It is the modern literature of
the educated, not of the uneducated, which is avowedly and aggressively
criminal. Books recommending profligacy and pessimism, at which the
high-souled errand-boy would shudder, lie upon all our drawing-room
tables. If the dirtiest old owner of the dirtiest old bookstall in
Whitechapel dared to display works really recommending polygamy or
suicide, his stock would be seized by the police. These things are our
luxuries. And with a hypocrisy so ludicrous as to be almost unparalleled
in history, we rate the gutter-boys for their immorality at the very
time that we are discussing (with equivocal German Professors) whether
morality is valid at all. At the very instant that we curse the Penny
Dreadful for encouraging thefts upon property, we canvass the
proposition that all property is theft. At the very instant we accuse it
(quite unjustly) of lubricity and indecency, we are cheerfully reading
philosophies which glory in lubricity and indecency. At the very instant
that we charge it with encouraging the young to destroy life, we are
placidly discussing whether life is worth preserving.
But it is we who are the morbid exceptions; it is we who are the
criminal class.
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