It is the essence of a charlatan that he aims at the results of certain excellences3 in the full consciousness that he does not possess those excellences. The material upon which he works is twofold: the ignorance and the noble appetite for reverence4 in his fellow men.
Where animals are concerned the Scientific Spirit has tabulated a good deal of careful research in this department. We know fairly well the habits of the Cuckoo. What seemingly harmless organisms are poisonous to us, and why, we have discovered and can catalogue. The successful deception5 practised for purposes of secrecy6 or greed by such and such a creature,[Pg 263] we can discover in our books. But no one has tabulated the human charlatan.
An admirable example upon which one can test the whole theory of charlatanism7 is the ridiculous Lombroso.
To begin with you have the name. He was no more of an Italian than Disraeli, or than the present Mayor of Rome: but his Italian name deceives and is intended to deceive, not necessarily that it was assumed, but that it was paraded as national. Hundreds of honest men thought themselves praising the Italian character and Italian civilisation9 when the newspapers (themselves half duped) had persuaded them to blow the trumpet10 of Lombroso.
One of the characteristics of the charlatan is that he parades the object with which he desires to dupe you, and simultaneously11 hides his methods in pushing the thing forward. The purveyor12 of cheap jewellery in Whitechapel does this. He lets you have the glitter of his article full and strong. Where he got it, of his own connection with it, and what it is, you learn[Pg 264] last in the business or not at all. The whole process is one of suggestion, or, as our forefathers13 called it, "hoodwinking." Lombroso was true to type in this regard.
The European Press was deluged14 one day with notices, praise, reviews of a book which was called Degeneration. It was a tenth-rate book, but we were compelled to hear of it. No words were fine enough to describe its author. We learnt that his name was Nordau. There was no process of logic15 in the book, there was no labour. Where it asserted (it was a mass of assertions) it usually trespassed16 on ground which the author could not pretend to any familiarity with. Those who are already alive to the international trick were suspicious and upon their guard from the very moment that they smelt17 the thing. The infinitely18 larger number who do not understand the nature of international forces were taken in. For one man who read the farrago a hundred were taught to magnify the name of Nordau. Only when this process of suggestion had well sunk in did the[Pg 265] public casually19 learn that the said Nordau was a connection of Lombroso's.
A book of greater value (which is not saying much) proceeded from the pen of one Ferrero. It proposed an examination of the Roman Empire and the Roman people. Its thesis was, of course, a degradation20 of both. For one man who so much as saw that book, a hundred went away with the vague impression that a certain great Ferrero dominated European thought. He gave opinions (among other things) upon the polity of England so absurd and ignorant that, had the process of suggestion not run on before, those opinions would only have attained21 some small measure of notoriety from their very fatuousness23. But the international trick had reversed the common and healthy process of human thought. We were not allowed to judge the man by his work; no, we must accept the work on the authority of the man; only after the trick had been successfully worked did it come out that Ferrero was a connection of Lombroso's.
[Pg 266]
Lombroso's own department of charlatanry24 was to attack Christian25 morals in the shape of denying man's power of choice between good and evil.
In another epoch26 and with other human material to work upon his stock-in-trade would have taken some other form, but Lombroso had been born into that generation immediately preceding our own, whose chief intellectual vice28 was materialism29. A name could be cheaply made upon the lines of materialism, and Lombroso took to it as naturally as his spiritual forerunners30 took to rationalist Deism and as his spiritual descendants will take to spurious mysticism. We shall have in the near future our Lombrosos of the Turning Table, the Rapping Devil, and the Manifesting Dead Great Aunt—indeed this development coincided with his own old age—but as things were, the easiest charlantry in his years of vigour31 was to be pursued upon Materialist32 lines, and on Materialist lines did the worthy33 Lombroso proceed. His method was childishly simple, and we ought to blush for our[Pg 267] time or rather for that of our immediate27 seniors that it should have duped anybody—but it was far from childishly guileless.
When the laws are chiefly concerned in defending the possessions of those already wealthy, and when society, in the decline or depression of religion, takes to the worshipping of wealth, those whom the laws will punish are generally poor. Such a time was that into which Lombroso was born. No man was executed for treason, few men were imprisoned34 for it. Cheating on a large scale was an avenue to social advancement35 in most of the progressive European countries. The purveying36 of false news was a way to fortune: the forestaller37 and the briber38 were masters of the Senate. The sword was sheathed39. The popular instinct which would repress and punish cowardice40, oppression, the sexual abominations of the rich, and their cruelties, had no outlet41 for its expression. The prisons of Europe were filled in the main with the least responsible, the weakest willed, and the most unfortunate of the very[Pg 268] poor. We owe to Lombroso the epoch-making discovery that the weakest willed, the least responsible, and the most unfortunate of the very poor often suffer from physical degradation. With such an intellectual equipment Lombroso erected42 the majestic43 structure of human irresponsibility.
Two hundred men and women are arrested for picking pockets in such and such a district in the course of a year. The contempt for human dignity which is characteristic of modern injustice44 permits these poor devils to be treated like so many animals, to be thrashed, tortured, caged, and stripped: measured, recorded, dealt with as vile45 bodies for experiment. Lombroso (or for that matter any one possessed46 of a glimmering47 of human reason) can see that of these two hundred unfortunate wretches48, a larger proportion will be diseased or malformed, than would be the case among two hundred taken at random49 among the better fed or better housed and more carefully nurtured50 citizens. The Charlatan is in clover! He gathers his[Pg 269] statistics: twenty-three per cent. squint51, eighteen per cent. have lice—what is really conclusive52 no less than ninety-three per cent. suffer from metagrobolisation of the hyperdromedaries, which is scientist Greek for the consequences of not having enough to eat. It does not take much knowledge of men and things to see what the Charlatan can make of such statistics. Lombroso pumps the method dry and then produces a theory uncommonly53 comfortable to the well-to-do—that their fellow-men if unfortunate can be treated as irresponsible chattels54.
There is the beginning and end of the whole humbug55.
With the characteristic lack of reason which is at once the weakness and the strength of this vicious clap-trap, a totally disconnected—and equally obvious—series of facts is dragged in. If men drink too much, or if they have inherited insanity56, or are in any other way afflicted57, by their own fault or that of others, in the action of the will, they will be prone58 to irresponsibilities and to follies59; and where such[Pg 270] irresponsibilities and follies endanger the comfort of the well-to-do, the forces of modern society will be used to restrain them. Their acts of violence or of unrestrained cupidity60 being unaccompanied by calculation will lead to the lock-up. And so you have another stream of statistics showing that "alcoholism" (which is Scientist for drinking too much) and epilepsy and lunacy do not make for material success.
On these two disparate legs poses the rickety structure which has probably already done its worst in European jurisprudence and against which the common sense of society is already reacting.
Fortunately for men Charlatanry of that calibre has no very permanent effect. It is too silly and too easily found out. If Lombroso had for one moment intended a complete theory of Materialist morals or had for one moment believed in the stuff which he used for self-advertisement, he would have told us how physically61 to distinguish the cosmopolitan62 and treasonable financier, the fraudulent company-worker, the[Pg 271] traitor63, the tyrant64, the pornographer, and the coward. These in high places are the curse of modern Europe—not the most wretched of the very poor. Of course Lombroso could tell us nothing of the sort; for there is nothing to tell.
Incidentally it is worthy of remark that this man was one of those charlatans65 who are found out in time. Common sense revolted and in revolting managed to expose its enemy very effectively while that enemy was still alive. A hundred tricks were played upon the fellow: it is sufficient to quote two.
After a peculiarly repulsive66 trial for murder in Paris, a wag sent the photograph of two hands, a right hand and a left hand, to the great criminologist, telling him they were those of the murderer, and asking for his opinion. He replied in a document crammed67 with the pompous68 terms of the scientific cheap-jack, hybrid69 Greek and Latin, and barbarous in the extreme. He discovered malformations in the fingers and twenty other mysteries of his craft, which exactly proved why these hands were necessarily[Pg 272] and by the predestination of blind Nature the hands of a murderer. Then it was that the wag published his letter and the reply with the grave annotation70 that the left hand was his own (he was a man of letters) and the right hand that of an honest fellow who washed down his carriage.
The other anecdote71 is as follows: Lombroso produced a piece of fatuous22 nonsense about the Political Criminal Woman. He based it upon "the skull72 of Charlotte Corday"—which skull he duly analysed, measured, and labelled with the usual regiment73 of long and incomprehensible words. Upon the first examination of the evidence it turned out that the skull was no more Charlotte Corday's than Queen Anne's—a medical student had sold it to a humble74 Curiosity Shop, and the dealer75, who seems to have had some intellectual affinity76 with the Lombroso tribe, had labelled it for purposes of sale, "The Skull of Charlotte Corday." Lombroso swallowed it.
The Ass8!
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1
tabulated
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| 把（数字、事实）列成表( tabulate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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charlatan
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| n.骗子；江湖医生；假内行 | |
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excellences
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| n.卓越( excellence的名词复数 )；（只用于所修饰的名词后）杰出的；卓越的；出类拔萃的 | |
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reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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deception
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| n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计 | |
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secrecy
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| n.秘密，保密，隐蔽 | |
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charlatanism
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| n.庸医术，庸医的行为 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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trumpet
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| n.喇叭，喇叭声；v.吹喇叭，吹嘘 | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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purveyor
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| n.承办商，伙食承办商 | |
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forefathers
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| n.祖先，先人；祖先，祖宗( forefather的名词复数 )；列祖列宗；前人 | |
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deluged
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| v.使淹没( deluge的过去式和过去分词 )；淹没；被洪水般涌来的事物所淹没；穷于应付 | |
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logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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trespassed
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| （trespass的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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smelt
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| v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼 | |
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infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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21
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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22
fatuous
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| adj.愚昧的；昏庸的 | |
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fatuousness
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| n.愚昧，昏庸，蠢 | |
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charlatanry
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| n.吹牛，骗子行为 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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29
materialism
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| n.［哲］唯物主义，唯物论；物质至上 | |
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forerunners
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| n.先驱( forerunner的名词复数 )；开路人；先兆；前兆 | |
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vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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materialist
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| n. 唯物主义者 | |
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33
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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imprisoned
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| 下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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advancement
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| n.前进，促进，提升 | |
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purveying
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| v.提供，供应( purvey的现在分词 ) | |
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forestaller
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| 垄断者 | |
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briber
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| n.行贿者 | |
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sheathed
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| adj.雕塑像下半身包在鞘中的；覆盖的；铠装的；装鞘了的v.将（刀、剑等）插入鞘( sheathe的过去式和过去分词 )；包，覆盖 | |
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40
cowardice
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| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
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41
outlet
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| n.出口/路；销路；批发商店；通风口；发泄 | |
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42
ERECTED
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| adj. 直立的，竖立的，笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立，建立 | |
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majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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44
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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45
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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46
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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47
glimmering
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| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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48
wretches
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| n.不幸的人( wretch的名词复数 )；可怜的人；恶棍；坏蛋 | |
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49
random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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50
nurtured
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| 养育( nurture的过去式和过去分词 )； 培育； 滋长； 助长 | |
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51
squint
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| v. 使变斜视眼, 斜视, 眯眼看, 偏移, 窥视; n. 斜视, 斜孔小窗; adj. 斜视的, 斜的 | |
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52
conclusive
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| adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的 | |
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53
uncommonly
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| adv. 稀罕(极，非常) | |
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54
chattels
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| n.动产，奴隶( chattel的名词复数 ) | |
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55
humbug
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| n.花招，谎话，欺骗 | |
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56
insanity
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| n.疯狂，精神错乱；极端的愚蠢，荒唐 | |
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57
afflicted
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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58
prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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59
follies
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| 罪恶，时事讽刺剧； 愚蠢，蠢笨，愚蠢的行为、思想或做法( folly的名词复数 ) | |
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60
cupidity
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| n.贪心，贪财 | |
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61
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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62
cosmopolitan
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| adj.世界性的，全世界的，四海为家的，全球的 | |
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traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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64
tyrant
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| n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人 | |
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charlatans
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| n.冒充内行者，骗子( charlatan的名词复数 ) | |
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66
repulsive
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| adj.排斥的，使人反感的 | |
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67
crammed
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| adj.塞满的，挤满的；大口地吃；快速贪婪地吃v.把…塞满；填入；临时抱佛脚( cram的过去式) | |
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68
pompous
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的；夸大的；豪华的 | |
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hybrid
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| n.(动，植）杂种，混合物 | |
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annotation
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| n.注解 | |
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71
anecdote
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| n.轶事，趣闻，短故事 | |
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72
skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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75
dealer
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| n.商人，贩子 | |
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affinity
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| n.亲和力，密切关系 | |
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