VII.]

THE CORRUPTION OF THE INTELLECT. 171

An eminent French writer has observed that the two most distinctive "notes" of our great cities are the corruption of the flesh and the corruption of the intellect. Facts too amply bear out his judgment. The vastness of such places as London, Paris, Berlin, New York affords a cloak, which is wanting in the greater number of provincial towns, for the deliberate and habitual infraction of those precepts of the moral law that have reference to the virtue of purity. Systematic, organised unchastity is especially the sin of great cities. And what this vice is in its own sphere, the vice of mendacity is in another range, as striking at the very root of intellectual soundness, as being, in the words of the Council of Trent, "a disease of the mind, generally incurable." Now it cannot be doubted that journalism is conducted under conditions which tend to nourish this vice. The newspaper is, by its very nature, an ephemeral production, read for an hour and then cast aside, and probably never looked at again. Its assertions have done their work before an opportunity of correcting them is presented. Besides, it rests with editors whether contradictions of false and misleading allegations, which their journals may contain, shall appear in them or not. And it is manifest to all men that the considerations by which this question is determined are, in a vast majority of instances, wholly unethical. Again, the conditions under which the newspaper publicist works are extremely unfavourable to the cultivation

of the virtue of veracity. He is called upon suddenly to expound views which shall strike his readers as profound, well-considered, or original, about subjects of which, very likely, he knows nothing truly or exactly. Or he is summoned to essay the defence of "principles" to which he is wholly indifferent. Or he is bidden to attack some institution, some interest, some work, which whatever there may be of good left in him confesses to be worthy of respect and support. A very few years' practice in a calling of this kind is apt to render him as indifferent to the goal whither his pen conducts him, as is a cab-horse to the destination whither the driver's "fare" is conveyed. And the worst of it is that, in time, he comes to glory in his shame. Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, distinguishes between two kinds of liars; there is "the liar who loves a lie for its own sake," and "the liar who lies to win reputation or to make money." But many a journalist who, at first, belongs to the latter of these classes, and is perhaps a little ashamed, for a while, at finding himself there, passes pretty swiftly into the former. Thus does he anticipate, in this life, the doom which Dante ascribes to the damned; he is in the miserable estate of those "genti dolorose" who have lost "il ben del intelletto." And then, by a fatal and necessary law, his chief object, next to the provision of the means of "agreeable feeling" for himself, is to bring down as many as possible to his

own level.

Nor does he find any surer way of effecting this, than by the persistent denial of those moral excellences which he has ceased to strive after, or even to venerate. Is a man the object of reverence and admiration, for patriotism, philanthropy, piety? Your newspaper censors, with due protestations of hatred of hypocrisy, will strip off the veneer which imposes on the unsuspicious; will show their readers that these pretended virtues are a mere cloak for some base or sordid end; will demonstrate conclusively that "old Cato is as great a rogue as you." And their efforts are only too successful. I think I may truly say that the newspaper press, during the last quarter of a century, has done more than anything else to de-ethicise public life; to lay the axe to the root of duty, selfdevotion, self-sacrifice, the elements of the moral greatness of a nation, which is its true greatness. Such is the practical working of the philosophy of relativity in the sphere of journalism.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ETHICS OF PROPERTY.

MUCH has been written lately on capital and labour; on the great question between "the Haves" and "the Have-nots," which underlies all social and political issues. In this chapter I shall approach that question from a point of view usually lost sight of, or ignored. A considerable number of contributions to its discussion lies before me, as I write; publications, in various languages, and of all sorts and kinds; from the folio to the flysheet; from the reasoned treatise to the rhetorical tract. As I turn them over, I find invocations of selfishness and of sentiment; pleas on behalf of civilisation and on behalf of our common humanity; appeals to acts of the legislature and to the teachings of political econony. To all the considerations thus urged, I cheerfully allow due weight. Both selfishness and sentiment must be reckoned with, as permanent factors in our nature. True it is that doctrines incompatible with the fair order of civilised life are self-condemned.

VIII.]

THE TRUE CRITERION.

175

As true is it, that the common good of all mankind is an end which we are ever bound to keep in view. "Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made" is an essential condition of the political freedom which we all prize so highly. Political economy cannot be put aside with a Carlylean anathema as "the dismal science," although perhaps more sad nonsense has been talked about it, during the present century, than about any other subject, with the possible exception of sanitation. But none of these things goes to the root of the matter. The first fact about man, as we have learnt from Aristotle, is that he is a moral being, having perception of right and wrong, justice and injustice. "The law of conscience," echoes the great English philosopher of the last century, "is the law which we are born under." The moral law is the rule of economics, the life of legislation, the tutor of philanthropy, the foundation of civilisation, the discipline of sentiment, and the curb of selfishness. These are not the flourishes of rhetoric. They are the words of truth and soberness. The moral law, as I claim to have shown in previous chapters, is Supreme Reason ruling over all intelligent existence throughout the universe, either by its mandates or by its penalties; sovereign over society, as over the individuals of whom society is composed; to obey it, the great good of nations as of men; to violate it, the chief evil. If the moral law is this-and if it