And anomalies accustom the mind to the
idea of unreason and untruth. Suppose I had by some prehistoric law the
power of forcing every man in Battersea to nod his head three times
before he got out of bed. The practical politicians might say that this
power was a harmless anomaly; that it was not a grievance. It could do
my subjects no harm; it could do me no good. The people of Battersea,
they would say, might safely submit to it. But the people of Battersea
could not safely submit to it, for all that. If I had nodded their heads
for them for fifty years I could cut off their heads for them at the end
of it with immeasurably greater ease. For there would have permanently
sunk into every man's mind the notion that it was a natural thing for me
to have a fantastic and irrational power. They would have grown
accustomed to insanity.
For, in order that men should resist injustice, something more is
necessary than that they should think injustice unpleasant. They must
think injustice _absurd_; above all, they must think it startling. They
must retain the violence of a virgin astonishment. That is the
explanation of the singular fact which must have struck many people in
the relations of philosophy and reform.
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