M. Vaillant, the French gentleman who lacked a “good opinion of the
law,” but was singularly rich in the faith that by means of gunpowder
and flying nails humanity could be brought into a nearer relation
with reason, righteousness and the will of God, is said to have been
nearly devoid of nose. Of this privation M. Vaillant made but slight
account, as was natural, seeing that for but a brief season did he need
even so much of nose as remained to him. Yet before its effacement by
premature disruption of his own petard it must have had a certain value
to him—he would not wantonly have renounced it; and had he foreseen
its extinction by the bomb the iron views of that controversial
device would probably have been denied expression. Albeit (so say the
scientists) doomed to eventual elimination from the scheme of being,
and to the anarchist even now something of an accusing conscience, the
nose is indubitably an excellent thing on man.
We have grown so accustomed to the presence of this feature that we
take it as a matter of course; its absence is one of the most notable
phenomena of our observation—“an occasion long to be remembered,” as
the society reporter hath it. Yet “abundant testimony sheweth” that
but a few centuries ago noseless men and women were so common all
over Europe as to provoke but little comment when seen and (in their
disagreeable way) heard. They abounded in all the various walks of
life: there were honored burgomasters without noses; wealthy merchants,
great scholars, artists, teachers. Amongst the humbler classes nasal
destitution was almost as frequent as pecuniary—in the humblest of all,
the most common of all. Writing in the thirteenth century, a chronicler
mentions the retainers and servants of certain Suabian noblemen as
having hardly a whole ear among them—for until a comparatively recent
period man’s tenure of his ears was even more precarious than that
of his nose. In 1436, when a Bavarian woman, Agnes Bernaurian, wife
of Duke Albert the Pious, was dropped off the bridge at Prague, she
persisted in rising to the surface and trying to escape; so the
executioner gave himself the trouble to put a long pole into her hair
and hold her under. A contemporary account of the matter hints that her
disorderly behavior at so solemn a moment was due to the pain caused
by removal of her nose; but as her execution was by order of her own
father it seems more probable that this “extreme penalty of the law”
was not imposed. Without a doubt, though, possession of a nose was an
uncommon (and rather barren) distinction in those days among “persons
designated to assist the executioner,” as the condemned were civilly
called. Nor, as already said, was it any too common among persons not
as yet consecrated to that service: “Few,” says the chronicler, “have
two noses, and many have none.”
Man’s firmer grasp upon his nose in this our day and generation is
not altogether due to invention of the handkerchief. The genesis and
development of his right to his own nose have been accompanied with a
corresponding advance in possessory rights all along the line of his
belongings—his ears, his fingers and toes, his skin, his bones, his
wife and her young, his clothes and his labor—everything that is (and
that once was not) his. In Europe and America to-day these things can
not be taken away from even the humblest and poorest without somebody
wanting to “know the reason why.” In every decade the nation that is
most powerful upon the seas incurs voluntarily a vast expense of blood
and treasure in suppressing a slave trade which in no way is injurious
to her interests, nor to the interests of any but the slaves.
To-day even the lowliest incapable of all Nature’s aborted has a nose
that he dares to call his own and bite off at his own sweet will.
Unfortunately, with an unthinkable fatuity we permit him to be told
that but for the very agencies that have put him in possession he could
successfully assert a God-given and world-old right to the noses of
others. At present the honest fellow is mainly engaged in refreshing
himself upon his own nose, consuming that comestible with avidity
and precision; but the Vaillants, Ravechols, Mosts and Hearsts are
pointing his appetite to other snouts than his, and inspiring him with
rhinophagic ambition. Meantime the rest of us are using these imperiled
organs to snore with.
’Tis a fine, resonant and melodious snore, but it is not going to last:
there is to be a rude awakening. We shall one day get our eyes open to
the fact that scoundrels like Vaillant are neither few nor distant.
We shall learn that our blind dependence upon the magic of words is a
fatuous error; that the fortuitous arrangement of consonants and vowels
which we worship as Liberty is of slight efficacy in disarming the
lunatic brandishing a bomb. Liberty, indeed! The murderous wretch loves
it a deal better than we, and wants more of it. Liberty! one almost
sickens of the word, so quick and glib it is on every lip—so destitute
of meaning.
There is no such thing as abstract liberty; it is not even thinkable.
If you ask me, “Do you favor liberty?” I reply, “Liberty for whom to
do what?” Just now I distinctly favor the liberty of the law to cut
off the noses of anarchists caught red-handed or red-tongued. If they
go in for mutilation let them feel what it is like. If they are not
satisfied with the way that things have been going on since the wife of
Duke Albert the Pious was held under water with a pole, and since the
servitors of the Suabian nobleman cherished their vestigial ears, it is
to be presumed that they favor reversion to that happy state. There is
grave objection, but if we must we will. Let us begin (with moderation)
by reverting _them_.
I favor mutilation for anarchists convicted of killing or inciting to
kill—mutilation followed by death; for those who merely deny the right
and expediency of law, plain mutilation—which might advantageously take
the form of removal of the tongue. Why not? Where is the injustice?
Surely he who denies men’s right to make laws will not invoke the laws
that they have wickedly made! That were to say that they must not
protect themselves, yet are bound to protect him. What! if I beat him
will he call the useless and mischievous constabulary? If I draw out
his tongue shall he (in the sign-language) demand it back, and failing
of restitution (for surely I should cut it clean away) shall he have
the law on me—the naughty law, instrument of the oppressor? Why, that
“goes neare to be fonny!”