Polemic

“ He has seriously tried to comprehend what the pragmatic movement may intelligibly mean; and if he has failed, it is the fault neither of his patience nor of his sincerity, but rather of stubborn tricks of thought which he could not easily get rid of. Minute polemics, in which the parties try to rebut every detail of each of the other’s charges, are a useful exercise only to the disputants. They can but breed confusion in a reader. ”

“ In the first place, then, we have to notice, have we not, that the little book is polemical, which, at any rate to the amateur observer of things contemporary, detracts somewhat from its historical value; for, after all, is not a polemist, to a large extent a man who defends the delusions of his friends against the delusions of his enemies, and leaves Truth, like the proverbial pounds, to look after herself? ”

“ Over-refinement, however, cannot be charged as the failing of most of our periodical publications. Some are full of polemical orthodoxy—some of methodistical deliration—some inculcate servility, and others preach up sedition—some creep along in a series of dull truisms and stale moralities—while others, more ‘lively, audible, and full of vent,’ subsist on the great staple of falsehood and personality, and enjoy all the advantages that result from an entire contempt for the restraints of decency, consistency, or candour. ”

“ This view is especially important because it should persuade us that polemics are useless and that we should abstain from it as a waste of time and energy, for against superstition even the gods contend in vain. ”

“ A well-dressed fellow walked into a room where they were talking politics, and, stretching himself up to his full height, exclaimed, in a loud voice, "Where is a radical? Show me a radical, gentlemen, and I'll show you a liar!" In an instant a man exclaimed, "I am a radical, sir!"—"You are?"—"Yes, sir, I am!"—"Well, just you step round the corner with me, and I'll show you a fellow who said I couldn't find a radical in the ward. ”

“ In politics that doesn't really matter; you decide on a course, and you invent moral reasons for it afterwards. No, what I had done was much worse than any mere wrongdoing. All my political foresight and achievements were a gamble that had gone wrong; and for that my Day of Judgment had come, and I stood in the pillory, a peepshow for mockery. ”

“ Political criticism, and personality analyses, frozen into the so-permanently-appearing dignity of a printed volume—that is something else again! Even a politician who dismisses with a smile or a shrug recurrent discompliments in the news columns or the anonymous editorial pages of the press, is tempted to burst into angry protest when far less bitter, far more balanced criticism of himself is voiced in a book. ”

“ But this philosopher knows better, and so do you, my optimistic friend. It is the fashion, I am aware, among conservative people, lawyers looking for employment, bankers and solid men of affairs, to put the finger on the lips when this evil is broached and whisper, "Hush!" They admit confidentially the truth of it, but they say "Hush! What's the use of stirring things up? It can't do any good and it makes the public discontented. It excites the populists." ”

“ That party and passion, and prepossession, are clamorous and tumultuous things, and so much the more clamorous and tumultuous by how much the more erroneous: that they domineer and tyrannise over the imaginations of persons who want judgment, and sometimes too of those who have it, and, like a fierce and outrageous torrent, bear down all opposition before them. ”

“ We saw men in the highest places of the Republic employ their power and opportunities for selfish advantage, thus stimulating the demoralization of our political life, and by their conspicuous example, and the loud chorus of partisan sycophancy, drown the voice of honest criticism. ”

“ When I go to the city and perceive what creatures wield the power there, when I watch the trickery, the iniquity, the audacious infamy, of the cliques that control the machinery of that great government, and when I look, as I do sometimes, into the faces of those who are thus leagued for plunder and power, only to see there vulgarity, ignorance, vice and general moral filthiness, my soul is made sick. ”

“ When professional men, who, supposably, represent the best phases of liberal thought and scientific culture, lend their names to the partisanship of mere theory, and array themselves under sectarian titles which signify their adherence to an exclusive dogma, it is small wonder that the laity should follow in their footsteps, and cast their views into the yet narrower mold of unreasoning prejudice. ”

“ In politics, however, and, indeed, in all other matters that are of sufficient magnitude to attract general attention, there are adverse sentiments, which, were it not for the absurdity of the phrase, might almost be termed two publick opinions. This is the result of party feeling, which induces men to adopt in gross, the prejudices, notions and judgments of the particular faction to which they belong, often without examination, and generally without candor. ”

“ It is melancholy to observe the pernicious influence of party spirit upon the public press of this country: it is not only that it excites rancour and bitterness of feeling, but even truth, viewed through the medium of its jaundiced eye, appears like falsehood—beauty, like deformity—virtue, like vice. ”

“ He heard the daily gossip of that bewildering system of which his daughter was a part: a world in itself, with its politics, its many jarring factions, its jealousies, dissensions, its varied personalities, ambitions and conspiracies ”

“ Faction is as capricious as Fortune: wrongs, oppression, the zeal of real patriots, or the genius of false ones, may sometimes be employed for years in kindling substantial opposition to authority; in other seasons, the impulse of a moment, a ballad, a nickname, a fashion can throw a city into a tumult, and shake the foundations of a state. ”

“ If you should be convinced by argument, not only that the pamphlet before you is not a libel, but that almost all those political writings, which it has been the habit of certain people, taking up the cry from their leaders, to call libels, are not merely not dangerous but beneficial to political society ”

“ In short, the noblest, honestest, dearest, best, and most ill-used creature that ever dabbled in the puddle of politics. One might suppose that this outcry of the antis, backed as it was by the full proof of my change of politics, would have stopped the mouths of the hurrah-boys. But it did no such thing; they only raved the louder. As for the proof of my backsliding, they treated that with contempt; proofs being as little regarded in politics as arguments. They accused the antis more zealously than before; and the antis recriminated with equal enthusiasm. ”

“ Perhaps indeed most adult politicians would gain rather by becoming conscious of new vices than of new virtues. Some day, for instance, the word 'opinion' itself may become the recognised name of the most dangerous political vice. ”

“ Beneath the calm of general society mutterings of discontent from powerful interests could be heard,—occasional outbursts of jealousy, revivals of old and virulent passions, inveterate prejudices, which made as yet but little noise in the Press or in Parliament, but which rankled in the breasts of individuals. ”

“ The world is, however, full of wicked passions; and wicked passions find fertile soil in political parties, social classes, and public opinion—that vague power which has come so much to the fore in the last hundred years. ”

“ All is confusion, intermingling of principles and opinions, political rivalry and personal antipathy, the working of which produces, from time to time, something brisk and exciting, and a good deal of clever speaking and writing, interesting enough to the immediate actors, but which the mass of the country does not care a straw about. ”

“ Timidity, rashness, prejudice, personal rivalries, and the still less worthy influences of calculating self-interest or of a narrow ambition, dwarf and vitiate a policy not less surely than do the impediments due to popular ignorance and incompetence. ”

“ Oh well, I should say that instead of boring us with politics, he should have written about art, and described the picturesque aspects of the country and the local color. Then the critic bewails himself. Politics are intruded everywhere; we are weary of politics—politics on all sides. ”

“ And thus it is, that folly, party-spirit, pride, and passion, can misrepresent the best measures, and so far poison the public mind, that the very granting the object of their desires shall be made the subject of new complaints. ”

“ For the political criticism, which is of the boldest, passes safely enough, by being merely broken, and put into the mouths of opposing factions, who are just upon the point of coming to blows upon the stage, and cannot, therefore, be suspected of collusion. ”

“ Simplicity, courage, lack of humour—those appeared to be the fundamentals characterising the ensemble—supplemented by the extremes of restless intelligence and grim conservatism.
And the whole fabric seemed to be founded not on industry but on impulse born of sentiment. In this new, busy, inspiring, delightful world logic became a synthesis erected upon some inceptive absurdity, carried solemnly to a picturesque and erroneous conclusion. ”

“ His production, therefore, though containing many striking thoughts, and some splendid composition, reads more like a vigorous party pamphlet than an impartial history. Every thing is seen through a distorting medium of rage and prejudice. ”

“ Wherever this impulse of social or political reform darts up its rill through the crusts of selfishness, scoff and dread also arise, and hang like a heavy mist above it. But the voice of the rill penetrates far enough for those who have ears to hear. ”

“ In like manner, let a politician evince concern for the moral character of the nation and it is ten to one his colleagues in the House of Commons and his critics in the Press, and everywhere the very men most in despair of politics, will declare him to be a fanatic. ”

“ That public opinion is certainly finally to pronounce a substantially just and patriotic judgment. The politician is doomed to failure and disgrace who speculates upon the theory that the masses are mainly fools and knaves. ”

“ Reason and argument, common sense, statesmanlike appeal, may all fail. It is ridicule alone which kills. You three, my trusted confederates, have probably prevented a revolution. You have brought to an end in ridicule and disgust a great social upheaval. ”

“ Principles of false thought appeared suddenly and widely as principles of false passion and of false action. Doubts, difficulties, guesses, fine spinnings of the perverse brain, seized upon the temper of the times—became the springs of public and popular movements—engines of political change. ”

“ They are, in fact, a convenient medium to break the force of popular feeling, and to transmit the rays of popular indignation against the influence and power of the crown, blunted and neutralized by as many qualifications and refractions as possible. ”

“ The bias to miscellaneous discussion and criticism is so great, that it is necessary to insert politics in a sort of sandwich of literature, in order to make them at all palatable to the ordinary taste. ”

“ In this letter to a New York newspaper, the writer, a loyal "fan," reveals the same mentality that we find in the sectarian fanatic, or good party man, whose "principles" have been challenged. The challenge seems in all such cases to bring the hostility into consciousness as "righteous indignation." ”

“ By a natural process minorities of agitators cast cowardly and selfish members out of their ranks; in other words, they weed out the useless, the feeble, the derogatory elements, and the elements which, being dependent upon the favour of the public, or susceptible to public criticism, flinch if subjected to unfavourable judgment. ”

“ How the crowds had cheered the hackneyed platitudes, the blatant patriotic appeals, the malevolent caricature of opponents! Something unspeakably trivial, vulgar, and evil in it all reminded him of tired children when the romping begins to grow ill-natured. ”

“ Remove publicity and its checks, then all the mean motives of mankind—their malice, petty rivalries, pique, the prejudices that men would be ashamed to put into words even to themselves—skulk to the polling booth under a disguising cloak. ”

“ Anybody, who has experienced, written, read, heard, or seen, even a little of this ever-recurrent hanging controversy, loathes its very atmosphere, and gladly retreats from it, seldom without a sense of protest, and a chafing at injustice. ”

“ But why then, in this democracy, does the one sphere, in successive stages as you ascend, hate, envy, imitate, and seek to enter the other? Alas! if they were better men, even as our mediæval baron was the better man than his churl, the folly of the imitation would be gone. ”

“ We condemn controversy, because we would have matters all our own way, and think that ours is the only side that has a title to be heard. We imagine that there is but one view of a subject that is right; and that all the rest being plainly and wilfully wrong, it is a shocking waste of speech, and a dreadful proof of prejudice and party spirit, to have a word to say in their defence. But this is a want of liberality and comprehension of mind. ”

“ This is, in short, to sanction the most obvious weakness of popular movements, and to assure the ignorant and thoughtless that they are above reason, and their crude guesses infallible guides to truth. ”