Too Close to the Tellers.
We are too close to the tellers; there are many tellers, and they are all talking together; and even if we knew them we must not kill them. But the old and terrible instinct which taught our ancestors to kill the original story-teller warns us that we shall not be far wrong if we challenge any man who shows signs of being afflicted with the magic of the necessary words.
May not this be the reason why, without any special legislation on its behalf, literature has always stood a little outside the law as the one calling that is absolutely free—free in the sense that it needs no protection?
For instance, if, as occasionally happens, a judge makes a bad law, or a surgeon a bad operation, or a manufacturer makes bad food, criticism upon their actions is by law and custom confined to comparatively narrow limits. But if a man, as occasionally happens, makes a book, there is no limit to the criticism that may be directed against it, and it is perfectly as it should be. The world recognizes that little things, like bad law, bad surgery, and bad food, only affect the cheapest commodity that we know about—human life.
Therefore, in these circumstances, men can afford to be swayed by pity for the offender, by interest in his family, by fear, or loyalty, or respect for the organization he represents, or even a desire to do him justice.
But when the question is of words—words that may become alive and walk up and down in the hearts of the hearers—it is then that this world of ours, which is disposed to take an interest in the future, feels instinctively that it is better that a thousand innocent people should be punished than that one guilty word should be preserved, carrying that which is an untrue tale of the tribe.