Mencken Chrestomathy (Vintage) Read online

  First Vintage Books Edition, May 1982

  Copyright © 1916, 1918, 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1924, 1926, 1927

  1932, 1934, 1942, 1949 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

  Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by

  Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada

  by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally

  published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in June 1949.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis), 1880-1956.

  A Mencken chrestomathy.

  Reprint. Originally published: New York: Knopf, 1949.

  I. Title.

  [PS3525.E43A6 1982] 818′.5209 81-52593

  eISBN: 978-0-307-80887-5 AACR2

  v3.1

  PREFACE

  IN my title I revive the word chrestomathy in its true sense of “a collection of choice passages from an author or authors,” and ignore the late addition of “especially one compiled to assist in the acquirement of a language.” In the latter significance the term is often used by linguists, and some of the chrestomathies issued by them in recent years—for example, Dr. Edgar H. Sturtevant’s “Hittite Chrestomathy” of 1935 – are works of capital importance. But I see no reason why they should have a monopoly on what is not, after all, their invention. Nor do I see why I should be deterred by the fact that, when this book was announced, a few newspaper smarties protested that the word would be unfamiliar to many readers, as it was to them. Thousands of excellent nouns, verbs and adjectives that have stood in every decent dictionary for years are still unfamiliar to such ignoramuses, and I do not solicit their patronage. Let them continue to recreate themselves with whodunits, and leave my vocabulary and me to my own customers, who have all been to school. Chrestomathy is actually more than a century old in English, which makes it quite as ancient as scientist, which was invented by William Whewell in 1840, or anesthetic, which was proposed by Oliver Wendell Holmes I in 1846. In Greek, where it was contrived by joining chrestos, meaning useful, and mathein, meaning to learn, it goes back to Proclus Disdochos, who used it in Athens in the year 450.

  Whether anyone will find anything useful in what follows, or learn from it otherwise, is not for me to guess, but at all events I like the word better than the omnibus, reader, treasury, miscellany, panorama and portable that have been so horribly overworked of late. The aim of the volume is simply to present a selection from my out-of-print writings, many of them now almost unobtainable. They come mostly from books, but others are magazine or newspaper pieces that never got between covers, and a few of them are notes never previously published at all. I have an enormous collection of such notes, mainly accumulated for books that, after long struggles, failed to get themselves written, and some day I may gather them into a couple of volumes. The books levied on here are the six of the “Prejudices” series, “A Book of Burlesques,” “Damn: a Book of Calumny,” “In Defense of Women,” “Making a President,” “Notes on Democracy” and “Treatise on Right and Wrong.” All save two of these had fair successes in their day, and I still receive frequent correspondence about them, but they are so full of the discussion of matters now of only historical interest that I have hesitated to let them be reprinted in toto. It seemed to be much more rational to dig out of them the material that continues to be of more or less current interest, and to print all of it in one volume, at a price substantially less than the cost of a dozen. I have done my own editing, and the judicious may observe some evidence that I have occasionally allowed partiality to corrupt judgment, but I assume that any other editor would have been guilty of a similar softness. Some of the lesser pieces following—for example, “The Sahara of the Bozart,” my bathtub hoax and my translation of “The Declaration of Independence” into the American vulgate—have carried on a vigorous life for years, and I have therefore thought it worth while to give them one more embalming before consigning them to statistics and the devil.

  In general, I have made few changes in the original texts, and in consequence several thumpingly false prophecies and other howlers are preserved. But when it seemed to make for clarity I have not hesitated to change the present tense into the past, and to omit repetitive and otherwise unnecessary passages. In all cases where I could determine it I have given the date and place of original publication. My later books—for example, “The American Language” and its Supplements and the three “Days” books—are not represented, for all of them are still in print. For the same reason I have passed over “The Artist,” “Christmas Story” and “Treatise on the Gods,” the last of which came out in a revised edition so recently as 1946. What the total of my published writings comes to I don’t know precisely, but certainly it must run well beyond 5,000,000 words. A good deal of it, of course, was journalism pure and simple—dead almost before the ink which printed it was dry. But I certainly do not regret that I gave so much of my time and energy, especially in my earlier years, to this journalism, for I had a swell time concocting it, and in its day it got some attention. Even in my later years, with wisdom radiating from me like heat from a stove, I have occasionally gone back to it, to my complete satisfaction and the apparent approval (or horror) of the customers. There is something delightful about getting an idea on paper while it is still hot and charming, and seeing it in print before it begins to pale and stale. My happiest days have been spent in crowded press-stands, recording and belaboring events that were portentous in their day, but are now forgotten. These recordings usually died with the events, but I am well aware, as an old book reviewer, that multitudes of books have died too, including many once gloated over as masterpieces.

  Those who explore the ensuing pages will find them marked by a certain ribaldry, even when they discuss topics commonly regarded as grave. I do not apologize for this, for life in the Republic has always seemed to me to be far more comic than serious. We live in a land of abounding quackeries, and if we do not learn how to laugh we succumb to the melancholy disease which afflicts the race of viewers-with-alarm. I have had too good a time of it in this world to go down that chute. I have witnessed, in my day, the discovery, enthronement and subsequent collapse of a vast army of uplifters and world-savers, and am firmly convinced that all of them were mountebanks. We produce such mountebanks in greater number than any other country, and they climb to heights seldom equalled elsewhere. Nevertheless, we survive, and not only survive but also flourish. In no other country known to me is life as safe and agreeable, taking one day with another, as it is in These States. Even in a great Depression few if any starve, and even in a great war the number who suffer by it is vastly surpassed by the number who fatten on it and enjoy it. Thus my view of my country is predominantly tolerant and amiable. I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.

  Baltimore H. L. MENCKEN

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Preface

  I. Homo Sapiens

  The Life of Man

  Man’s Place in Nature

  Meditation on Meditation

  Coda

  II. Types of Men

  The Romantic

  The Skeptic

  The Believer

  The Toiler

  The Physician

  The Scientist

  The Business Man

  The King

  The Metaphysician

  The Average Man

  The Truth-Seeker

  The Relative

 
; The Relative-in-Law

  The Friend

  The Philosopher

  The Altruist

  The Iconoclast

  The Family Man

  The Bachelor

  The Good Man

  The Eternal Male

  The Slave

  III. Women

  The Feminine Mind

  Women as Outlaws

  The Cold Woman

  Intermezzo on Monogamy

  The Libertine

  The Lure of Beauty

  The Incomparable Buzz-Saw

  The War Between Man and Woman

  The Nature of Love

  The Eternal Farce

  The Helpmate

  The Sex Uproar

  Women as Christians

  The Lady of Joy

  A Loss to Romance

  The Balance Sheet

  Compulsory Marriage

  Cavia Cobaya

  Art and Sex

  Offspring

  Sex Hygiene

  Eugenics

  The Double Standard

  The Supreme Comedy

  Woman as Realpolitiker

  After-Thoughts

  Romantic Interlude

  Apologia

  IV. Religion

  The Cosmic Secretariat

  The Nature of Faith

  The Restoration of Beauty

  Holy Clerks

  The Collapse of Protestantism

  Immune

  A New Use for Churches

  Free Will

  Sabbath Meditation

  The Immortality of the Soul

  Miracles

  Quod est Veritas?

  The Doubter’s Reward

  Holy Writ

  The Powers of the Air

  Memorial Service

  V. Morals

  The Origin of Morality

  The Good Citizen

  Free Will Again

  An Ethical Dilemma

  Honor

  VI. Crime and Punishment

  The Criminal Law

  The Penalty of Death

  On Hanging a Man

  Cops and Their Ways

  VII. Death

  On Suicide

  Under the Elms

  Exeunt Omnes

  Clarion Call to Poets

  VIII. Government

  Its Inner Nature

  More of the Same

  The Politician

  Governmental Theories

  Note on a Cuff

  IX. Democracy

  Its Origins

  A Glance Ahead

  The Democratic Citizen

  A Blind Spot

  Rivals to Democracy

  Last Words

  X. Americans

  The Anglo-Saxon

  American Culture

  XI. The South

  The Sahara of the Bozart

  The Confederate Mind

  The Calamity of Appomattox

  A Class A Blunder

  XII. History

  Historians

  Forgotten Men

  Revolution

  New England

  New Deal No. 1

  The Greeks

  War

  A Bad Guess

  Undying Glories

  XIII. Statesmen

  Pater Patriæ

  Abraham Lincoln

  Portrait of an Immortal

  A Good Man in a Bad Trade

  Roosevelt I

  In Memoriam: W. J. B.

  The Archangel Woodrow

  Coolidge

  Imperial Purple

  XIV. American Immortals

  Mr. Justice Holmes

  Professor Veblen

  John D.

  XV. Odd Fish

  A Good Man Gone Wrong

  Valentino

  An American Bonaparte

  Sister Aimée

  XVI. Economics

  To Him That Hath

  Capitalism

  On Getting a Living

  Personal Note

  XVII. Pedagogy

  The Educational Process

  Travail

  Classical Learning

  The Boon of Culture

  Bearers of the Torch

  XVIII. Psychology

  Psychologists in a Fog

  The Mind of the Slave

  The Crowd

  The Art Eternal

  XIX. Science

  Hypothesis

  Darwin

  Caveat Against Science

  The Eternal Conundrum

  The Universe

  The Boons of Civilization

  XX. Quackery

  Christian Science

  Chiropractic

  The Fruits of Comstockery

  The Foundations of Quackery

  Hooey from the Orient

  The Executive Secretary

  The Husbandman

  Zoos

  XXI. The Human Body

  Pathological Note

  The Striated Muscle Fetish

  Moral Tale

  Comfort for the Ailing

  Eugenic Note

  XXII. Utopian Flights

  A Purge for Legislatures

  A Chance for Millionaires

  The Malevolent Jobholder

  Portrait of an Ideal World

  XXIII. Souvenirs of a Journalist

  The Hills of Zion

  Dempsey vs. Carpentier

  How Legends are Made

  Lodge

  The Perihelion of Prohibition

  The End of Prohibition

  The New Deal

  XXIV. Criticism

  The Critical Process

  Examination for Critics

  XXV. Literature

  The Divine Afflatus

  The Poet and His Art

  The New Poetry

  On Style

  Authorship as a Trade

  The Author at Work

  Foreign Poisons

  The Blue-Nose

  Folk-Literature

  The Literary Amenities

  The Author’s League

  XXVI. Literati

  The Moonstruck Pastor

  Aristotelian Obsequies

  Poe

  Whitman

  Memorial Service

  Footnote

  Credo

  The Man Within

  The Dean

  Ambrose Bierce

  Stephen Crane

  Hamlin Garland

  Henry James

  Dreiser

  Ring Lardner

  Huneker: a Memory

  Joseph Conrad

  XXVII. Music

  Beethoven

  Schubert

  Brahms

  Wagner

  More of the Same

  Johann Strauss

  Tempo di Valse

  Richard Strauss

  Bach at Bethlehem

  Opera

  Music as a Trade

  The Music-Lover

  The Reward of the Artist

  Masters of Tone

  XXVIII. The Lesser Arts

  Hand-Painted Oil Paintings

  Art Critics

  The New Architecture

  Art Galleries

  Art and Nature

  The Artist

  The Greenwich Village Complex

  Reflection on the Drama

  Actors

  The Comedian

  Arrière-pensée

  Oratory

  The Libido for the Ugly

  XXIX. Buffooneries

  Death: a Philosophical Discussion

  The Declaration of Independence in American

  The Visionary

  A Neglected Anniversary

  Star-Spangled Men

  The Incomparable Physician

  A Smart Set Circular

  Suite Américaine

  People and Things

  XXX. Sententiæ

  The Mind of Man

  Masculum et Feminam Creavit Eos

  The Citizen and the State

  Arcan
a Cœlestia

  This and That

  XXXI. Appendix

  Catechism

  Epitaph

  About the Author

  I. HOMO SAPIENS

  The Life of Man

  From PREJUDICES: THIRD SERIES, 1922, pp. 120–32.

  First printed in the Smart Set, Oct., 1918, pp. 80–81

  THE OLD anthropomorphic notion that the life of the whole universe centers in the life of man—that human existence is the supreme expression of the cosmic process—this notion seems to be happily on its way toward the Sheol of exploded delusions. The fact is that the life of man, as it is more and more studied in the light of general biology, appears to be more and more empty of significance. Once apparently the chief concern and masterpiece of the gods, the human race now begins to bear the aspect of an accidental by-product of their vast, inscrutable and probably nonsensical operations. A blacksmith making a horse-shoe produces something almost as brilliant and mysterious—the shower of sparks. But his eye and thought, as we know, are not on the sparks, but on the horse-shoe. The sparks, indeed, constitute a sort of disease of the horse-shoe; their existence depends upon a wasting of its tissue. In the same way, perhaps, man is a local disease of the cosmos—a kind of pestiferous eczema or urethritis. There are, of course, different grades of eczema, and so are there different grades of men. No doubt a cosmos afflicted with nothing worse than an infection of Beethovens would not think it worth while to send for the doctor. But a cosmos infested by Socialists, Scotsmen and stockbrokers must suffer damnably. No wonder the sun is so hot and the moon is so diabetically green.

  Man’s Place in Nature

  From the same. First printed in the Smart Set, Aug., 1919, pp. 61–62

  As I say, the anthropomorphic theory of the world is made absurd by modern biology—but that is not saying, of course, that it will ever be abandoned by the generality of men. To the contrary, they will cherish it in proportion as it becomes more and more dubious. Today, indeed, it is cherished as it was never cherished in the Ages of Faith, when the doctrine that man was god-like was at least ameliorated by the doctrine that woman was vile. What else is behind charity, philanthropy, pacifism, the uplift, all the rest of the current sentimentalities? One and all, these sentimentalities are based upon the notion that man is a glorious and ineffable animal, and that his continued existence in the world ought to be facilitated and insured. But this notion is obviously full of fatuity. As animals go, even in so limited a space as our world, man is botched and ridiculous. Few other brutes are so stupid or so cowardly. The commonest yellow dog has far sharper senses and is infinitely more courageous, not to say more honest and dependable. The ants and the bees are, in many ways, far more intelligent and ingenious; they manage their government with vastly less quarreling, wastefulness and imbecility. The lion is more beautiful, more dignified, more majestic. The antelope is swifter and more graceful. The ordinary house-cat is cleaner. The horse, foamed by labor, has a better smell. The gorilla is kinder to his children and more faithful to his wife. The ox and the ass are more industrious and serene. But most of all, man is deficient in courage, perhaps the noblest quality of them all. He is not only mortally afraid of all other animals of his own weight or half his weight—save a few that he has debased by artificial inbreeding –; he is even mortally afraid of his own kind—and not only of their fists and hooves, but even of their sniggers.