BY H. L. MENCKEN AND GEORGE JEAN NATHAN
HELIOGABALUS: A BUFFOONERY
| BY H. L. MENCKEN | BY GEORGE JEAN NATHAN |
| THE PHILOSOPHY OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE | ANOTHER BOOK ON THE THEATRE |
| A BOOK OF BURLESQUES | MR. GEORGE JEAN NATHAN PRESENTS |
| IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN | A BOOK WITHOUT A TITLE |
| A BOOK OF PREFACES | THE POPULAR THEATRE |
| PREJUDICES: FIRST SERIES | COMEDIANS ALL |
The superficial, no doubt, will mistake this little book for a somewhatlaborious attempt at jocosity. Because, incidentally to its mainpurpose, it unveils occasional ideas of so inordinate an erroneousnessthat they verge upon the ludicrous, it will be set down a piece ofspoofing, and perhaps denounced as in bad taste. But all the while thatmain purpose will remain clear enough to the judicious. It is, in brief,the purpose of clarifying the current exchange of rhetorical gas bombsupon the subject of American ideals and the American character, socopious, so cocksure and withal so ill-informed and inconclusive, byputting into plain propositions some of the notions that lie at theheart of those ideals and enter into the very substance of thatcharacter. "For as he thinketh in his heart," said Solomon, "so ishe." It is a saying, obviously, that one may easily fill with fantastic[Pg 8]meanings, as the prevailing gabble of the mental healers, NewThoughters, efficiency engineers, professors of scientific salesmanshipand other such mountebanks demonstrates, but nevertheless it is onegrounded, at bottom, upon an indubitable fact. Deep down in every manthere is a body of congenital attitudes, a corpus of ineradicabledoctrines and ways of thinking, that determines his reactions to hisideational environment as surely as his physical activity is determinedby the length of his tibiæ and the capacity of his lungs. Theseprimary attitudes, in fact, constitute the essential man. It is byrecognition of them that one arrives at an accurate understanding of hisplace and function as a member of human society; it is by a shrewdreckoning and balancing of them, one against another, that one forecastshis probable behaviour in the face of unaccustomed stimuli.
All the arts and sciences that have to do with the management of men inthe mass are founded upon a proficient practice of that sort ofreckoning. The practical politician, as every connoisseur of ochlocracyknows, is not a man who seeks to inoculate the innumerable caravan ofvoters with[Pg 9] new ideas; he is a man who seeks to search out and prickinto energy the basic ideas that are already in them, and to turn theresultant effervescence of emotion to his own uses. And so with thereligious teacher, the social and economic reformer, and every othervariety of popular educator, down to and including the humblestpress-agent of a fifth assistant Secretary of State, moving-pictureactor, or Y.M.C.