But the whole modern world, or at any rate the
whole modern Press, has a perpetual and consuming terror of plain
morals. Men always attempt to avoid condemning a thing upon merely moral
grounds. If I beat my grandmother to death to-morrow in the middle of
Battersea Park, you may be perfectly certain that people will say
everything about it except the simple and fairly obvious fact that it is
wrong. Some will call it insane; that is, will accuse it of a deficiency
of intelligence. This is not necessarily true at all. You could not tell
whether the act was unintelligent or not unless you knew my grandmother.
Some will call it vulgar, disgusting, and the rest of it; that is, they
will accuse it of a lack of manners. Perhaps it does show a lack of
manners; but this is scarcely its most serious disadvantage. Others will
talk about the loathsome spectacle and the revolting scene; that is,
they will accuse it of a deficiency of art, or aesthetic beauty. This
again depends on the circumstances: in order to be quite certain that
the appearance of the old lady has definitely deteriorated under the
process of being beaten to death, it is necessary for the philosophical
critic to be quite certain how ugly she was before.
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