room, but my own hotel was far away, so I suggested that help might be got from a journalist on the premises. We went to his room, and I introduced the publicist. The journalist promptly got out a bottle and gave him a policeman’s drink. The publicist had recovered in three minutes.... When he got home, he joined, like the professor, in signing a public statement praising Prohibition.
10
Note in the Margin of a Treatise on Psychology
As I stoop to lace my shoe you hit me over the coccyx with a length of hickory (Carya laciniosa). I conclude instantly that you are a jackass. This is a whole process of human thought in little. This also is free will.
11
Definition
Democracy is that system of government under which the people, having 35,717,342 native-born adult whites to choose from, including thousands who are handsome and many who are wise, pick out a Coolidge to be head of the State. It is as if a hungry man, set before a banquet prepared by master cooks and covering a table an acre in area, should turn his back upon the feast and stay his stomach by catching and eating flies.