Second Mencken Chrestomathy

by H. L. Mencken

  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? What causes men to be faithful to their wives: habit, fear, poverty, lack of imagination, lack of enterprise, stupidity, religion? 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 are not true?—e.g., in Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech, the Declaration of Independence and the CIII Psalm. What is the origin of the so-called double standard of morality? Why do so many people dislike Jews? Why are women forbidden to take off their hats in church?

  All these are questions of interest and importance to all of us, for their solution would materially improve the accuracy of our outlook upon the world, and with it our mastery of our environment, but the psychologists, busily engaged in chasing their tails, leave them unanswered, and, in most cases, even unasked. Thus the field lies open to the amateur, and not infrequently he enters it to good effect. The late Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche did it often, and the usufructs were many curious and daring guesses as to the genesis of this, that or the other common delusion of man—e.g., the delusion that the law of the survival of the fittest may be repealed by an act of Congress. Into the same field several very interesting expeditions were made by Dr. Elsie Clews Parsons, a lady once celebrated by the newspapers for her invention of trial marriage—an invention, by the way, in which the Nietzsche aforesaid preceded her by at least a dozen years. The records of her researches are to be found in a brief series of books: “The Family” (1906), “The Old-Fashioned Woman” (1913), and “Fear and Conventionality” (1914). Apparently they have wrung relatively little esteem from the learned, and I seldom encounter a reference to them, and Dr. Parsons herself is not often recalled. Nevertheless, they are extremely instructive volumes, particularly “Fear and Conventionality.” I know of no other work, indeed, which offers a better array of observations upon that powerful complex of assumptions, prejudices, instinctive reactions, racial emotions and unbreakable vices of mind which enters so massively into the daily thinking of all of us. The author does not concern herself, as so many psychologists fall into the habit of doing, with thinking as a purely laboratory phenomenon, a process in vacuo. What she deals with is thinking as it is done by men and women in the real world—thinking that is only half intellectual, the other half being as automatic and unintelligent as swallowing, blinking the eye, or falling in love.

  The power of the complex that I have mentioned is usually very much underestimated, not only by psychologists, but also by all other persons who pretend to enlightenment. We take pride in the fact that we are thinking animals, and like to believe that our thoughts are free, but the truth is that nine-tenths of them are rigidly conditioned by the babbling that goes on around us from birth, and that the business of considering this babbling objectively, separating the true in it from the false, is an intellectual feat of such stupendous difficulty that very few men are ever able to achieve it. Not one of us is actually a free agent. Not one of us thinks for himself, or in any orderly and scientific manner. The pressure of environment, of mass ideas, of the socialized intelligence, improperly so called, is too enormous to be withstood. No genuine American, no matter how sharp his critical sense, can ever get away from the notion that democracy is, in some subtle and mysterious way, more conducive to human progress and more pleasing to a just God than any of the systems of government which stand opposed to it. In the privacy of his study he may observe very clearly that it exalts the facile and specious man above the really competent man, and from his reflections upon it he may draw the conclusion that its abandonment would be desirable, but once he emerges from his academic seclusion and resumes the rubbing of noses with his fellow men, he will begin to be tortured by a sneaking feeling that such ideas are heretical and unmanly, and the next time the band begins to play he will thrill with the best of them—or the worst.

  It is the business of Dr. Parsons, in “Fear and Conventionality,” to prod into certain of these ideas which thus pour into every man’s mind from the circumambient air, sweeping away, like some huge cataract, the feeble resistance that his own powers of ratiocination can offer. In one direction they lay upon us the bonds of what we call etiquette, i.e., the duty of considering the habits and feelings of those around us—and in another direction they throttle us with what we call morality, i.e., the rules which protect the life and property of those around us. But, as Dr. Parsons shows, the boundary between etiquette and morality is very dimly drawn, and it is often impossible to say of a given action whether it is downright immoral or merely a breach of the punctilio. Even when the moral law is plainly running, considerations of mere amenity and politeness may still make themselves felt. Thus, as Dr. Parsons points out, there is even an etiquette of adultery. “The ami de la famille vows not to kiss his mistress in her husband’s house”—not in fear, but “as an expression of conjugal consideration,” as a sign that he has not forgotten the thoughtfulness expected of a gentleman. And in this delicate field, as might be expected, the differences in racial attitudes are almost diametrical. The Englishman, surprising his wife with a lover, sues the rogue for damages and has public opinion behind him, but for an American to do it would be for him to lose caste at once and forever. The plain and only duty of the American is to open upon the fellow with artillery, hitting him if the scene is south of the Potomac and missing him if it is above.

  I confess to an endless interest in such puzzling niceties, and to much curiosity as to their origins and meaning. Why do we Americans take off our hats when we meet a female on the street, and yet stand covered before a male of the highest eminence? A Continental would regard this last as boorish to the last degree; in greeting any equal or superior, male or female, actual or merely conventional, he lifts his head-piece. Why does it strike us as ludicrous to see a man in dress clothes before 6 P.M.? The Continental puts them on whenever he has a solemn visit to make, whether the hour be six or noon. Why do we regard it as indecent to tuck the napkin between the waistcoat buttons—or into the neck—at meals? The Frenchman does it without thought of crime. So does the Italian. So does the German. All three are punctilious men—far more so, indeed, than we are. Why is it bad manners in Europe and America to ask a stranger his or her age, and a friendly attention in China? Why do we regard it as absurd to distinguish a woman by her husband’s title—e.g., Mrs. Judge Jones, Mrs. Professor Smith? In Teutonic and Scandinavian Europe the omission of the title would be looked upon as an affront.

  Such fine distinctions, so ardently supported, raise many interesting questions, but the attempt to answer them quickly gets one bogged. Several years ago I ventured to lift a sad voice against a custom in America: that of married men, in speaking of their wives, employing the full panoply of “Mrs. Brown.” It was my contention—supported, I thought, by logical considerations of the loftiest order—that a husband, in speaking of his wife to his equals, should say “my wife”—that the more formal mode of designation should be reserved for inferiors and for strangers of undetermined position. This contention, somewhat to my surprise, was vigorously combated by various volunteer experts. At first they rested their case upon the mere authority of custom, forgetting that this custom was by no means universal. But finally one of them came forward with a more analytical and cogent defense—the defense, to wit, that “my wife” connoted proprietorship and was thus offensive to a wife’s amour propre. But what of “my sister” and “my mother”? This discussion, al
as, came to nothing. It was impossible to carry it on logically. The essence of all such inquiries lies in the discovery that there is a force within the liver and lights of man that is infinitely more potent than logic. His reflections, perhaps, may take on intellectually recognizable forms, but they seldom lead to intellectually recognizable conclusions.

  Nevertheless, Dr. Parsons offers something in her book that may conceivably help to a better understanding of them, and that is the doctrine that the strange persistence of these rubber-stamp ideas, often unintelligible and sometimes plainly absurd, is due to fear, and that this fear is the product of a very real danger. The safety of human society lies in the assumption that every individual composing it, in a given situation, will act in a manner hitherto approved as seemly. That is to say, he is expected to react to his environment according to a fixed pattern, not necessarily because that pattern is the best imaginable, but simply because it is determined and understood. If he fails to do so, if he reacts in a novel manner—conducive, perhaps, to his better advantage or to what he thinks is his better advantage—then he disappoints the expectation of those around him, and forces them to meet the new situation he has created by the exercise of independent thought. Such independent thought, to a good many men, is quite impossible, and to the overwhelming majority of men, extremely painful. “To all of us,” says Dr. Parsons, “to the animal, to the savage and to the civilized being, few demands are as uncomfortable,… disquieting or fearful, as the call to innovate.… Adaptations we all of us dislike or hate. We dodge or shirk them as best we may.” And the man who compels us to make them against our wills we punish by withdrawing from him that understanding and friendliness which he, in turn, looks for and counts upon. In other words, we set him apart as one who is anti-social and not to be dealt with, and according as his rebellion has been small or great, we call him a boor or a criminal.

  This distrust of the unknown, this fear of doing something unusual, is probably at the bottom of many ideas and institutions that are commonly credited to other motives. For example, monogamy. The orthodox explanation of monogamy is that it is a manifestation of the desire to have and to hold property—that the husband defends his solitary right to his wife, even at the cost of his own freedom, because she is the pearl among his chattels. But Dr. Parsons argues, and with a good deal of plausibility, that the real moving force, in both the husband and the wife, may be merely the force of habit, the antipathy to experiment and innovation. It is easier and more sanitary to stick to the one wife than to risk adventures with another wife—and the immense social pressure that I have just described is all on the side of sticking. Moreover, the indulgence of a habit automatically strengthens its bonds. What we have done once or thought once, we are more apt than we were before to do and think again. Or, as William James put it, “the selection of a particular hole to live in, of a particular mate,… a particular anything, in short, out of a possible multitude … carries with it an insensibility to other opportunities and occasions—an insensibility which can only be described physiologically as an inhibition of new impulses by the habit of old ones already formed. The possession of homes and wives of our own makes us strangely insensible to the charms of other people.… The original impulse which got us homes, wives,… seems to exhaust itself in its first achievements and to leave no surplus energy for reacting on new cases.” Thus the benedict looks no more on women (at least for a while), and the post-honeymoon bride neglects the bedizenments which got her her man.

  In view of the popular or general character of most of the taboos which put a brake upon personal liberty in thought and action—that is to say, in view of their enforcement by people in the mass, and not by definite specialists in conduct—it is quite natural to find that they are of extra force in democratic societies, for it is the distinguishing mark of democratic societies that they exalt the powers of the majority almost infinitely, and tend to deny the minority any rights whatever. Under a society dominated by a small caste the revolutionist in custom has a relatively easy time of it, for the persons whose approval he seeks for his innovation are few in number, and most of them are already habituated to more or less intelligible and independent thinking. But under a democracy he is opposed by a horde so vast that it is a practical impossibility for him, without complex and expensive machinery, to reach and convince all its members, and even if he could reach them he would find most of them quite incapable of rising out of their accustomed grooves. They cannot understand innovations that are genuinely novel and they don’t want to understand them; their one desire is to put them down.

  But how, then, explain the fact that the populace is constantly ravished and set aflame by fresh brigades of moral, political and sociological prophets—that it is forever playing the eager victim to new mountebanks? The explanation lies in the simple circumstance that these performers upon the public midriff are always careful to ladle out nothing actually new, and hence nothing incomprehensible, alarming and accursed. What they offer is always the same old panacea with a new label—the tried and much-loved dose, the colic cure that Mother used to make. Superficially, the United States seems to suffer from an endless and astounding neophilism; actually all its thinking is done within the boundaries of a very small group of political, economic and religious ideas, most of them unsound. For example, there is the fundamental idea of democracy—the idea that all political power should remain in the hands of the populace, that its exercise by superior men is intrinsically immoral. Again, there is the doctrine that the possession of great wealth is a crime—a doctrine half a religious heritage and half the product of mere mob envy. Yet again, there is the peasant suspicion of the man who is having a better time in the world—a suspicion grounded, like the foregoing, partly upon undisguised envy and partly upon archaic and barbaric religious taboos. The whole history of the United States is a history of these three ideas. There has never been an issue before the people that could not be translated into one or another of them.

  Here is a golden opportunity for other investigators: I often wonder that the field is so little explored. Why do otherwise sane men believe that they have immortal souls? What is the genesis of the American axiom that the fine arts are somehow unmanly? What is the precise machinery of the process called falling in love? Why do people believe newspapers?

  At the Mercy of the Mob

  From the American Mercury, Jan., 1929, pp. 123–24.

  A review of CIVILIZATION, by Clive Bell; New York, 1928

  Mr. Bell is, by trade, an art critic, and his chief interest lies in the moderns who have followed Cézanne. In consequence most of his writings are full of the vague and indignant rhetoric that the contemplation of green complexions and hexagonal heads seems to draw from even the best critical minds. But in “Civilization” he so far forgets his customary muttons that he writes smoothly, clearly and oftentimes brilliantly. He studies civilization by the case method: his exhibits are the civilizations that flourished in the Athens of Pericles, in the Florence of the Renaissance, and in the Paris of the Eighteenth Century, before the French Revolution. What had they in common? In particular, what had they in common that was indubitably civilized, and hence completely unimaginable under lower forms of culture? What did they show that we should strive for today, if, as is usually assumed, modern man really wants to be civilized?

  Mr. Bell’s answer is too long and complicated to be summarized in a paragraph, but parts of it may be given. It is one of the fundamental characteristics of a true civilization, he says, that it provides means for the ready exchange of ideas, and encourages the process. There must be sufficient people with time to hear them and the equipment to comprehend them, and they must be extremely tolerant of novelty. The concept of heresy, says Mr. Bell, is incompatible with civilization, and so is the concept of impropriety. But the civilized man yet has his pruderies. He cannot be impolite. He cannot be gross. He cannot be cheap and vulgar. He cannot be cocksure. Facing what he regards as error, he assaults it with all a
rms, but he never mistakes error for crime. He is free from deadly solemnity, and cultivates his senses as well as his mind. A society made up wholly of philosophers would not be civilized, nor one made up only of artists; there must also be charming women and good cooks. Creation is necessary; there must be an urge to progress; but appreciation is quite as needful. Perhaps the finest flower of civilization is not the creator at all, but the connoisseur. His existence presupposes economic security. It is as essential to civilization as enlightenment. A poor society cannot be wholly civilized.

  Mr. Bell makes much of the difference between the civilized individual and a civilized society. The former may exist anywhere, and at any time. There may be men and women hidden in Oklahoma who would be worthy, if he were alive, to consort with Beethoven. It is not only possible; it is probable. But Oklahoma is still quite uncivilized, for such persons are extremely rare there, and give no color to the communal life. The typical Oklahoman is as barbarous as an Albanian or a man of Inner Mongolia. He is almost unaware of the ideas that engage the modern world; in so far as he has heard of them he is hostile to them. He lives and dies on a low plane, pursuing sordid and ridiculous objectives and taking his reward in hoggish ways. His political behavior is that of a barbarian, and his religious notions are almost savage. Of urbanity he has no more than a traffic cop. His virtues are primitive and his vices are disgusting.

  It is not, of course, by examining the populace that civilizations are judged. The mob is always inferior, and even under high cultures it may be ignorant and degraded. But there can be no civilization so long as its ideas are accepted and have the force of custom. A minority must stand above it, sufficient in strength to resist its corruption. There must be freedom for the superior man—economic freedom primarily, but also personal freedom. He must be free to think what he pleases and to do what he pleases, and what he thinks and does must be the standard of the whole community, the accepted norm. The trouble in Oklahoma, as in the United States as a whole, is that the civilized minority is still at the mercy of the mob. It is not only disdained as heretical and unsafe; it is despised as immoral. One of the central aims of the laws is to curb it. It is to be lifted up to the moral level of the mob. Thus civilization has hard sledding among us. The free functioning of those capable of it is deliberately impeded. But it resists that hampering, and in the fact lies hope for the future. The big cities, at least, begin to move toward genuine civilization. They will attain to it if, when and as they throw off the yoke of the rustic Bible-preachers. Their own mobs are become disciplined and quiescent, but they still face danger from the dunghill Goths and Huns. The history of the United States during the next century will probably be a history of a successful revolt of the cities. They alone are capable of civilization. There has never been a civilized yokel.