The good American is, as a rule, pretty hard upon roguery, but he
atones for his austerity by an amiable toleration of rogues. His
only requirement is that he must personally know the rogues. We all
“denounce” thieves loudly enough if we have not the honor of their
acquaintance. If we have, why, that is different—unless they have
the actual odor of the slum or the prison about them. We may know
them guilty, but we meet them, shake hands with them, drink with them
and, if they happen to be wealthy, or otherwise great, invite them
to our houses, and deem it an honor to frequent theirs. We do not
“approve their methods”—let that be understood; and thereby they are
sufficiently punished. The notion that a knave cares a pin what is
thought of his ways by one who is civil and friendly to himself appears
to have been invented by a humorist. On the vaudeville stage of Mars it
would probably have made his fortune.
I know men standing high in journalism who to-day will “expose”
and bitterly “denounce” a certain rascality and to-morrow will be
hobnobbing with the rascals whom they have named. I know legislators
of renown who habitually raise their voices against the dishonest
schemes of some “trust magnate,” and are habitually seen in familiar
conversation with him. Indubitably these be hypocrites all. Between the
head and the heart of a man of this objectionable kind is a wall of
adamant, and neither knows what the other is doing.
If social recognition were denied to rogues they would be fewer by
many. Some would only the more diligently cover their tracks along the
devious paths of unrighteousness, but others would do so much violence
to their consciences as to renounce the disadvantages of rascality for
those of an honest life. An unworthy person dreads nothing so much as
the withholding of an honest hand, the slow, inevitable stroke of an
ignoring eye.
We have rich rogues because we have “respectable” persons who are not
ashamed to take them by the hand, to be seen with them, to say that
they know them. In such it is treachery to censure them; to cry out
when robbed by them is to turn state’s evidence.
One may smile upon a rascal (most of us do so many times a day) if
one does not know him to be a rascal, and has not said he is; but
knowing him to be, or having said he is, to smile upon him is to be a
hypocrite—just a plain hypocrite or a sycophantic hypocrite, according
to the station in life of the rascal smiled upon. There are more
plain hypocrites than sycophantic ones, for there are more rascals
of no consequence than rich and distinguished ones, though they get
fewer smiles each. The American people will be plundered as long as
the American character is what it is; as long as it is tolerant of
successful knaves; as long as American ingenuity draws an imaginary
distinction between a man’s public character and his private—his
commercial and his personal. In brief, the American people will be
plundered as long as they deserve to be plundered. No human law can
stop it, none ought to stop it, for that would abrogate a higher and
more salutary law: “As ye sow ye shall reap.”
In a sermon by the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst is the passage following:
“The story of all our Lord’s dealings with sinners leaves upon the mind
the invariable impression, if only the story be read sympathetically
and earnestly, that He always felt kindly towards the transgressor,
but could have no tenderness of regard toward the transgression. There
is no safe and successful dealing with sin of any kind save as that
distinction is appreciated and made a continual factor in our feelings
and efforts.”
If Dr. Parkhurst will read his New Testament more understandingly he
will observe that Christ’s kindly feeling to transgressors was not
to be counted on by sinners of every kind, and it was not always in
evidence; for example, when he flogged the moneychangers out of the
temple. Nor is Dr. Parkhurst himself any too amiably disposed toward
the children of darkness. It was not by mild words and gentle means
that he hurled the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low
degree. Such revolutions as he set afoot are not made with spiritual
rosewater; there must be the contagion of a noble indignation fueled
with harder wood than abstractions. The people can not be mustered and
incited to action by the spectacle of a man fighting something that
does not fight back. It was men that Dr. Parkhurst was trouncing—not
their crimes—not Crime. He may fancy himself “dowered with the hate of
hate, the scorn of scorn,” but in reality he does not hate hate but
hates the hateful, and scorns, not scorn but the scornworthy.
It is singular with what tenacity this amusing though mischievous
superstition keeps its hold upon the human mind—this grave, _bona fide_
personification of abstractions and the funny delusion that it is
possible to hate or love them. Sin is not a thing; there is no existing
object corresponding to any of the mere counter-words that are properly
named abstract nouns. One can no more hate sin or love virtue than
one can hate a vacuum (which Nature—itself imaginary—was once by the
scientists of the period solemnly held to do) or love one of the three
dimensions. We may think that while loving a sinner we hate the sin,
but that is not so; if anything is hated it is other sinners of the
same kind, who are not quite so close to us.
The French have a saying to the effect that to know all is to pardon
all; and doubtless with an omniscient insight into the causes of
character we should find the field of moral responsibility pretty
thickly strewn with extenuating circumstances very suitable indeed
for consideration by a god who has had a hand in besetting “with
pitfall and with gin” the road we are to “wander in.” But I submit
that universal forgiveness would hardly do as a working principle.
Even those who are most apt and facile with the incident of the woman
taken in adultery commonly cherish a secret respect for the doctrine of
eternal damnation; and some of them are known to pin their faith to the
penal code of their state. Moreover, there is some reason to believe
that the sinning woman, being “taken,” was penitent—they usually are
when found out.
“But,” says Citizen Goodheart, who thinks with difficulty, “shall I
throw over my friend when he is ‘in trouble’?” Yes, when convinced that
he deserves to be in trouble; throw him all the harder and the further
because he is your friend. In addition to his particular offense
against society he has disgraced _you_. If there are to be lenity and
charity let them go to the criminal who has foreborne to involve you
in his shame. It were a pretty state of affairs if an undetected scamp,
fearing exposure, could make you a co-defendant by so easy a precaution
as securing your acquaintance and regard. Don’t throw the first stone,
of course, but when convinced that your friend is a proper target,
heave away with a right hearty good-will, and let the stone be of
serviceable weight and delivered with a good aim.
I care nothing for principles—they are lumber and rubbish. What
concerns our happiness and welfare, as affectable by our fellowmen, is
conduct. “Principles, not men,” is a rogue’s cry; rascality’s counsel
to stupidity, the noise of the duper duping on his dupe. He shouts
it most loudly and with the keenest sense of its advantage who most
desires inattention to his own conduct, or to that forecast of it,
his character. As to sin, that has an abundance of expounders and is
already universally known to be wicked. What more can be said against
it, and why go on repeating that? The thing is a trifle wordworn,
whereas the sinner cometh up as a flower every day, fresh, ingenuous
and inviting. Sin is not at all dangerous to society; what does all the
mischief is the sinner. Crime has no arms to thrust into the public
treasury and the private; no hands with which to cut a throat; no
tongue to wreck a reputation withal. I would no more attack it than I
would attack an isosceles triangle, or Hume’s “phantasm floating in a
void.” My chosen enemy must be something that has a skin for my switch,
a head for my cudgel—something that can smart and ache. I have no
quarrel with abstractions; so far as I know they are all good citizens.