Censorship and Art | Page 7

see made on
our nicely pruned and tutored stage. For not only would the more
dangerous and penetrating scientific truths have been carefully
destroyed at birth, but scientists, aware that the results of investigations
offensive to accepted notions would be suppressed, would long have
ceased to waste their time in search of a knowledge repugnant to
average intelligence, and thus foredoomed, and have occupied
themselves with services more agreeable to the public taste, such as the
rediscovery of truths already known and published.
Indissolubly connected with the desirability of a Censorship of Science,
is the need for Religious Censorship. For in this, assuredly not the least
important department of the nation's life, we are witnessing week by
week and year by year, what in the light of the security guaranteed by
the Censorship of Drama, we are justified in terming an alarming
spectacle. Thousands of men are licensed to proclaim from their pulpits,
Sunday after Sunday, their individual beliefs, quite regardless of the
settled convictions of the masses of their congregations. It is true,
indeed, that the vast majority of sermons (like the vast majority of
plays) are, and will always be, harmonious with the feelings--of the
average citizen; for neither priest nor playwright have customarily any
such peculiar gift of spiritual daring as might render them unsafe
mentors of their fellows; and there is not wanting the deterrent of
common-sense to keep them in bounds. Yet it can hardly be denied that
there spring up at times men--like John Wesley or General Booth--of
such incurable temperament as to be capable of abusing their freedom
by the promulgation of doctrine or procedure, divergent from the
current traditions of religion. Nor must it be forgotten that sermons,
like plays, are addressed to a mixed audience of families, and that the
spiritual teachings of a lifetime may be destroyed by ten minutes of
uncensored pronouncement from a pulpit, the while parents are sitting,
not, as in a theatre vested with the right of protest, but dumb and
excoriated to the soul, watching their children, perhaps of tender age,

eagerly drinking in words at variance with that which they themselves
have been at such pains to instil.
If a set of Censors--for it would, as in the case of Literature, indubitably
require more than one (perhaps one hundred and eighty, but, for
reasons already given, there should be no difficulty whatever in
procuring them) endowed with the swift powers conferred by freedom
from the dull tedium of responsibility, and not remarkable for religious
temperament, were appointed, to whom all sermons and public
addresses on religious subjects must be submitted before delivery, and
whose duty after perusal should be to excise all portions not
conformable to their private ideas of what was at the moment suitable
to the Public's ears, we should be far on the road toward that proper
preservation of the status quo so desirable if the faiths and ethical
standards of the less exuberantly spiritual masses are to be maintained
in their full bloom. As things now stand, the nation has absolutely
nothing to safeguard it against religious progress.
We have seen, then, that Censorship is at least as necessary over
Literature, Art, Science, and Religion as it is over our Drama. We have
now to call attention to the crowning need--the want of a Censorship in
Politics.
If Censorship be based on justice, if it be proved to serve the Public and
to be successful in its lonely vigil over Drama, it should, and logically
must be, extended to all parallel cases; it cannot, it dare not, stop short
at--Politics. For, precisely in this supreme branch of the public life are
we most menaced by the rule and license of the leading spirit. To
appreciate this fact, we need only examine the Constitution of the
House of Commons. Six hundred and seventy persons chosen from a
population numbering four and forty millions, must necessarily,
whatever their individual defects, be citizens of more than average
enterprise, resource, and resolution. They are elected for a period that
may last five years. Many of them are ambitious; some
uncompromising; not a few enthusiastically eager to do something for
their country; filled with designs and aspirations for national or social
betterment, with which the masses, sunk in the immediate pursuits of
life, can in the nature of things have little sympathy. And yet we find
these men licensed to pour forth at pleasure, before mixed audiences,
checked only by Common Law and Common Sense political utterances

which may have the gravest, the most terrific consequences; utterances
which may at any moment let loose revolution, or plunge the country
into war; which often, as a fact, excite an utter detestation, terror, and
mistrust; or shock the most sacred domestic and proprietary convictions
in the breasts of vast