Be That As It May, So Far As Humanity Is Concerned, This
Hypersensitive Effeminacy Has But A Noxious Influence; And
All The More For The Twofold Reason That It Is Sometimes
Sincere, Though More Often Mere Cant And Hypocrisy.
At the
best, it is a perversion of the truth; for emotion combined
with ignorance, as it is in nine hundred and ninety-nine
cases out of a thousand, is a serious obstacle in the path of
rational judgment.
Is sentimentalism on the increase? It seems to be so, if we
are to judge by a certain portion of the Press, and by
speeches in Parliament. But then, this may only mean that
the propensity finds easier means of expression than it did
in the days of dearer paper and fewer newspapers, and also
that speakers find sentimental humanity an inexhaustible fund
for political capital. The excess of emotional attributes in
man over his reasoning powers must, one would think, have
been at least as great in times past as it is now. Yet it is
doubtful whether it showed itself then so conspicuously as it
does at present. Compare the Elizabethan age with our own.
What would be said now of the piratical deeds of such men as
Frobisher, Raleigh, Gilbert, and Richard Greville? Suppose
Lord Roberts had sent word to President Kruger that if four
English soldiers, imprisoned at Pretoria, were molested, he
would execute 2,000 Boers and send him their heads? The
clap-trap cry of 'Barbaric Methods' would have gone forth to
some purpose; it would have carried every constituency in the
country.
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