Without Prejudice | Page 5

be
required to trace the operation of the systems of punishment in various

countries. History would be consulted to the same effect. The sanctity
of human life being a religious dogma, the religions of the world would
have to be studied, to see under what conditions it has been thought
permissible to destroy life. One ought not to rely on translations:
Confucius should be read in Chinese, the Koran in Arabic, and the few
years spent in the acquisition of Persian would be rewarded by a
first-hand familiarity with the Zend Avesta. The Old Testament enjoins
capital punishment. On what grounds, then, if one is leaning the other
way, may a text be set aside that seems to settle the matter positively?
Here comes in the vast army of Bible commentators and theologians.
But perhaps the text is of late origin, interpolated. The Dutch and
German savants rise in their might, with their ingenious theories and
microscopic scholarship. But there are other scientists who bid us not
heed the Bible at all, because it contradicts the latest editions of their
primers. Is, then, science strictly accurate? To answer this you must
have a thorough acquaintance with biology, geology, astronomy,
besides deciding for yourself between the conflicting views at nearly
every point. By the time you have made up your mind as to whether
capital punishment should be abolished, it has passed out of the
statute-book, and you are dead, or mad, or murdered.
"But were this the only question a man has to settle in his short span of
years, he might cheerfully engage in its solution. But life bristles with a
hundred questions equally capital, and with a thousand-and-one minor
problems on which he is expected to have an opinion, and about which
he is asked at one time or other, if only at dinner."
At this moment the Poet who shares my chambers came in--later than
he should have done--and interrupted my soliloquy. But I was still hot,
and enlisted his interest in my vision and my apologia, and began
drawing up a list of the questions, in which after a while he became so
interested that he started adding to it. Hours flew like minutes, and only
the splitting headache we both brought upon ourselves drove us to
desist. Here is our first rough list of the questions that confront the
modern man--a disorderly, deficient, and tautological list, no doubt, to
which any reader can add many hundred more.

VEXED QUESTIONS
Queen Mary and Bothwell. Shakespeare and Bacon. Correct
transliteration of Greek; pronunciation of Latin. Sunday opening of
museums; of theatres. The English Sunday; Bank Holiday. Darwinism.
Is there spontaneous creation? or spontaneous combustion? The germ
theory; Pasteur's cures; Mattei's cures; Virchow's cell theory. Unity of
Homer; of the Bible. Dickens v. Thackeray. Shall we ever fly? or steer
balloons? The credit system; the discount system. Impressionism,
decadence, Japanese art, the plein air school. Realism v. romance;
Gothic v. Greek art. Russian fiction, Dutch, Bulgarian, Norwegian,
American, etc., etc.: opinion of every novel ever written, of every
school, in every language (you must read them in the original); ditto of
every opera and piece of music, with supplementary opinions about
every vocalist and performer; ditto of every play, with supplementary
opinions about every actor, dancer, etc.; ditto of every poem; ditto of
every picture ever painted, with estimates of every artist in every one of
his manners at every stage of his development and decisions as to
which pictures are not genuine; also of every critic of literature, drama,
art, and music (in all of which departments certain names are equal to
an appalling plexus of questions--Wagner, Ibsen, Meredith, Browning,
Comte, Goethe, Shakespeare, Dante, Degas, Rousseau, Tolstoï,
Maeterlinck, Strindberg, Zola, Whistler, Leopardi, Emerson, Carlyle,
Swedenborg, Rabelais). Socialism, its various schools, its past and its
future; Anarchism: bombs. Labour questions: the Eight Hours' Day, the
Unemployed, the Living Wage, etc., etc. Mr. Gladstone's career. Shall
members of Parliament be paid? Chamberlain's position; ditto for every
statesman in every country, to-day and in all past ages. South Africa,
Rhodes, Captain Jim. The English girl v. the French or the American.
Invidious comparisons of every people from every point of view,
physical, moral, intellectual, and aesthetic. Vizetelly. Vivisection. First
love v. later love; French marriage system v. the English. The corrupt
choruses in the Greek dramas (also in modern burlesque--with the
question of the Church and Stage Guild, Zaeo's back, the County
Council, etc.). How to make London beautiful. Fogs. Bi-metallism.
Secondary Education. Volunteer or conscript? Anonymity in
journalism. Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism:

their mutual superiorities, their past and their future. Plato, Spinoza,
Kant, Hegel, and all philosophers and philosophies. The Independent
Theatre. The origin of language, Where do the Aryans come from? Was
Mrs. Maybrick guilty? Same question for every great