Humbug

“ Such was Alchemy, such was Magic, such was and still is Astrology, and above all, Fortune-telling.
But there is a more thorough humbug than any of these enterprises or systems. The greatest humbug of all is the man who believes—or pretends to believe—that everything and everybody are humbugs. We sometimes meet a person who professes that there is no virtue; that every man has his price, and every woman hers ”

“ Hence, taking [Pg 21] the sense from the derivation of the word, humbug means “an imposition, under fair pretences;” cheat; hoax; a deception without malicious intent. Webster says it is “a low word.”
The humbugs in medicine, we assert, began to exist with the first persons of whom we have any account in the history of the healing art. Among the early Egyptian physicians, Æsculapius was esteemed as the most celebrated. ”

“ Catching his meaning, I quickly answered:
“I think it is a humbug?”
“Of course, I know you will say so; because you ‘forstha’ such things better as any man living, so I shall not try to humbug you. I have color them myself.” ”

“ In a world so full of pain it would seem as if people could not be so foolish, or practitioners so knavish, as to sport with men’s and women’s and children’s lives by their professional humbugs. Yet there are many grave M. D.’s who, if there is nobody to hear, and if they speak their minds, will tell you plainly that the whole practice of medicine is in one sense a humbug. One of its features is certainly a humbug, though so innocent and even useful that it seems difficult to think of any objection to it. ”

“ These are the contemptible cowards. They lack the courage of their convictions. And the curious fact is that these persons are proud of their cowardice, because they call it another name—self-preservation, which includes self-appreciation.”
Here the Excelsior turned upon me.
“Did it ever occur to you,” he asked, “that a humbug is at heart a coward? A humbug is simply one who is afraid to be himself for fear it may not pay. As an example, one of the oldest and most harmful devices of the humbug is to titulate the imagination with smut under the pretense of being outspoken. ”

“ I can, of course, put myself into the sectarian scientist's attitude, and imagine vividly that the world of sensations and of scientific laws and objects may be all. But whenever I do this, I hear that inward monitor of which W. K. Clifford once wrote, whispering the word 'bosh!' Humbug is humbug, even though it bear the scientific name, and the total expression of human experience, as I view it objectively, invincibly urges me beyond the narrow 'scientific' bounds. ”

“ This vain world is a humbug, as you phrase it. Dead Orthodoxy is a humbug. Human reason is a humbug. We are all humbugs, unless we are made true by Dispensation. This age will be a humbug, unless it can be wrought into an age of miracles. ”

“ A HUMBUG. A boy or girl who is pleasant and agreeable everywhere except at home is a humbug. I know one boy who is a good deal of a humbug, although you would never think so if you were to see him in any place outside of his home. He is good-looking, neat and tidy, and carries himself like a little man. ”

“ "How can I help being a humbug," he said, "when all these people make me do things that everybody knows can't be done? ”

“ We must have humbug, we all like humbug, we couldn’t get on without humbug. ”

“ She talks in the style that she imagines the person whom she attempts to personate would use, being one of the doctrines of spiritualism that a person’s character and feelings are not changed by death. To make the humbug more complete, she narrates imaginary incidents, asserting them to have occurred in the earth-experience of the spirit who purports to have possession of her at the same time she is speaking. ”

“ American Humbugs.
Humbug is not necessarily synonymous with ignorance. So far from it, that doubtless a very perfect and successful man in the art of humbugging must be educated to his business.
The following true statement is a case in point: A physician of New York, now in excellent standing, who “rolls in riches,” and whose own carriage is drawn by a span of horses that Bonner once might have envied, was but a few years ago as poor as a church mouse, and as unknown as Scripture. ”

“ Looked at on one side, the history of humbug is truly humiliating to intellectual pride, yet the long silly story is less absurd during the later ages of history, and grows less and less so in proportion to the spread of real Christianity. This religion promotes good sense, actual knowledge, contentment with what we cannot help, and the exclusive use of intelligent means for increasing human happiness and decreasing human sorrow. And whenever the time shall come when men are kind and just and honest ”

“ Before I had been standing at the window five minutes, they somehow conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them pretended not to know that the others were toadies and humbugs: because the admission that he or she did know it, would have made him or her out to be a toady and humbug. ”

“ But the humbugs which have prevailed about that wondrous machine, the human body, its ailments and its cures, about the unspeakable mystery of human life, and still more about the far greater and more awful mysteries of the life beyond the grave, and the endless happiness and misery believed to exist there, the humbugs about these have been infinitely more absurd, more shocking, more unreasonable, more inhuman, more destructive. ”

“ And whenever the time shall come when men are kind and just and honest; when they only want what is fair and right, judge only on real and true evidence, and take nothing for granted, then there will be no place left for any humbugs, either harmless or hurtful.
CHAPTER II. DEFINITION OF THE WORD HUMBUG.—​WARREN OF LONDON.—​GENIN, THE HATTER.—​GOSLING’S BLACKING.
Upon a careful consideration of my undertaking to give an account of the “Humbugs of the World,” I find myself somewhat puzzled in regard to the true definition of that word. ”

“ When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way: holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions: Scrooge's niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends being not a bit behindhand, roared out, lustily.
"Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!"
"He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!" cried Scrooge's nephew. "He believed it too!"
"More shame for him, Fred!" said Scrooge's niece, indignantly. Bless those women; they never do anything by halves. They are always in earnest. ”

“ I do not pretend to say; for the biggest fools and the greatest philosophers can be numbered among the believers in and victims of the worst humbugs that ever prevailed on the earth.
As we grow up from childhood and begin to think we are free from all superstitions, absurdities, follies, a belief in dreams, signs, omens, and other similar stuff, we afterward learn that experience does not cure the complaint. Doubtless much depends upon our “bringing up.” ”

“ Thus considered, these shallow humbugs teach a useful lesson, for they constitute a strong proof of man’s inborn natural recognition of some God, of some obligation to a higher power, of some disembodied existence; and so they show a natural human want of exactly what the Christian revelation supplies, and constitute a powerful evidence for Christianity. ”

“ Write ‘other person,’ in short, where before was written ‘self,’ and the account of pride and humility becomes the account of love and hatred. Of this pleasure determined by the idea of another person, or of which such a person ‘is the object,’ Hume gives no rationale, and, failing this, it must be taken to imply the same power of determining feeling on the part of a conception not derived from feeling, which we have found to be implied in the pleasure of which self is the object. ”

“ Throughout the winter she strove with single purpose to slip into the man's confidence. Having recognised Hume's peculiar strength, having sought his weaknesses, knowing that he was no man's or woman's fool, she did not make a fool of herself by giving him an inkling of her intentions. ”

“ For what modest person would venture to maintain his own experience to be altogether and absolutely firm and unalterable? Who would declare of a witness, who testified, for example, what was contrary to that experience, that such a man was worthy only of disbelief and derision? And yet many, in the present day, adopt and put into practice this unstable and imperfect theory of Hume. ”

“ If, in Hume’s account of pride, for pleasure, wherever it occurs, is substituted pain, it becomes his account of humility. A criticism of one account is equally a criticism of the other; and with him every passion that ‘has self for its object,’ according as it is pleasant or painful, is included under one or other of these designations. In like manner, every passion that has ‘some other thinking being’ for its object, according as it is pleasant or painful, is either love or hatred. ”

“ It is not so evident at first sight, that a relation of impressions is requisite to these passions, and that because in the transition the one impression is so much confounded with the other, that they become in a manner undistinguishable. But as in pride and humility, we have easily been able to make the separation, and to prove, that every cause of these passions, produces a separate pain or pleasure, I might here observe the same method with the same success, in examining particularly the several causes of love and hatred. ”

“ It was observ'd, that no object ever produces pride or humility, if it has not something peculiar to ourself; as also, that every cause of that passion must be in some measure constant, and hold some proportion to the duration of ourself, which is its object. Now as health and sickness vary incessantly to all men, and there is none, who is solely or certainly fix'd in either, these accidental blessings and calamities are in a manner separated from us, and are never consider'd as connected with our being and existence. ”

“ Thus the good and bad qualities of our actions and manners constitute virtue and vice, and determine our personal character, than which nothing operates more strongly on these passions. In like manner, it is the beauty or deformity of our person, houses, equipage, or furniture, by which we are rendered either vain or humble. The same qualities, when transfered to subjects, which bear us no relation, influence not in the smallest degree either of these affections. ”

“ The sensations of lust and hunger always produce in us the idea of those peculiar objects, which are suitable to each appetite. These two circumstances are united in pride. The organs are so dispos'd as to produce the passion; and the passion, after its production, naturally produces a certain idea. All this needs no proof. 'Tis evident we never shou'd be possest of that passion, were there not a disposition of mind proper for it; and 'tis as evident, that the passion always turns our view to ourselves, and makes us think of our own qualities and circumstances. ”

“ Any thing, that gives a pleasant sensation, and is related to self excites the passion of pride, which is also agreeable, and has self for its object.
What I have said of pride is equally true of humility. The sensation of humility is uneasy, as that of pride is agreeable; for which reason the separate sensation, arising from the causes, must be revers'd, while the relation to self continues the same. Tho' pride and humility are directly contrary in their effects, and in their sensations, they have not withstanding the same object ”

“ But this difficulty will vanish, if we consider that in sympathy our own person is not the object of any passion, nor is there any thing, that fixes our attention on ourselves; as in the present case, where we are suppos'd to be actuated with pride or humility. Ourself, independent of the perception of every other object, is in reality nothing: For which reason we must tum our view to external objects ”

“ She came to see, after the first few days, that Hume's one working theory of life was that of the survival of the fittest. Eminently fit himself, capable physically in strong, clean body, mentally in cool, calculating, single purposed brain, morally in a code of ethics which resolved all considerations to his working theory of life, he looked down upon other lives than his own from the passionless heights of a supreme impudence. ”

“ The Idea of Toil, Labour, and Danger, suffer'd by the Fishermen, is painful, by an unavoidable Sympathy, which attends every Conception of human Happiness or Misery.
When I was twenty, says a French Poet, Ovid was my Choice: Now I am forty, I declare for Horace. We enter, to be sure, more readily into Sentiments, that resemble those we feel every Moment: But no Passion, when well represented, can be altogether indifferent to us; because there is none, of which every Man has not within him, at least, the Seeds and first Principles. ”