H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun/November 2, 1915

§1.

Menschliches all-zu Menschliches.—Protestantism was a protest against the too-human habits of the mediæval Church. Puritanism was a protest against the too-human doctrines of Christianity. On both sides of the equations the two things have now flown together. That is to say, Protestantism and Puritanism have become almost identical, and the only sort of Christianity that Christ Himself would recognize is the sort now taught by what is left of the mediæval Church. The non-Puritan subsects of Protestantism are rapidly shrinking to nothingness. The high church Anglicans, for example, gallop for Rome like firemen going to a fire; once they outlive their married clergy they will go over en masse. And the theology of Puritanism, far from being “purer” than the Roman brand, has really become an elaborate criticism and repudiation of Christ, whose easy-going toleration of sinners and general gemüthlichkeit musts needs scandalize every honest Puritan. It would be difficult, indeed, to find a single tenet of Puritan theology (or rule of Puritan ethics, which is substantially the same thing) that Christ approved, either by word or by act. If He were to return to earth today it is obvious that the chief objects of His attack in every town would be the leading Puritans—that is, the “World in Cohokus” magnates, the Billy Sunday committeemen, the Sunday-school superintendents, the World and Religion Forward movers, the Y. M. C. A. fund cadgers, the smuthounds, the examples-to-young-men. . . .

§2.

To visualize Puritan Kultur let us imagine a raid upon a penny ante poker game by a posse of moral stockbrokers. . . .

§3.

The Coming Rebellion.—Puritanism, at the moment, seems to be entering upon its greatest era in the United States. There is a magnificent specimen of the Puritan Pecksniff in the White House, both houses of Congress are meekly subservient to the Puritan browbeaters and whip-crackers, and even the Supreme Court has lately shown signs of yielding to Puritan pressure. Day after day the body of inquisitorial Puritan legislation increases in volume; year after year its enforcement is attempted by larger and larger forces of special policemen, informers, agents provocateurs and ecstatic volunteers. National prohibition, for example, is now almost a certainty of tomorrow, though it was still a joke ten years ago. The Puritan has learned how to get what he wants under democracy. In particular, he has learned how easy it is to control and intimidate the flabby sort of men who testify to their lack of self-respect by petitioning the mob for its votes. Such swine the Puritan has under his thumb. They are afraid of him. They leap to do his bidding, whether they be in the President’s Cabinet or on a bench of petty cross-roads magistrates.

 . . . There are, however, other sorts of men in the world than those who seek office under democracies, and all the signs begin to indicate that men of these other sorts will be heard from with increasing frequency hereafter. The present world war, in truth, is plainly paving the way to that end, for it reveals the bankruptcy of democracy even more dramatically than it reveals the bankruptcy of Christianity. Democracy is weak in adversity because it puts its dependence, not in strong, capable men, but in shifty, ignorant and cowardly majorities. Puritanism, despite its superficial appearance of strength, is weak in the same way and for much the same reason. The notion that the mob is irresistible, that its mere size protects it from overthrow, is just as absurd as the notion that the mob is wise. A very small minority of resolute and courageous men overthrew negro domination in the South. A handful of determined and intelligent men, once they have rid themselves of the pruderies of mob morality, will be sufficient to knock out Puritanism. It will be no more than an obscene memory the day after the first thousand Puritan clergymen are hanged.

§4.

The Puritan in War.—Here, if anything, I overestimate the valor of the Puritan. The truth is that, like all believers in law and policemen, he is a ludicrous poltroon. The legend of his gravery in the face of hardship and persecution is a fiction that was set afloat by his own gabble, just as the English set afloat the (now lamentably exploded) fiction of their steadiness and sportsmanship. The Puritan, as a matter of fact, never faced persecution; he always ran away from it, and from the slightest threat of it—first to Germany, then to Holland and finally to America. Who can name a single Puritan martyr? Every other faith has scores and hundreds of them; primitive Christianity had thousands. But the only authentic records of persecution in Puritan history show the Puritan doing the persecuting, always with the mob behind him. He is, in brief, not a fighter, but a lyncher; the odds have to be at least 100 to 1 in his favor before he will take to the field. . . . More, he bellows like a hyena every time he stubs his toe; the sight of his own blood sickens and scandalizes him. . . .

§5.

The current war shows off in a brilliant light many characteristic ways of the Puritan. One recalls, for example, the Cavell incident, of which so much was heard lately. The facts were these: It was necessary for the English, for military purposes, to maintain communications with Brussels, and this service was extremely hazardous, for the penalty provided by the customs of war for engaging in it was death. That penalty was well known to the English, and they knew that the Germans, who were without sentimentality, would rigidly enforce it. Accordingly, they appointed a woman to perform the service (just as they had previously sent Canadians, Australians and Belgians on extra-hazardous missions), and when the woman was duly detected and the known penalty executed upon her they set up a screaming that could be heard around the world, and filled the American papers with slobbering protests against the Germans “violation” of some obscure and mythical law or other. Here was a typically Puritan phenomenon: first, the effort to work an injury at no risk, and secondly, the yell of fear and surprise when the penalty fell.

§6.

The Puritan on the sex side. . . . His obsession by sex ideas. His inability to separate woman the individual from woman the female. The Freudian explanation of his bogus celibacy. . . . Havelock Ellis on the true motives of the vice crusader.

§7.

England is the mother-country of Puritanism, and will be its first victim. The English Cavalier of other days is now quite as rare a bird in England as in Virginia. The control of affairs has been taken away from the ancient governing families, and is now in the hands of Puritans, or, as they are called over there, nonconformists. Of these nonconformists the Right Hon. David Lloyd-George, the de facto King of England, is a perfect example. He is an affecting orator at Sunday-school conferences—and his personal honor has been questioned on the floor of the House of Commons. The state church in England often shows signs of an anti-Puritan reaction, but such manifestations are quickly and easily suppressed by the adroit use of patronage. Thus Lloyd-George, though legally a heretic, actually appoints the bishops, or can at least prevent the appointment of any gentleman of God distasteful to him. . . . The apostolic succession converted into a musical comedy libretto. . . .

§8.

The United States is the purest democracy existing in the world today, and perhaps the most Puritanical. . . . It is also the only country that has ever been governed by saloonkeepers. . . .

§9.

In 1796 the House of Representatives, in framing a reply to the President’s speech, debated whether to insert the words “this nation is the freest and most enlightened on earth.” On January 10 of the same year Josef Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven appeared on the same platform in Vienna! . . .

§10.

“More than any other people,” said Wendell Phillips, “we Americans are afraid of one another.” And no wonder. Who hasn’t seen what happens to the man who treads upon the national corns? A scream of rage, and he is flat upon his back. And then, in order, come:

1. The removal of his liver and lights.

2. The deposit of a cake of ice in the cavity.

3. The burial of the corpse.

§11.

Making Men Good by Law.—What he calls “the fallacy of all prohibitory, sumptuary and moral legislation” is thus explained by William Graham Sumner:

A and B determine to be teetotalers, which is often a wise determination, and sometimes a necessary one. If A and B are moved by considerations which seem to them good, that is enough. But A and B put their heads together to get a law passed which shall force C to be a teetotaler for the sake of D, who is in danger of drinking too much. There is no pressure on A and B. They are having their own way, and they like it. There is rarely any pressure on D. He does not like it, and evades it. The pressure all comes on C. The question then arises, Who is C? He is the man who wants alcoholic liquors for any honest purpose whatsoever, who would use his liberty without abusing it, who would occasion no public question and trouble nobody at all. He is the Forgotten Man.