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Authors: H.L. Mencken
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but they do not fear robbers, and never lock their doors when they leave home. Rape is regarded as a heinous crime and if there were ever a case of it the offender would be roughly handled, but there has never been a case. Adultery is unknown as either crime or sin, for public opinion in Wiseman holds that it is nobody’s business save that of the contracting parties, and even the aggrieved spouse is expected to take it in a placid and philosophical manner.
Mr. Marshall gave the Binet-Simon test to forty-five of the adults of the settlement, and to most of the children. He found an extraordinarily large proportion of high IQ’s. The Wisemannites, in fact, turned out to be on the general mental level of Harvard professors, members of the General Staff of the Army, and the superior minority of bootleggers, investment bankers and magazine editors. Only fourteen per cent fell below the American average, whereas forty-six per cent ranked above it. This fact, I believe, offers a plausible explanation of their felicity. They are naturally intelligent, and there is no agency among them to war upon their intelligence, and make it dangerous. They have no newspapers. They have no politicians. Their police force is rudimentary and impotent. Above all, they are not cursed with theologians. Thus they are free to be intelligent, and what is more, to be decent.
Bring On the Clowns
From T HE B UTTE B ASHKIRTSEFF , P REJUDICES : F IRST S ERIES , 1919, pp. 127–28
A mongrel and inferior people, incapable of any spiritual aspiration above that of second-rate English colonials, we seek refuge inevitably in the one sort of superiority that the lower castes of mencan authentically boast, to wit, superiority in docility, in credulity, in resignation, in morals. We are the most moral race in the world; there is not another that we do not look down upon in that department; our confessed aim and destiny as a nation is to inoculate them all with our incomparable rectitude. In the last analysis, all ideas are judged among us by moral standards; moral values are our only permanent tests of worth, whether in the arts, in politics, in philosophy or in life itself. Even the instincts of man, so intrinsically immoral, so innocent, are fitted with moral false-faces. That bedevilment by sex ideas which punishes continence, so abhorrent to nature, is converted into a moral frenzy, pathological in the end. The impulse to cavort and kick up one’s legs, so healthy, so universal, is hedged in by incomprehensible taboos; it becomes stealthy, dirty, degrading. The desire to create and linger over beauty, the sign and touchstone of man’s rise above the brute, is held down by doubts and hesitations; when it breaks through it must be so by orgy and explosion, half ludicrous and half pathetic. Our function, we like to believe, is to teach and inspire the world. We are wrong. Our function is to amuse the world. We are the Bryan, the Henry Ford, among the nations.
II. POLITICS
The Politician Under Democracy
From N OTES ON D EMOCRACY , 1926, pp. 104–08
H E IS A man who has lied and dissembled, and a man who has crawled. He knows the taste of the boot-polish. He has suffered kicks in the tonneau of his pantaloons. He has taken orders from his superiors in knavery and he has wooed and flattered his inferiors in sense. His public life is an endless series of evasions and false pretenses. He is willing to embrace any issue, however idiotic, that will get him votes, and he is willing to sacrifice any principle, however sound, that will lose them for him. I do not describe the democratic politician at his inordinate worst; I describe him as he is encountered in the full sunshine of normalcy. He may be, on the one hand, a cross-roads idler striving to get into the State Legislature by grace of the local mortgage-sharks and evangelical clergy, or he may be, on the other, the President of the United States. It is almost an axiom that no man may make a career in
Mr. Marshall gave the Binet-Simon test to forty-five of the adults of the settlement, and to most of the children. He found an extraordinarily large proportion of high IQ’s. The Wisemannites, in fact, turned out to be on the general mental level of Harvard professors, members of the General Staff of the Army, and the superior minority of bootleggers, investment bankers and magazine editors. Only fourteen per cent fell below the American average, whereas forty-six per cent ranked above it. This fact, I believe, offers a plausible explanation of their felicity. They are naturally intelligent, and there is no agency among them to war upon their intelligence, and make it dangerous. They have no newspapers. They have no politicians. Their police force is rudimentary and impotent. Above all, they are not cursed with theologians. Thus they are free to be intelligent, and what is more, to be decent.
Bring On the Clowns
From T HE B UTTE B ASHKIRTSEFF , P REJUDICES : F IRST S ERIES , 1919, pp. 127–28
A mongrel and inferior people, incapable of any spiritual aspiration above that of second-rate English colonials, we seek refuge inevitably in the one sort of superiority that the lower castes of mencan authentically boast, to wit, superiority in docility, in credulity, in resignation, in morals. We are the most moral race in the world; there is not another that we do not look down upon in that department; our confessed aim and destiny as a nation is to inoculate them all with our incomparable rectitude. In the last analysis, all ideas are judged among us by moral standards; moral values are our only permanent tests of worth, whether in the arts, in politics, in philosophy or in life itself. Even the instincts of man, so intrinsically immoral, so innocent, are fitted with moral false-faces. That bedevilment by sex ideas which punishes continence, so abhorrent to nature, is converted into a moral frenzy, pathological in the end. The impulse to cavort and kick up one’s legs, so healthy, so universal, is hedged in by incomprehensible taboos; it becomes stealthy, dirty, degrading. The desire to create and linger over beauty, the sign and touchstone of man’s rise above the brute, is held down by doubts and hesitations; when it breaks through it must be so by orgy and explosion, half ludicrous and half pathetic. Our function, we like to believe, is to teach and inspire the world. We are wrong. Our function is to amuse the world. We are the Bryan, the Henry Ford, among the nations.
II. POLITICS
The Politician Under Democracy
From N OTES ON D EMOCRACY , 1926, pp. 104–08
H E IS A man who has lied and dissembled, and a man who has crawled. He knows the taste of the boot-polish. He has suffered kicks in the tonneau of his pantaloons. He has taken orders from his superiors in knavery and he has wooed and flattered his inferiors in sense. His public life is an endless series of evasions and false pretenses. He is willing to embrace any issue, however idiotic, that will get him votes, and he is willing to sacrifice any principle, however sound, that will lose them for him. I do not describe the democratic politician at his inordinate worst; I describe him as he is encountered in the full sunshine of normalcy. He may be, on the one hand, a cross-roads idler striving to get into the State Legislature by grace of the local mortgage-sharks and evangelical clergy, or he may be, on the other, the President of the United States. It is almost an axiom that no man may make a career in
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