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Java Foundations 3rd Edition John Lewis Test Bank download

The document provides links to various test banks and solution manuals for Java programming and other subjects. It includes a test bank for 'Java Foundations 3rd Edition' by John Lewis, featuring multiple-choice, true/false, and short answer questions related to arrays in Java. Additionally, it explains the concepts of array initialization, passing arrays to methods, and the use of loops to process array elements.

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100% found this document useful (1 vote)
2 views

Java Foundations 3rd Edition John Lewis Test Bank download

The document provides links to various test banks and solution manuals for Java programming and other subjects. It includes a test bank for 'Java Foundations 3rd Edition' by John Lewis, featuring multiple-choice, true/false, and short answer questions related to arrays in Java. Additionally, it explains the concepts of array initialization, passing arrays to methods, and the use of loops to process array elements.

Uploaded by

degenssurezbg
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Java Foundations: Introduction to Program Design & Data Structures, 3/e
John Lewis, Peter J. DePasquale, Joseph Chase
Test Bank: Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Arrays

Multiple Choice Questions:

1) In Java, array indexes always begin at ________________ .

a) -1
b) 0
c) 1
d) 2
e) you can declare an array to have any indexes you choose

Answer: b
Explanation: In Java, the array indexes are from 0 to one less than the length of the array.

2) Which of the following statements best describes this line of code?

int[] numbers = new int[50];

a) this is the declaration and initialization of an array that holds 50 integers


b) this is a declaration and initialization of an array that holds 49 integers
c) this is a declaration and initialization of an integer array that will hold integers smaller than 50
d) this is a declaration and initialization of an integer array that will hold integers smaller than 49
e) none of the above is correct

Answer: a
Explanation: The code represents the declaration and initialization of an array that will hold 50 integers. The
indexes of this array will begin at 0 and end at 49.

3) Which of the statements is true about the following code snippet?

int[] array = new int[25];


array[25] = 2;

a) The integer value 2 will be assigned to the last index in the array.
b) The integer value 25 will be assigned to the second index in the array.
c) The integer value 25 will be assigned to the third value in the array.
d) This code will result in a compile-time error.
e) This code will result in a run-time error.

Answer: e
Explanation: This code will throw an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException, since the last index in this array will
be 24. This causes a run-time error.

4) What will be the output of the following code snippet?

int[] array = new int[25];


System.out.println(array.length);

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Addison-Wesley © 2014
Java Foundations: Introduction to Program Design & Data Structures, 3/e
John Lewis, Peter J. DePasquale, Joseph Chase
Test Bank: Chapter 7

a) 26
b) 24
c) 25
d) This code will result in a compile time error.
e) This code will result in a run time error.

Answer: c
Explanation: Note that the length instance variable can be accessed directly. Therefore this will not result in any
errors. The array has length 25, and therefore the code will output 25.

5) Which of the following array declarations are invalid?

a) int[] grades = new int[5];


b) int grades[] = new int[5];
c) int[] grades = { 91, 83, 42, 100, 77 };
d) all of the above are valid
e) none of the above are valid

Answer: d
Explanation: All three of these are valid array declarations. Choice b uses an alternate syntax. Choice c uses an
initializer list to initialize the array.

6) Which of the following is a true statement?

a) Arrays are passed as parameters to methods like primitive types.


b) Arrays are passed as parameters to methods like object types.
c) Arrays cannot be passed as parameters to methods.
d) All of the above are true.
e) None of the above are true.

Answer: b
Explanation: Arrays are passed to methods by reference. This means that if the content of the array is changed in a
method, the change will be reflected in the calling method.

7) Suppose we have an array of String objects identified by the variable names. Which of the following for loops will not
correctly process each element in the array.

a) for(int i = 0; i < names.length; i++)


b) for(String name : names)
c) for(int i = 0; i < names.length(); i++)
d) none of these will correctly process each element
e) all of these will correctly process each element

Answer: c
Explanation: Choice c will not process each element correctly due to a syntax error. The length variable is not a
method and, therefore, does not have parenthesis after it. Choice b is an example of using a foreach loop to process an
array, and choice a is a correct for loop.

8) Which of the following statements will assign the first command-line argument sent into a Java program to a variable

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Addison-Wesley © 2014
Java Foundations: Introduction to Program Design & Data Structures, 3/e
John Lewis, Peter J. DePasquale, Joseph Chase
Test Bank: Chapter 7

called argument?

a) argument = System.getFirstArgument();
b) argument = System.getArgument[1];
c) argument = System.getArgument[0];
d) argument = args[0];
e) argument = args[1];

Answer: d
Explanation: Choice d is the correct answer. The System object does not have any methods called
getFirstArgument or getArgument, and the args array's index starts at 0. Therefore the other choices are incorrect.

9) Which of the following method declarations correctly defines a method with a variable length parameter list?

a) public int average(int[] list)


b) public int average(int ... list)
c) public int average(...)
d) public int average(int a, int b, int c, ...)
e) public int average(integers)

Answer: b
Explanation: The only choices with valid syntax are choice a and choice b. Choice a represents a method
declaration with a single parameter, which is a reference to an array. Choice b correctly represents a valid declaration for a
method with a variable length parameter list.

10) Which of the following is a valid declaration for a two-dimensional array?

a) int[][] matrix;
b) int[2] matrix;
c) int[]** matrix;
d) int[] matrix;
e) none of these are correct

Answer: a
Explanation: Choice a is the only valid declaration for a two-dimensional array. Choices b and c contain invalid
Java syntax, and choice d is a valid declaration for a single dimensional array.

11) Which of the following lines of code accesses the second element of the first array in a two-dimensional array of
integers, numbers, and stores the result in a variable called num?

a) num = numbers[1][2];
b) num = numbers[0][1];
c) num = numbers.getElement(1, 2);
d) num = numbers.getElement(0, 1);
e) none of the above are correct

Answer: b
Explanation: Choice b accesses the second element of the first array. Choice a accesses the third element of the

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Addison-Wesley © 2014
Java Foundations: Introduction to Program Design & Data Structures, 3/e
John Lewis, Peter J. DePasquale, Joseph Chase
Test Bank: Chapter 7

second array. Choices c and d do not represent valid Java syntax.

12) Which of the following are true about two-dimensional arrays?

a) Two-dimensional integer arrays cannot be initialized via an initializer list.


b) Two-dimensional arrays can only store up to 10 elements per array (or per row).
c) Two-dimensional arrays are not accessible using for loops.
d) Two-dimensional arrays cannot hold objects.
e) None of the above are true.

Answer: e
Explanation: None of the statements about two-dimensional arrays are true.

13) What is the precedence of the index operator ( [ ] ) relative to other operators in Java?

a) It has the lowest precedence of all Java operators.


b) It has a higher precedence than addition, but a lower precedence than multiplication.
c) It has a higher precedence than multiplication, but a lower precedence than addition.
d) It has the highest precedence of all Java operators.
e) [ ] is not an operator.

Answer: d
Explanation: The index operator has the highest precedence of all Java operators.

14) Every Java array is a(n) _________________, so it is possible to use a foreach loop to process each element in the
array.

a) object
b) iterator
c) class
d) operator
e) none of the above

Answer: b
Explanation: Every Java array is an iterator, therefore a foreach loop can be used to process each element in the
array.

15) Multi-dimensional arrays that contain arrays of different lengths in any one dimension are called _________________.

a) ragged arrays
b) static arrays
c) two-dimensional arrays
d) constant arrays
e) overloaded arrays

Answer: a
Explanation: Ragged arrays are multi-dimensional arrays that contain arrays at the same dimension with differing
lengths.

4
Addison-Wesley © 2014
Java Foundations: Introduction to Program Design & Data Structures, 3/e
John Lewis, Peter J. DePasquale, Joseph Chase
Test Bank: Chapter 7

True/False Questions:

1) In Java, array indexes begin at 0 and end at one less than the length of the array.
Answer: True
Explanation: For an array of length n, the indexes begin at 0 and end at n – 1 in Java.

2) There is only one way to declare and initialized an array in Java.


Answer: False
Explanation: There are two different ways to declare an array in Java – the standard syntax and the alternate
syntax. Arrays can also be initialized in different ways. The first way is to use the new operator, which will create the
array, and then initialize each index individually. You can also initialize an array using an initializer list.

3) An array declared as an int[] can contain elements of different primitive types.


Answer: False
Explanation: An array that has been declared with a specific type may only contain elements of that type. In this
case the array can only contain integers.

4) The foreach loop can be used to process each element of an array.


Answer: True
Explanation: In Java, an array is an iterator and therefore it is possible to use the foreach loop to process individual
elements.

5) It is possible to store 11 elements in an array that is declared in the following way.

int[] array = new int[10];

Answer: False
Explanation: An array declared as above can only store 10 elements.

6) If a program attempts to access an element outside of the range of the array indexes, a run-time error will occur.
Answer: True
Explanation: If a program attempts to access an element outside of the range of the array indexes, an
ArrayOutOfBoundsException will be thrown at run-time.

7) An array cannot hold object types.


Answer: False
Explanation: An array can be declared to hold references to objects.

8) It is possible to send in data to a Java program via the command-line.


Answer: True
Explanation: Command-line arguments can be sent in to a Java program. They are sent into the program via the
args[] array.

9) It is possible for a method to have a variable length parameter list, meaning that the method can take in any number of
parameters of a specified data type.
Answer: True
Explanation: Java supports variable length parameter lists for methods.

10) In Java it is not possible to have arrays of more than two dimensions.
Answer: False

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Addison-Wesley © 2014
Java Foundations: Introduction to Program Design & Data Structures, 3/e
John Lewis, Peter J. DePasquale, Joseph Chase
Test Bank: Chapter 7

Explanation: It is possible to have arrays of any dimension in Java. It is not common, however, for these types of
arrays to be used in object-oriented programs.

6
Addison-Wesley © 2014
Java Foundations: Introduction to Program Design & Data Structures, 3/e
John Lewis, Peter J. DePasquale, Joseph Chase
Test Bank: Chapter 7

Short Answer Questions:

1) Explain how arrays are passed to methods as parameters.

Answer: Arrays are passed to methods by reference. This means that a reference to the original array is sent into
the method. Therefore any changes that are made to the array in the method will be reflected in the original array in the
calling method.

2) Write the declaration for an array of doubles called averages that is initialized with an initializer list.

Answer:

double[] averages = { 25.2, 36.18, 42.1, 30.5 };

3) Write the declaration for a two-dimensional array of integers that can be thought of as a table with three rows and three
columns. Assign the value 3 to the cell that is in the second row and the third column.

Answer:

int[][] table = new int[3][3];


table[1][2] = 3;

4) Write a loop that cycles through an array of String objects called names and prints them out, one per line. Your loop
should not use a foreach loop.

Answer:

for(int i = 0; i < names.length; i++)


System.out.println(names[i]);

5) Write a loop that cycles through an array of String objects called names and prints out the ones that start with a vowel,
one per line. Your loop should use a foreach loop.

Answer:

for(String n : names)
if(n.charAt(0) == 'A' || n.charAt(0) == 'a' ||
n.charAt(0) == 'E' || n.charAt(0) == 'e' ||
n.charAt(0) == 'I' || n.charAt(0) == 'i' ||
n.charAt(0) == 'O' || n.charAt(0) == 'o' ||
n.charAt(0) == 'U' || n.charAt(0) == 'u')
System.out.println(n);

6) Write a method that accepts an array of integers as a parameter and returns the sum of all of the integers in the array.

Answer:

public int arraySum(int[] array) {

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Addison-Wesley © 2014
Java Foundations: Introduction to Program Design & Data Structures, 3/e
John Lewis, Peter J. DePasquale, Joseph Chase
Test Bank: Chapter 7

int sum = 0;
for(int i = 0; i < array.length; i++)
sum += array[i];

return sum;
}

7) Write a method called doubleSize that accepts an integer array as a parameter and returns a reference to a new integer
array that is twice as long and contains all of the elements of the first array in the same positions.

Answer:

public int[] doubleSize(int[] originalArray) {


int[] newArray = int[originalArray.length*2];

for(int i = 0; i < originalArray.length; i++)


newArray[i] = originalArray[i];

return newArray;
}

8) Write a method called average that accepts an array of floating point numbers and returns their average.

Answer:

public double average(float[] array) {


double sum = 0;
for(int i = 0; i < array.length; i++)
sum += array[i];

return (double) sum/array.length;


}

9) Write a method called containsPair that accepts an array of integers as a parameter and returns true if it contains two
integers that are equal.

Answer:

public boolean containsPair(int[] values) {


for(int i = 0; i < values.length; i++) {
for(int j = i+1; j < values.length; j++)
if(values[i] == values[j])
return true;
}

return false;
}

8
Addison-Wesley © 2014
Java Foundations: Introduction to Program Design & Data Structures, 3/e
John Lewis, Peter J. DePasquale, Joseph Chase
Test Bank: Chapter 7

10) Write a method that takes in an arbitrary number of String objects, and then prints out all of them that have over 10
characters.

Answer:

public void printLongStrings(String ... words) {


for(String w : words)
if(w.length() > 10)
System.out.println(w);
}

11) Write a method that takes in at least one integer and returns the largest of all integer parameters sent in.

Answer:

public void largest(int first, int ... numbers) {


int currentLargest = first;

for(int num : numbers)


if(num > currentLargest)
currentLargest = num;

return currentLargest;
}

12) Write a method that accepts an array of integers as a parameter and returns a reference to an array that contains the
even numbers in the array original array. The returned array should have a size equal to the number of even numbers in the
original array.

Answer:

public int[] getEvenArray(int[] numbers) {


int size = 0;

for(int i = 0; i < numbers.length; i++)


if(numbers[i]%2 == 0)
size++;

int[] evenArray = new int[size];

int evenArrayIndex = 0;

for(int i = 0; i < numbers.length; i++) {


if(numbers[i]%2 == 0) {
evenArray[evenArrayIndex] = numbers[i];

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Addison-Wesley © 2014
Java Foundations: Introduction to Program Design & Data Structures, 3/e
John Lewis, Peter J. DePasquale, Joseph Chase
Test Bank: Chapter 7

evenArrayIndex++;
}//end if
}//end for
}

13) Write a short program that accepts an arbitrary number of command line arguments, and prints out those containing the
character 'z'.

Answer:

public class PrintZArgs {


public static void main(String[] args) {
for(String s : args) {
for(int i = 0; i < s.length; i++)
if(s.charAt(i) == 'z')
System.out.println(s);
}//end foreach
}//end main
}//end class

14) Write a line of code that initializes a two-dimensional array of integers using an initializer list.

Answer:

int[][] numbers = { {2,3},{4,5} };

15) Write a method that accepts an array of integers and returns the smallest value in the list.

Answer:

public int smallest(int[] list) {


int currentSmallest = list[0];

for(int i = 0; i < list.length; i++)


if(list[i] < currentSmallest)
currentSmallest = list[i];

return currentSmallest;
}

10
Addison-Wesley © 2014
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ON KIND HEARTS BEING MORE
THAN CORONETS
That is true. But a friend having remarked to me that Cash was
more than kind hearts, I put the thing down in a formula for myself,
thus,

Cash > Kind Hearts > Coronets

and sat gazing at it for a long time, until it awoke other thoughts in
me.
And the first was this: "'Kind hearts are more than Coronets.' What
an intolerably bad line! What a shocking line—or rather, half-line!
What an outrage!"
When verse is concerned one must not mince matters. It is too
sacred. One must have no reservations. One must ride roughshod
over one's nearest and dearest, and proclaim bad verse aloud, and
say, "Aroint! Honi!"
No reverend name, no illustrious label half-mixed with the State
itself, should deter one. Nothing should impede the truth on bad
verse save a substantial offer of money—and where is the chance of
that in such a galley?
No! It is prime duty. Having the thing before you, having seen it,
whether your opinion is asked or no, speak out at once and say:
"Madam, this is not poetry, it is verse. It is not good verse; it is bad
verse."
And what wickedly bad verse!
I remember coming down on to Stamford one July morning (I was
following the Roman road across Burleigh Park, and so down to the
river), when I saw in the window of a little shop among the first
houses of the town, hither of the bridge, a card; an ornamented
card; a florally ornamented card, put up for sale. It was a set of
verses all about a rich man who owned Burleigh, that great house,
and who married a young woman much poorer than himself. I read
them and paid little attention to them. I thought they were some
local thing made up to sell in a charity. But a little way on I found
another set in another window, and then another, all just the same. I
read them again, and something familiar echoed in my mind;
something of childhood ... I sought.... There was an odd connection
with "Locksley Hall." Yet what had "Locksley Hall" to do with
Burleigh? Then it broke in on me like an evil-doer breaking sacred
locks: Tennyson! Tennyson had written this amazing thing!
And so he did "Lady Clara Vere de Vere." And in Lady Clara comes
"Kind Hearts = Coronets + K" ("K" being some positive number)—I
had found it!
The answer to all those who ask why great poets (and especially our
great poets, and especially our modern great poets) write rubbish is
as old as the Higher Criticism. It is because a poet is only a man
used by the gods. It is not the man himself who is the poet. He is
only the reed. Those Good Poets who don't publish their Bad Verse
along with their Poetry are only those who happen to be good critics
and at the same time very keen on their reputation as verse-writers.
All good Poets have written execrable verse, but as to who writes
Poetry I will tell you: it is a god.
A lot might be written, by the way (but I will not write it), on the
different kinds of bad verse put out by Good Poets. The "Kind hearts
and Coronets" monstrosity is quite, quite different from
Wordsworth's prose, or Corneille's dotage. Some might say that each
great poet had his own kind of bad verse. It is not so. Their bad
verse is not good enough to be individual. They do it in
commonplace groups; and I suppose each falls into the group
natural to him when the god is not blowing through the reed; or
when it proves a broken reed. Thus Hugo left un-godded becomes
mere rhetoric and Milton, a stately painter at the best, a tiresome
tractarian at the worst—as in the theological bits of "Paradise
Regained." Horace (I think—I won't look it up) said that a poet was
such that however bad a line might be, you felt the poet in it. If
Horace said that, or if any one said that, it isn't true. But talking of
truth, "kind hearts are more than coronets" is quite true, and I can
imagine that truth being put into fine verse—even into poetry, if and
when the god should feel inclined ... and here I pause to praise you,
Phœbus Apollo, my protector, my leader, my Capitan; but you have a
way of quitting; you leave them in the Scæan Gate....
There is nothing against Truth being expressed in Poetry, even
though most Poetry is lies.
"Nox est perpetua una dormiunda" is Poetry—though it is sternly
true; at least, it is half true.
And "between a sleep and a sleep" is Poetry, and so is "Our little life
is rounded with a sleep" ... where the operative word is "rounded."
("Every English sentence, Gentlemen," said the Professor to his
class, "contains an operative word. For instance, in the sentence:
'Every gentleman who hits a cocoanut will receive a good cigar,' the
operative word is not 'gentleman,' but 'good.'")
So also is both Poetry and profoundly true that line of granite:

L'amour est un plaisir, l'honneur est un devoir

which I quote again and again; though I suppose a great many


people will say it is not Poetry at all, and cannot be, because it is
written in a foreign language. Well! Well!
So is also:
Dead honour risen out-does love at last.

That also is Poetry, though in the more formal manner. But that last
line has this drawback about it; which is, that only those who have
lived to a certain age and in a certain way can know the truth of it;
and that those who have not lived the truth of it will not make much
of it anyhow. Young people will make nothing of it, nor those who
have become old blamelessly, of whom a great number are to be
found to this day in the outlying parts and among seafaring men.
But I say that truth is no bar to poetry, nor bad verse to truth either.
And I say that this half-line of horribly bad verse, "kind hearts are
more than coronets," is as true as true.
Which of you, O my companions, having drunk the wine of this
world and half-despaired would not rather fetch up in your
dereliction against a kind heart than a coronet? I don't say the two
combined are to be despised. I only ask: Which of you having strictly
to choose in the dark passage of this life between: (a) a coronet
with a bad heart; (b) a kind heart without a coronet—wealth being
equal—would not choose (b)? I would. So would you all. I cannot
answer for women, but as Mr. Joseph Chamberlain said, "I know my
own people," and the bearded ones (or those who would be bearded
but for the detestable necessity of shaving) will with one moaning
voice reply: "Kind Hearts!... No, thank you; I do not feel inclined for
a Coronet this evening; bring me a Kind Heart."
Which of you, O my brethren, having suffered the things of this
world and finding yourself sitting lonely on the bank of a stream in
some forest place would not desire to have approach him, rather
than a shallow, silly, boring, untenacious, stupid, cranky, ill-
tempered, nagging, sour, pinched, haggard woman with a little
coronet on her wig, a warm, a just, an experienced, a tender, an at-
the-right-time-silent, a speaking-the-unexpected-word-of-salvation-
at-the-Heaven-sent-moment, true, profoundly-loving, sufficiently
admiring, comforting, regally beautiful woman with a kind heart?
Which of you would not leave the first to approach the second?
(Supposing, of course, equal incomes.)
It is as true a thing as ever was said. But it was said badly. He ought
not to have attempted it in metre until he was feeling in the mood.
I can hear arguments on the other side. A coronet is more amenable
to the will of man. You can buy a coronet. You cannot buy a kind
heart. To call kind hearts "better" than coronets, therefore, is like
calling fine weather "better" than a good boat. For the sea the boat
is more important than the weather. You can guarantee the one, you
can't the other. You can make sure of your coronet, but not of your
kind heart.
Again, a coronet does not change or fade—money being always
taken for granted. It is incorruptible. It is not subject to our poor
mortal years; but what it is on the brow of the infant, that it remains
on the senile and wrinkled front of him last ticked off to answer
questions in the House of Lords; but a Kind Heart!... Oh! Chronos!
Again, a coronet is heritable. A kind heart hardly so. A coronet is
definable. All are agreed upon it. It is there or it is not there, and
that's an end of it. Not so the Kind Heart. One having seized on a
companion for ever, and all on account of a Kind Heart, many will
say, "I can't for the life of me discover what he (she) saw in her
(him) to make him (her) marry her (him)." But no one ever says that
of a coronet. They may wonder what the coronet saw in the non-
coronet, but never what the non-coronet saw in the coronet. When
the fellow (or the wench) mates upwards with a coronet everybody
knows why; it's plain sailing and there can be no dispute. A coronet,
I say, is something objective, substantial, real. It is made of
ashwood covered with plush, it has spikes and each spike a ball on
the top. But who shall define a Kind Heart? It is one thing to one
man, one to another; it is elusive; it is all in the mind like the
Metaphysician's Donkey.
More: a Coronet of itself can bring about no evil. It is good in itself
absolutely. It conveys a definitely good thing, enjoyable to those
who enjoy it and at the worst indifferent to those who do not. It is a
steady, unmixed, absolute pleasure to its owner and to others. But a
Kind Heart? No! A kind heart suffers; and it causes suffering—more
than it heals. It makes its owner as often as not despised, always
taken advantage of. It is a perilous, uncertain thing.
Nevertheless, I return to my original judgment; kind hearts are more
than coronets. They are less rare; they are more easily captured;
they are much cheaper—yet they are more. One may put them
somewhere between coronets and good verse, but, of course,
nowhere near Poetry.
* * * * *
"Oh! Sir!" cries the Reader of Proofs, "have you verified your
references in all this?"
"No, My Child, nor will I. It is an extra labour, and should be charged
overtime. Let them go."
ON MUMBO-JUMBO
Mumbo-Jumbo is that department in the ruling of men which is
made of dead, false, apparatus; unreasonable; contemptible to the
free; unworthy of authority—and Mumbo-Jumbo is the most
necessary ingredient in all government.
All government is by persuasion. Odd it is that so many do not yet
see this! Perhaps not so odd after all; for words trick the mind, and
the words of government are not the words of persuasion.
But think of the matter for a moment, and you will see that
government is of necessity by persuasion. Here I catch the voices of
two men, an ass and his uterine brother—that sort of braying
centaur, half a rational being and half an ass. The ass tells me that
government is merely the use of force; the centaur, half man half
donkey, tells me that it lives by the threat of force.
Well, take an example. I come to a properly governed State: a State,
that is, where government is taken for granted and obeyed; why is it
so? Because that government works for the good of the Governed.
But an individual desiring to break a commandment even in such a
state refrains only from fear of force? True; but who executes that
force? Not the person who gave the command; not one man—for
one is not strong. No, what executes the force is many; and how are
many got to obey the will of one? It is by a process of suggestion,
dope; that is, persuasion. While men were persuaded of the rights of
private property, private property stood secure. Now that they are in
transition it is insecure. If ever they are persuaded that private
property is an injury, the institution will no longer be merely
insecure; it will perish; and no amount of force will save it. It will
perish as a general institution and only millionaires and the mass of
their servile dependents will remain.
Now, in this function of persuasion (which is the life of government)
mark the imperative power of Mumbo-Jumbo! And mark it not only
in political government, but in all those subsidiary forms of
government (or persuasion) by which one mind influences another
and directs it towards an end not originally its own. When the Police
were on their last strike (I forget when it was—they succeed each
other and will probably continue), an aged woman of means said in
my hearing—seeing a batch go by in civilian clothes—"Surely those
can't be policemen!" By these words did the Crone prove how
powerfully Mumbo-Jumbo had worked upon her mind. For her the
Policeman was the helmet, the coat, the belt.
With soldiers it is even more so (I am prepared to defend the use of
this elliptic idiom in private when next I have the leisure). Men used
to wearing some particular accoutrement cannot regard another
accoutrement as military; what is more, it is with difficulty—unless
their profession is to judge armies—that they can see any military
qualities in human beings clothed too much out of their fashion.
When I was in garrison in the town of Toul in the year 1891, there
came an English circus, with the men of which I made friends at
once, for I had not heard English for a weary while. One of them
said to me sadly: "They seem to have a lot of military about here,
but they are not real soldiers." I have no doubt that if you got a man
out of the fourteenth century and showed him suddenly a modern
regiment in peace (without tin hats), he would think they were
lackeys or pages; certainly not soldiers.
Once and again in the history of mankind has there arisen
Iconoclasm, which is but a fury against Mumbo-Jumbo. There was a
great outburst of it throughout the West at the end of the
eighteenth century. Men were too classic then to break statues with
hammers, but they were all for tearing the wigs off Judges and the
crowns off Kings and patchwork off Lords and Clowns, and for
getting rid of titles, and the rest of it. They argued thus—"Such
things are unworthy of Authority and even of men. They are lies:
they therefore degrade us." And they foamed at the mouth.
Ah, witless! All these things had a strict, even a logical connection
with public function. You may put it easily in two syllogisms: (1)
Without Mumbo-Jumbo there is no permanent subconscious
impression upon the mind, but without some permanent
subconscious impression upon the mind there is no permanent
persuasion; therefore, without Mumbo-Jumbo there is no persuasion.
Now (2) without persuasion there is no government. Therefore (to
take a short cut) there is no government without Mumbo-Jumbo.
And those excellent men, of whom my own ancestry, French,
English, Irish and American, were composed ("And what," you will
say, "has that to do with the matter?" Nothing), having got rid of
Mumbo-Jumbo in a greater or less degree—less in England, more in
France, most in America—immediately proceeded to set it up again.
Carefully did they scoop out the turnip, carefully did they light the
candle within, carefully did they dress it up in rags and tinsel, and
set it on its pole: there it stands to-day.
Flags in particular got a spurt through the slump in Kings. Formal
play-acting in public assemblies got a vast accession through the
contempt of Lords; and now, after a hundred years, we have so
much fiddle-faddle of ceremonious "rules" and "Honourable
gentlemen" and "law of libel" and uniform here and uniform there
that the State is now omnipotent, thanks to Mumbo-Jumbo, god and
master of the broken Human Heart.
Of the Mumbo-Jumbo of the learned in footnotes I shall later write.
And (as you will discover) I shall write also of the Mumbo-Jumbo of
technical words—a most fascinating department of my subject.
The Mumbo-Jumbo of the learned is indeed the very life of all
teaching, of all academic authority. A man never teaches so well as
when he is dressed up in a teaching fashion, and even those who
still foolishly refuse so to dress him up (I quote with sorrow the
Sorbonne) none the less put him on a raised platform; and he is
better with a desk, and I think he is the better also with a certain
artificial voice. The really great teachers also invent a certain
artificial expression of face and affected unnatural accent, which
they adopt at the beginning of a lecture and try to drop at the end
of it; but in the process of years these get fixed and may be
recognised at a hundred yards. For Mumbo-Jumbo holds his servants
tight. So also the authority of religion is badly wounded unless you
have an archaic language; and every religion whatsoever adopts one
as soon as it can. Some say that the most powerful of these
instruments is a dead language; others say old, odd, mouldy forms
of a living language, but at any rate Mumbo-Jumbo is of the essence
of the contract.
Then there is the Mumbo-Jumbo of command: Thackeray used to
ridicule it with the phrase "Shaloo-Hump!" or some such sounds, and
there is, as we all know, "Shun" rapidly shouted, and many another.
But any one who has had to drill recruits will admit that he would
never have got them drilled at all if instead of using these interesting
idols of language he had given his commands in a rational and
conversational tone with hesitation and urbanity.
Note you the Mumbo-Jumbo which may everywhere be classed
under the term "Official." A common lie has no such effect as a lie
with "Official" at the top in brackets. Yet no one could tell you
exactly what "Official" meant. It suggests only this: that the news
has been given by the Officer of some organisation. Thus, if you say
that a man has been declared mad, and put "Official," you mean
that two members of the Doctors' Guild have been at work; or, if you
are told that a funeral will not take place ("Official") you mean that a
member of the Undertakers' Union has given you the information, or
perhaps even a member of the family of the dead man. In this class
we must also put the two phrases "By Order" (used in this country)
and "Tremble and Obey," which, till recently stood (I understand) at
the foot of Chinese documents.
"By Order" is a Mumbo-Jumbo pearl! How often in lonely walks
through the London streets have I mused within my own dear mind
and marvelled at "By Order." When I read for instance "No Whistling
Allowed (By Order)" I wonder who gave the order and how he
climbed to such a novel power. How came he so strong that he could
prevent my whistling or in any other way enlivening London? And
why did he hide his magic name? I take it that he had no vulgar
legal power, but something more compelling and more mysterious, a
priestly thing. And there are others. People who own more than
2,000 acres of land love to paint "By Order" in black letters on little
white boards. With these they ornament the boundaries of their
possessions.
Mumbo-Jumbo has this defect, that if the spell fails through
unfamiliarity it looks grotesque; therefore is it essential for all
governments to shoe-horn any new Mumbo-Jumbo very carefully
into its place.
It must begin with some little habit, hardly acknowledged, hardly
noticeable, and it must only gradually grow into admitted authority.
Turn Mumbo-Jumbo on too suddenly and people would only laugh.
And while I think of it let me say that paint is a main incarnation of
Mumbo-Jumbo; paint with varnish—the complete form of paint.
People who sail boats know this very well. I will buy you for a few
pounds a very rotten old hulk, abandoned in Hamble River, I will
stop up the leaks with cement, paint her sides a bright colour,
varnish the paint and then varnish her decks, and sell her at an
enormous profit. It is done continually; lives are lost through it, of
course; the boat bursts asunder in the midst of the sea; but the
cheat never fails. Those who understand the art of horse dealing
(which I do not) assure me that much the same thing attaches to
that also. It seems there are poisons which you can give a horse
whereby it acquires a glossy coat, and that even the eyes of the
stupid beast can be made vivacious after long dulness. It may be so.
But of all the Mumbo-Jumbos, that which I admire most, because of
its excess and potency combined, is the Mumbo-Jumbo of wine. One
would think that in such a matter, where the senses are directly
concerned, and where every man can and should act for himself,
there was no room for this element in persuasion. It would be an
error so to think. There is not one man in a hundred who is not
almost entirely guided in a matter of wine by Mumbo-Jumbo. There
is here the Mumbo-Jumbo of particular terms, very well-chosen
metaphors, and a man is told that a Wine is "full," or "curious," or
"dry," or "pretty," or "sound," or something of that kind, and even as
he tastes the ink he does not doubt, but believes.
And there is the Mumbo-Jumbo of the years ("This is a '75
Brandy!"—What a lie!), and there is the Mumbo-Jumbo of labels.
And there is the arch-Mumbo-Jumbo of little wicker baskets and
dust. And the whole of that vast trade, the source of so much
pleasure and profit to mankind, floats upon an ocean of Mumbo-
Jumbo. Most of the claret you drink is either a rough Algerian wine
filled out with dirty water of great Garonne, or wine from the
Hérault, or the two mixed. But Lord! what names and titles the
concoction bears, including the Mumbo-Jumbo of "Bottled at the
Chateau."
And do you think that men would be happier in the drinking of wine
if they dropped all this? They would not; and that for two reasons.
First, that this would be making them work. They would have to
judge for themselves. It would be calling upon them for Effort, and
that is hateful to all mankind. Secondly, without the Mumbo-Jumbo,
most men would not know whether they were enjoying the wine or
not. Therefore I say let Mumbo-Jumbo flourish—and even increase—
if that be possible.
Let Mumbo-Jumbo flourish, not only in the matter of wine, and not
only in the matter of learning, and not only in the matter of positive
government (where it is absolutely essential), and not only in the
falsehoods of the daily Press, and not only in the Ecclesiastical affair,
nor only in that still more Mumbo-Jumbo world of sceptical
philosophy, but also in all the most intimate personal relations of
men. I am for it! I am for it! I am for it! Born a Mumbo-Jumboite, I
propose to die in the happy air which surrounds my nourishing
Divinity.
ON FOOTNOTES
It is pleasant to consider the various forms of lying, because that
study manifests the creative ingenuity of man and at the same time
affords the diverting spectacle of the dupe. That kind of lying which,
of the lesser sorts, has amused me most is the use of the footnote in
modern history.
It began with no intention of lying at all. The first modest footnote
was an occasional reinforcement of argument in the text. The writer
could not break his narrative; he had said something unusual; he
wanted his reader to accept it; and so he said, in little, "If you doubt
this, look up my authority so and so." That was the age of
innocence. Then came the serpent, or rather a whole brood of them.
The first big man I can find introducing the first considerable serpent
is Gibbon. He still uses the footnote legitimately as the occasional
reinforcement of a highly challengeable statement, but he also
brings in new features.
I do not know if he is original in this. I should doubt it, for he had
not an original mind, but was essentially a copier of the
contemporary French writers and a pupil of Voltaire's. But, anyhow,
Gibbon's is the first considerable work in which I find the beginnings
of the earliest vices or corruptions of the footnote. The first of these
is much the gravest, and I must confess no one has used it so well
as Gibbon; he had genius here as in much else. It is, the use of the
footnote to take in the plain man, the ordinary reader. Gibbon
abounds in this use.
His favourite way of doing this is to make a false statement in the
text and then to qualify it in the footnote in such words that the
learned cannot quarrel with him, while the unlearned are thoroughly
deceived. He tells you in the text that the thing was so certainly,
when he very well knows that it was not, and that if there is a scrap
of evidence for it, that evidence is bad. Then he puts in a footnote, a
qualification of what he has just said in the text, so that the critic
who really knows the subject has to admit that Gibbon knew it too.
As though I should write "The Russians marched through England in
1914," and then put a footnote, "But see the later criticisms of this
story in the accurate and fanatical Jones." At other times Gibbon
bamboozles the ordinary reader by a reference which looks learned
and is inane; so that your plain man says, "Well, I cannot look up all
these old books, but this great man has evidently done so."
A first-rate example of both these tricks combined in Gibbon is the
famous falsehood he propagated about poor St. George, of whom,
Heaven be witness, little enough[1] is known without having false
stories foisted upon him. You will find it in his twenty-third chapter,
where he puts forward the absurd statement that St. George was
identical with George of Cappadocia, the corrupt and disgraceful
bacon-contractor and the opponent of St. Athanasius.
This particular, classical example of the Evil Footnote is worth
quoting. Here are the words:[2] "The infamous George of
Cappadocia has been transformed into the renowned St. George of
England."
And here is the footnote:

This transformation is not given as absolutely certain, but as


extremely probable. See Longueruana, Tom. I, p. 194.

That footnote at once "hedges"—modifies the falsehood in the text


and assumes peculiar and recondite learning. That long title
"Longueruana" sounds like the devil and all! You will be surprised to
hear that the reference is to a rubbishy book of guess-work, with no
pretence to historical value, run together by a Frenchman of the
eighteenth century; from this Frenchman did Gibbon take the
absurdity of St. George originating with George of Cappadocia. I was
at the pains of looking this up—perhaps the first, and certainly the
last, of my generation to do so.
Another vice of the footnote (equally illustrated in that lie of
Gibbon's about St. George) is what I may call its use as the
"footnote of exception." It is universal to-day. You say something
which is false and then you quote in a footnote one or more
authorities supporting it. Any one can do it: and if the reader is
reasonably ignorant of the subject the trick always succeeds. Thus,
one might say that the earth was flat and put in a footnote two or
three references to the flat-earth pamphlets of which I have a little
collection at home. I am told that a wealthy lady, the widow of a
brewer, supported the Flat-Earth society which published these tracts
and that upon her death it collapsed. It may be so.
The next step of the footnote in iniquity was when it became a
mask. Who started this I know not, but I should imagine that the
great German school which remodelled history in the nineteenth
century was to blame. At any rate their successors the French are
now infinitely worse. I have seen a book purporting to be a history
in which of every page not more than a quarter was text, and the
rest a dreary regiment of references. There is no doubt at all about
the motives, mixed though they are. There is the desire of the fool
to say "Though I can't digest the evidence, yet I know it. Here it is."
There is the desire of the timid man to throw up fortification. There
is the desire of the pedant to show other pedants as well as the
general reader (who, by the way, has almost given up reading such
things, they have become so dull) that he also has been in Arcadia.
I notice that when anything is published without such footnotes, the
professional critic—himself a footnoter of the deepest dye—accuses
the author of romancing. If you put in details of the weather, of
dress and all the rest of it, minutely gathered from any amount of
reading, but refuse to spoil a vivid narrative with the snobbery and
charlatanism of these perpetual references, the opponent takes it for
granted that you have not kept your notes and cannot answer him;
and indeed, as a rule, you have not kept your notes and you cannot
answer him.
For the most part, these enormous, foolish, ill-motived accretions are
honest enough in their actual references, for the greater part of our
modern historians who use them are so incapable of judgment and
so lacking in style, so averse from what Rossetti called "fundamental
brain-work," that they have not the power to do more than shovel all
their notes on you in a lump and call it history. But now and then
this temptation to humbug produces its natural result, and the
references are false.
The late Mr. Andrew Lang used to say that the writer who writes
under the pseudonym of "Anatole France" must have had his
footnotes for his Life of Joan of Arc done by contract. The idea
opens up a wide horizon. A man of name would sit down to write a
general history of something of which he had a smattering, and
would then turn it over to a poor man who would hack for him in the
British Museum and find references—and they could always be found
—for pretty well any statement he had chosen to make.
At any rate, in this particular case of Anatole France's Joan of Arc,
Andrew Lang amply proved that the writer had never read his
original authorities, though he quoted them in heaps.
And that reminds me of another footnote vice (the subject is a
perfect jungle of vices!), which is the habit of copying other people's
footnotes. I did it myself when I was young; I was lured into it by
Oxford and I ask pardon of God and man. It is very common, and a
little ingenuity will hide one's tracks. A learned man who was also
civilised and ironical—but much too sparing in wine—told me once
this amusing story.
He was reading up an economic question, and he found himself
perpetually referred to a pamphlet of the late seventeenth century
wherein was a certain economic statement upon the point of his
research. Book after book referred him to this supposed statement,
but he being, as I have said, a learned, civilised, and ironical man
(though too sparing in wine) concluded from his general knowledge
—and very few learned men have general knowledge—that, in the
words of the Old Kent Road murderer, "There must be some
mistake." He couldn't believe any seventeenth-century pamphlet had
said what this oft-quoted pamphlet was made responsible for.
He proceeded to look up the pamphlet, the references to which
followed him about like a dog through all his research. He found
there were two copies—and only two. One was in a certain public
library, the other in a rich man's house. The public library was far off,
and the rich man was nearer by—an hour's journey in the train. So
he wrote to the rich man and asked him whether he might look at
this pamphlet in the library which his ancestors had accumulated,
but to which the rich man had added nothing, being indeed
indifferent to reading and writing. The rich man very politely
answered that his library had unfortunately been burnt down, and
that the pamphlet had been burnt with it. Whereupon the learned
man was at the pains of taking a long journey to consult the copy
kept in the public library. He discovered two things: (a) that the copy
had never been used at all—it was uncut; (b) that the references
always given had hardly any relation to the actual text. Then did he,
as is the habit of all really learned people, go and waste a universe
of energy in working out the textual criticism of the corruption, and
he proved that the last time any one had, with his own eyes, really
seen that particular passage, instead of merely pretending that he
had seen it, was in the year 1738—far too long ago! Ever since then
the reference had been first corrupted and then copied and recopied
its corrupted form by the University charlatans.
But I myself have had a similar experience (as the silent man said
when his host had described at enormous length his adventure with
the tiger). I was pursued for years by a monstrous piece of
nonsense about some Papal Bull forbidding chemical research: and
the footnote followed that lie. It was from Avignon that the thing
was supposed to have come. It seemed to me about as probable as
that Napoleon the Third should have forbidden the polka. At last—
God knows how unwillingly!—I looked the original Bull up in the big
collection printed at Lyons. It was as I had suspected. The Bull had
nothing whatever to do with chemical experiments. It said not a
word against the honest man who produces a poison or an explosive
mixture to the greater happiness of the race. It left the whole world
free to pour one colourless liquid into another colourless liquid and
astonish the polytechnic with their fumes. What it did say was that if
anybody went about collecting lead and brass under the promise of
secretly turning them into silver and gold, that man was a liar and
must pay a huge fine, and that those whom he had gulled must
have their metal restored to them—which seems sound enough.
Here you will say to me what is said to every reformer: "What would
you put in its place if you killed the little footnote, all so delicate and
compact? How could you replace it? How can we know that the
historian is telling the truth unless he gives us his references? It is
true that it prevents history from being properly written and makes
it, to-day, unreadable. It is true that it has become charlatan and
therefore historically almost useless. But you must have some
guarantee of original authority. How will you make sure of it?"
I should answer, let a man put his footnotes in very small print
indeed at the end of a volume, and, if necessary, let him give
specimens rather than a complete list. For instance, let a man who
writes history as it should be written—with all the physical details in
evidence, the weather, the dress, colours, everything—write on for
the pleasure of his reader and not for his critic. But let him take
sections here and there, and in an appendix show the critic how it is
being done. Let him keep his notes and challenge criticism. I think
he will be secure. He will not be secure from the anger of those who
cannot write clearly, let alone vividly, and who have never in their
lives been able to resurrect the past, but he will be secure from their
destructive effect.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] I should have said, nothing.
[2] This is a good opportunity, observe:—Gibbon, Dec. and Fall of
Rom. Emp., Ed. 1831 (Cassell), Chap. XXIII, Par. 27, n. 125. Does it
not look impressive?
A FEW KIND WORDS TO MAMMON
A friend of mine once wrote a parable ("and if these words should
meet his eye," etc.). I have not seen it written down. It may have
been written down. But in its verbal form it was something like this
(as it was told to me).
A number of candidates were offered what they would choose. But
they could choose only one thing each. The first chose health. And
the second, beauty. And the third, virtue. And the fourth, form. And
the fifth, ticklishness, which means an active sense. And the sixth,
forgetfulness. And the seventh, honesty. And the eighth, immunity
from justice. And the ninth, courage. And the tenth, experience. And
the eleventh, the love of others for him. And the twelfth, his love for
others. But the thirteenth (they were thirteen, including Judas)
chose money. And he chose wisely, for in choosing this, all the
others were added unto him.
If ever I complete that book which I began in the year 1898 called
"Advice to a Young Man" (I was twenty-eight years of age at the
moment I undertook it) it will there be apparent by example, closely
reasoned argument, and (what is more convincing than all) rhetoric,
that money is the true source of every delight, satisfaction, and
repose.
Do not imagine that, upon this account, I advise the young to seek
money in amounts perpetually extending. Far from it! I advise the
young (in this my uncompleted book) to regulate their thirst for
money most severely.
"Great sums of money" (said I, and say I) "are only to be obtained
by risking ruin, and of a hundred men that run the risk ninety-nine
get the ruin and only one the money." But money as a solid object;
money pursued, accumulated, possessed, enjoyed, bearing fruit:
that is the captain good of human life.
When people say that money is only worth what it will purchase, and
that it will purchase only certain things, they invariably make a
category of certain material things which it will purchase, and
imagine or hope that it will purchase no more. And these categories,
remember, are drawn up always by unmoneyed men. For your
moneyed man has no need to work and therefore no need to draw
up categories, which is a very painful form of toil. They say money
will purchase motor-cars and bathrooms—several bathrooms—and
foods and drinks and the rest of it—and then its power is exhausted.
These fools leave out two enormous chapters—the biggest chapters
of the lot. They leave out the services of other men, always
purchasable. And they leave out the souls of other men often
purchasable. With money in a sufficient amount you can purchase
any service, and with money you can purchase many individual
souls.
Now, that is important.
Take the purchasing of services with money. You start a newspaper.
Perhaps you cannot write very well yourself. I have known very
many extremely rich men whose writing was insignificant—never
persuasive or enduring in effect. The greater part of them cannot
write for more than a few minutes without breaking down. Just as
an elderly man cannot play Rugby football for more than a few
minutes or so without breaking down. But they can hire men to
write. And they do. They do not exactly buy the souls of those men
they hire. They only buy the services. Often enough have I had a
pleasant talk with one of these serfs in private when his daily task
was done (at from one to three thousand a year) concerning the
vices of his master and the follies which he (the serf) had had to
defend with his pen.
But to be able to purchase the services of men thus (I am only
speaking of my own trade, but all other trades are equally
purchasable, and the lawyers actually advertise that they are
purchasable!)—to be able, I say, to purchase services thus is a
category ridiculously neglected by those who pretend that money
brings nothing but material enjoyment.
It brings, for instance, immunity from the criminal law. At least it
does to-day. It did not until modern times even here, but it does to-
day. If you doubt it, take a little bit of paper and mark the men who
have been sent to prison during your own lifetime while possessed
(not after having been possessed) of five thousand a year. It is an
instructive winter game.
But if money can purchase services it can also, with less certitude,
but on a very large scale, purchase those other little things we noted
—the souls of men. Here there is a distinction.
When you purchase a service you do not necessarily purchase a
soul. You only purchase a soul when, by the action of your money,
you corrupt the individual. I do not say "corrupt him beyond all
salvation," but, at any rate, beyond any remaining desire for
salvation. When, for instance, by the possession of money, you
acquire the respect of a man, you are, to a small extent, purchasing
his soul. When by the action of money you make a man fall into
certain habits which at last become his character, you are purchasing
a soul.
I keep on saying "you," though I know well enough, wretched
reader, that you are in no position to do all this. In fact, you find it
the devil and all to purchase what is necessary for your household. If
you are a man with a thousand a year, for instance (there have just
passed my window three men with a good deal less, not judged by
their clothes but by my knowledge of them in a countryside), then
you are worth what was called before the war about four hundred
pounds a year. Taxation and Inflation, the twin gods that rhyme,
have done for the rest.
If you are what they called before the war a rich man (you will
excuse me, but random essays are read by all sorts of people), if
you were, say, a squire with six thousand a year, you are now worth
what your local scribbler at two thousand a year was worth before
the war. Horrible but true. So when I say "you," I only do so by way
of rhetoric and of shorthand. I cannot be pestered to know what
each of you is exactly worth, and, upon my soul, as things now are,
I do not think any one of you exactly knows.
To return. I say that money, acting thus, purchases souls. It
purchases souls not only in regardant, but in gross. In regardant, I
may explain, means "as regards the particular relation between one
soul and its purchaser," while in gross means "of the world in
general."
Thus a man may be a serf regardant when he is a serf to a particular
lord, but not a serf in his general status. Or he may be a serf in
gross, that is, a serf to anybody who comes across him. And in the
same way, there is a cad regardant and a cad in gross, and still more
is there a coward regardant and a coward in gross. For instance, a
man may be a general coward, and that is being a coward in gross,
or he may be a particular coward in the matter of riding a particular
horse, and then he is only a coward regardant.
I say, then, that the power of your money to purchase souls may be
in gross or regardant. It may purchase a particular soul, in which
case, God help you! Or it may have a general effect upon All Souls (I
mean not the College but the generality of mankind, for whom I
postulate souls), and in this case you are not perhaps very much to
blame. It is rather their fault than yours.
When your money has purchased souls in gross—gross souls in
gross and grossly purchased by the gross—it means that you are
worshipped for your money, and this is as common a worship as the
worship men give to their country.
There is a kind of insufficiency—I had almost called it idiocy—which
tries to shuffle out of this valuable truth by pointing to particular
cases (there are perhaps half a dozen at one time in a great
community like ours) of men who, possessing great wealth, are yet
not respected. But you will find that these are exceptions who have
deliberately done all that they could not to be respected. The ruck of
men with large fortunes are respected for all those things which
money is supposed to bring—justice, kindliness, humour,
temperance, courage and judgment. And even the very few rich men
who are not respected are still admired for some mystical quality.
"There must have been something in the man for him to have made
half a million before he was forty."
I should have said, "There must have been something lacking in
other men for this guttersnipe to have got so much out of them,"
but I am here deliberately the devil's advocate, and I know that I
have not a leg to stand on.
If you are possessed of great wealth ... (Digression: Little wealth is
disgusting, like mediocrity in verse. If you are going in for being
wealthy you must be very wealthy or not wealthy at all. Anywhere in
a plutocracy may you see the very wealthy hobnobbing with poor
hack-writers and versifiers and essay writers and such, but never
with the quarter-wealthy or the eighth-wealthy) ... if you are
possessed of great wealth, I say you are, in a plutocracy, a great
man. You are both loved and feared; everywhere respected and also
admired. Your good qualities are as enduring as stone; your evil
qualities are either transformed into something slight and humorous
or sublimated till they disappear.
There is more than this. Something goes on within yourself. Because
you are respected and admired you become more solid. You
envisage your faults sanely. You are far from morbid. If you have the
manhood to correct your failings, you correct them temperately. You
have poise and grasp. If, more wisely, you indulge your foibles—why,
that is a pardonable recreation. Your judgments are well-founded.
You are tempted to nothing rash or perilous. You may be led, for the
relief of tedium, into some slight eccentricity or other, but that will
give you the more initiative and a strong personality: not exactly
genius, for genius is a zigzag thing, burning and darting, unsuited to
the true greatness of wealth. It has not enough ballast and repose.
What is most important of all, those whose permanent affection you
ardently desire, those whose good you crave, those whose respect
you hunger for like food, will all of them at once respond to your
desire if money backs it. You can give them what they really need,
and you can give it them unexpectedly when they really need it.
Thus do they associate you with happiness. You, meanwhile, can
behave with the leisure that produces their respect. Gratitude will do
the rest, or, at any rate, security, and the habit of knowing that from
you proceeds so much good.
Thus does dear Mammon give us half a Paradise on earth and a fine
security within. Mammon is an Immediate Salvation. And the price
you pay for that Salvation is not so very heavy after all: only a
creeping gloom; a despair, turning iron and threatening to last for
ever.
So the whole thing may be summed up in a sentence that runs in
my head more or less like this: "Make unto you friends of the
Mammon of iniquity that they may receive you into their everlasting
habitations." My italics.
ON TREVES
As I stood in Treves Market Place the other day after an absence of
seven years (and the war in between) I could not but wonder
whether—since the tide in Europe has turned—the city would not
recover what is, if they only knew it, the glory of these German
towns: its individual tradition; its private excellence; its pride in
antiquity.
Treves as an outer frontier thing is unworthy of its history. Treves
was never meant to be a dependency of vulgar Prussia. It is as old
as Europe. It has, like all those towns of the Rhine basin—of which it
is the last Western example—a faculty for preserving what is old and
an active tradition within it of the Roman Empire. It was a provincial
capital of that Empire just at the moment of the transition before the
central government broke down, and the story of it from that time
onwards has never been interrupted. There are many modern
authorities who pretend (basing their thesis upon guesswork) that
Treves and this lower valley of the Moselle was once Celtic—or, as
we say to-day, French—that it was just like Toul, or Metz, or Verdun,
but that the district was later overflowed by German speech; that it
was invaded. There is no real or certain evidence for any change in
the boundaries of German speech towards the West within recorded
time. The various German dialects (which were, of course, not
original at the beginning of our recorded history, but were already
more than half Latin in their wording) reached to a certain limit
which they have not overpassed in two thousand years, but from
which also they have not receded. Treves, I take it, was what to-day
we call German just as much when Priscillian was there condemned
as it is to-day.
The stamp of Rome is set upon it very largely, as it is upon
everything German west of the central forests and the waste Baltic
land. And Treves has the good fortune to have preserved great
monuments of that time. The Black Gate is the most famous of
them. But I am not sure that the restored Basilica, though most of
its bricks are new, does not affect the traveller more.
You might come upon that Basilica of Treves in Ravenna, and it
would not be out of place. By a nice irony, its strict, solemn
simplicity, its high, blind arches, regular and repetitive, its vast blank
of wall, and all that reminds you of the later Cæsars, were given
over for use as a garrison church to dull Pomeranium men from
hundreds of miles away, a garrison which has now disappeared. By a
nice irony, this astounding thing, instinct with Rome, was used for
the artificial parade of Prussians who were as little native to Treves
as one breed of similarly speaking men could be to another. This
great church and the Black Gate at the other end of the town, piled
up enormous above the market centre, are the chief standing
recollections of that moment when the Empire had just settled into
its Christian mould. They saw St. Martin coming in, as Milan had
seen him. They saw the crowds that besieged the Imperial Courts
when the Spanish bishop was condemned. They saw the procession
that moved out to his beheading.
And there is a third point in Treves which arrests one still more,
although it is broken to an old ruin, and that is the remaining
decayed defence of the old palace. It has been built up, and rebuilt
up with rough stone, through the Dark Ages, so that now you look at
the rude courses and the rough, half-buried arches as you look at a
piece of Pevensey or Richborough. But the very fact of its continuous
decline in grandeur recalls its continuous use, and you can stand in a
roofless room which held in turn the Apostate and the giant
Maximin, and which heard the high, piping voice of Charlemagne,
incongruous with his tall presence and dignity.
All that great transition from the pagan to the mediæval Europe one
feels more at Treves even than one does at Aix; and this, I suppose,
is because the roots of Treves go deeper; but partly, also, because
Treves is more of a border town.
Like every countryside in Europe, this rich pocket in the valley of the
Moselle has kept its real spirit, its individual soul, alive underneath
the covering of conquest and administration. If Treves were to-
morrow to become again, as it was in the past for so many
centuries, a State, there would be hardly any change to the eye. The
same sharply-cut hills going in succession like cliffs along the valley
—the typical hills of Lorraine which Claude loved—would still carry
the same terraced vineyards, and the specially Northern cultivation
of the grape would show all its accustomed marks.
As one goes up the valley, one may still see upon one of the
sandstone slabs of the steep above the river road, a sign marking
the limit of the jurisdiction of the Archbishop, a crozier and a cross
deeply carved into the smooth rock. It is a symbol of what Treves
was in the past, of its strong local character and individuality.
Perhaps some later symbol will mark the resurrection of that spirit.
There is also in the heart of the town something which the people
may well boast of as a mark of their Western inheritance. It is the
first of the Gothic churches of Germany.
It came surprisingly early. Suger had planted, during the Second
Crusade, three miles north of the Gate of Paris, the aboriginal
pointed arch from which so vast a revolution in architecture was to
spring. You get the cathedral of Notre Dame, and the whole
movement of the Ile de France. But this little church, right up
against the tremendous cathedral of the Dark Ages, this little church
here, hundreds of miles away from the Gallic origin of such things,
was begun actually within a hundred years of Suger's innovation! St.
Louis was still a boy, and so was Henry III of England, when the first
stones of the delicate thing were laid here in Treves. How European
and civilised a place it was in those days!
And talking of this church, I came upon something there even more
astonishing than its early witness to the Western spirit of Treves.
Immediately to the left of the choir I also found a witness of the
endurance of civilisation in Treves—a thing of, I suppose, the other
day—a little statue in freestone, of the most heavenly sort: what the
will of an English king prettily called "Mariolam quemdam"—"some
little Madonna or other."
It seemed to be unknown. There was no reproduction of it in the
town. No one had a photograph of it. No one could tell me who had
carved it. It looked quite new. It was as good a thing as even I have
seen. And it was here in Treves! It was in a place which finds itself
upon the map (as the map still insecurely stands) mixed up with the
monstrosities of the monument of Leipsic, the hideous vulgarity of
the Hohenzollerns and their palace at Posen (but I forgot—Posen is
no longer counted upon the same map; it has been restored to
civilisation), the comic streets of Berlin.
Seeing such a noble statue there, I thought to myself of what
advantage it would be if the people who write about Europe would
really travel. If only they would stop going from one large
cosmopolitan hotel to another, and giving us cuttings from
newspapers as the expressions of the popular soul! If only they
would peer about and walk and see things with their eyes!
This little statue to the left of the choir of Treves would be an
education for such men. No longer would they talk of Treves as
something identical with strange and distant Koenigsberg or as a
cousin to base Frankfort. It would no longer be for them a railway
station or a dot upon the map. Even as I looked at that statue I
bethought myself of that other statue: the enormity at Metz. For, as
we all know, the Prussian Government built, or rather plastered,
onto the Western porch of Metz a red statue of the late Emperor and
Prussian King. He appears as the Prophet Daniel! The rest of the
cathedral is of a marvellous and aged grey, but he is red, carved out
of red stone. He is dressed up in a sort of monk's habit with a cowl.
His moustaches are turned up fiercely at the end—and yet the statue
is solemnly inscribed with that title: "The Prophet Daniel"....
These are the things that our generation has seen and that posterity
will not believe.
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