the just and genial man will attempt to take pleasure in what surrounds him when it is capable of giving him amusement, always supposing that it does not move him to wrath. i mean, that a man who is both just and companionable will rather laugh than turn sour at the discomforts of this world. for example, consider the pedant.

never was such an exasperating fellow; never was there a time when he ran riot as he does now! on which account many are bewildered and many sad, they know not why, and many who know their time are soured, but a few (and i hope they may be an increasing few) are neither bewildered nor saddened nor soured by this spectacle, but claim to be made merry—and are.

what is a pedant?

[pg 13]

there are many fixed human types, and every one of them has a name. there is the priest, there is the merchant, there is the noble—and there is the pedant. each of these types are known by a distinctive name, and to most men they call up a clear image, but because they are types of mankind they are a little too complicated for definition. nevertheless i will have a try at the pedant.

the essence of the pedant is twofold, first that he takes his particular science for something universal, second, that he holds with the grip of faith certain set phrases in that science which he has been taught. i say "with the grip of faith"; it is the only metaphor applicable; he has for these phrases a violent affection. not only does he not question them, but he does not know that they can be questioned. when he repeats them it is in a fixed and hierarchic voice. when they are denied he does not answer, but flies into a passion which, were he destined to an accession of power, might in the near future turn to persecution.

[pg 14]

alas! that the noblest thing in man should be perverted to such a use; for faith when it is exercised upon those unprovable things which are in tune with things provable, illuminates and throws into a right perspective everything we know. but the faith of the pedant!...

the pedant crept in upon the eclipse of our religion; his reign is therefore brief. perhaps he is also but a reflection of that vast addition to material knowledge which glorified the last century. perhaps it is the hurry, and the rapidity of our declining time, which makes it necessary for us to accept ready-made phrases and to act on rules of thumb good or bad. perhaps it is the whirlpool and turmoil of classes which has pitchforked into the power of the pedant whole groups of men who used to escape him. perhaps it is the devil. whatever it is it is there.

you see it more in england than in any other european country. it runs all through the fibre of our modern literature and our modern[pg 15] comment, like the strings of a cancer. come, let us have a few examples.

there is "the anglo-saxon race." it does not exist. it is not there. it is no more there than baal or moloch or the philosopher's stone, or the universal mercury. there never was any such race. there were once hundreds and hundreds of years ago a certain number of people (how many we do not know) talking a local german dialect in what is now hampshire and berkshire. to this dialect historians have been pleased to give the name of anglo-saxon, and that is all it means. if you pin your pedant down to clear expression, saying to him, "come, now, fellow, out with it! what is this anglo-saxon race of yours?" you find that he means a part (and a part only) of such people in the world as habitually speak the english language, or one of its dialects: that part only which in a muddy way he sympathises with; that part which is more or less of his religion, and more or less conformable to his own despicable self. it does not include the irish, it does not [pg 16]include the negroes of the united states, but it does include a horde of german jews, and a mixed rabble of every origin under the sun sweating in the slums of the new world.

why then you may ask, and you may well ask, does the man use the phrase "anglo-saxon" at all?

the answer is simple. it smacks—or did originally smack—of learning. among the innumerable factors of modern europe one, and only one, was the invasion of the eastern part of this island (and only the eastern part) by pirates from beyond the north sea. the most of these pirates (but by no means all) belonged either to a loose conglomeration of tribes whom the romans called saxones, or to a little maritime tribe called angles. true, the full knowledge of that event is a worthy subject of study; there is a good week's reading upon it in original authorities, and i can imagine a conscientious man who would read slowly and make notes, spending a fortnight upon the half dozen contemporary sources of knowledge we possess[pg 17] upon these little barbarian peoples. but, lord! what a superstructure the pedant has raised upon that narrow base!

then there is "alcohol"; what "alcohol" does to the human body, and the rest of it; to read the absurd fellows one would imagine that this stuff "alcohol" was something you could see and handle; something with which humanity was familiar, like beef, oak, sand, chalk, and the rest. not a bit of it. it does not exist any more than the "anglo-saxon race" exists. it is a chemical extraction. and in connection with it you have something very common to all such folly, to wit, gross insufficiency even in the line to which its pedantry is devoted. for this chemical abstraction of theirs may be expressed in many forms and it is only in one of these forms that they mouth out their interminable and pretentious dogmas. humanity, healthy european humanity that is, the jolly place called christendom, has drunk from immemorial time wine and beer and cider. it has been noticed (also from immemorial time) that[pg 18] if a man drank too much of any of these things he got drunk, and that if he got drunk often his health and capacity declined. there is the important fact which humanity has never missed, and without which the rhodomontades of the pedant would have no foothold. it is because his pretended knowledge relates to a real evil with which humanity is acquainted that people listen to him at all on the subject. he ill requites their confidence! he exploits and bamboozles them to the top of their bent. he terrifies the weak victims (and the weaker witnesses) of drunkenness and often, i am sorry to say, picks their pockets as well. i can call to mind as i write more than one pedant who by harping on this word "alcohol" has got very considerable sums out of the public. well, it is the public's fault! vult decipi et decipiatur. and a murrain on it—also a quinsy!

then there is "the fourth gospel": your pedant never calls it the gospel of s. john, as his fathers have done before him for two thousand years. he must give it a pretentious name[pg 19] and then, because it happens to be cram-full of christian doctrine, he must deny its authenticity. there is not a vestige of proof against that authenticity, nor for that matter a vestige of sound historical proof in favour of it. like everything else in the fundamental structure of the faith from the mass to the apocalypse, it has for witness the tradition of the church, and is no more acceptable as an historic document of the type of the "agricola" or the "catiline orations" than any one of the other gospels. there is not an event mentioned in the whole of the new testament which has true historic value. the whole thing depends upon belief, and belief in a corporate teaching body. yet how your pedant has flourished upon this same fourth gospel! now he is "reverently accepting it," now "reluctantly rejecting it"; he fondles it as a cat does a mouse, and when you try to come to handgrips with him he will first (taking you for a simple and unlearned man) put you off with silly technicalities. you have but to read up the meaning of these [pg 20]technicalities in the dictionary to find that he is talking through his hat. he has no evidence, and there can be no evidence, as to whether the gospel was or was not written by the traditional figure which the catholic church calls s. john, and all he has to say on the matter would not tempt the most gullible gambler to invest a penny on a ten-to-one chance.

then there is "the conflict between religion and science." what the pedant really means when he uses that phrase (and he has not only used it threadbare but has fed it by the ton to the recently enfranchised and to the vulgar in general) is the conflict between a mystical doctrine and every-day common sense. that conflict has always existed and always will exist. if you say to any man who has not heard of such a thing before "i will kill you and yet you will survive" or "this water is not ordinary water, it does more than wash you or assuage your thirst, it will also cure blindness, and make whole a diseased limb," the man who has not heard such things before, will call you a liar;[pg 21] of course he will, and small blame to him. we can only generalise from repeated experience, and oddities and transcendental things are not within the field of repeated experience. but "science" has nothing to do with that. the very fact that they use the word religion is enough to show the deplorable insufficiency of their minds. what religion? your pedant is far too warped and hypocritical to say exactly what he means even in so simple a case; so he uses the word "religion," a term which may apply to thugs with their doctrine of the sanctity of murder, or to the mahommedans who are not bound to any transcendental doctrine but only to a rule of life, or to buddhists who have but a philosophy, or to plymouth brethren, or to head hunters.

i said at the beginning of this that the pedant was food for laughter, rather than for anger.

humph!