"i asked old biggs (as the duke of racton used to be called) what he thought of charlie wilson. old biggs answered, 'man like that's one of two things: a fanatic or a fanatic.' i thought this very funny."—st. germans sporting memoirs, vol. ii, p. 186.
this is a kind of man whom we all love and yet all desire to moderate. he is excessive only in good, but his excess therein is dangerous. he proceeds from less to more; first irritated, then exasperated, then mad. he will not tolerate the necessary foibles of mankind. no, nor even their misunderstandings. he himself commonly takes refuge in some vice or other, but a small one, and from this bastion defends himself against all comers.
the fanatic will exaggerate the operations of war. if it be necessary in the conquest of a province to murder certain women, he will cry shame blindly, without consideration of[pg 308] martial conditions or remembrance that what we do in war is absolved by indemnities thereafter following. it is the same with the death of children in warfare, whether these be starved to death in concentration camps or more humanely spitted, or thrown down wells, or dealt with in some other fashion, such as the braining of them against walls and gateposts: nothing will suit the fanatic in these matters but a complete and absolute abstention from them, without regard to strategy or tactics or any other part of military science. now many a man shall argue against practices of one sort or another, as against excesses. but the fanatic is nothing so reasonable, being bound by a law of his nature or rather a lack of law, to violent outburst with no restraint upon it, and to impotent gnashings.
it is so also in affairs of state when peace reigns, for the fanatic is for ever denouncing what all men know must be and making of common happenings an uncommon crime.[pg 309] thus, when a minister shall borrow of a money-lender certain sums which this last generously puts before him without condition or expense, what must your fanatic do, but poke and pry into the whole circumstance, and when the usurer has his just reward, and is made a peer to settle our laws for us, the fanatic will go vainly about from one newspaper to another seeking which shall print his foolish "protest" (as he calls it). mark you also that the fanatic is quite indifferent to this: that his foolishness is of no effect. he will roar in an empty field as loud as any bull and challenge all men to meet him, and seems well pleased whether they come or no.
it is of the fanatical temper to regard some few men as heroes, or demigods, and then again, these having failed in something, to revile them damnably. thus by the old religious sort you will find the twelve apostles in the gospel very foolishly revered and made much of as though they were so many idols, but let one of these (judas to wit) show statesmanship and a manly[pg 310] sense, and lord! how the fanatic does rail at him!
so it is also with foreign nations. the fanatic has no measure there and speaks of them as though they were his province, seeing that it is of his essence never to comprehend diversity of circumstance or measure. thus our cousins oversea will very properly burn alive the negroes that infest them in those parts, and their children and young people will, when the negro has been thus despatched, collect his bones or charred clothing to keep the same in their collections, which later they compare one with another. this is their business not ours, and has proved in the effect of great value to their commonwealth. but the fanatic will have none of it. to hear him talk you might imagine himself a negro or one that had in his own flesh tasted the fire, and in his rage he will blame one man and another quite indiscriminately: now the good president of these people (mr. roosevelt as he once was), now the humble instrument of justice who should have put a match[pg 311] to the african. and all this without the least consideration of those surrounding things and haps which made such dealing with negroes a very necessary thing.
there is nothing workable or of purpose in what this man does. he is for ever quarrelling with other men for their lack of time or memory or even courtesy to himself, for on this point he is very tender. he wearies men with repeating to them their own negotiations, as though these were in some way disgraceful. thus if a man has taken a sum of money in order to write of the less pleasing characters of his mother; or if he has sold his vote in parliament, or if he has become for his own good reasons the servant of some one wealthier than he, or if he has seen fit to deal with the enemies of his country, the fanatic will blurt out and blare such a man's considered action, hoping, it would seem, to have some support in his mere raving at it. but this he never gets, for mankind in the lump is too weighty and reasonable to accept any such wildness.
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there is no curing the fanatic, neither with offers of money nor with blows, nor is there any method whatsoever of silencing him, save imprisonment, which, in this country, is the method most commonly taken. but in the main there is no need to act so violently by him, seeing that all men laugh at him for a fool and that he will have no man at his side. commonly, he is of no effect at all, and we may remain his friend though much contemptuous of him, since contempt troubles him not at all. but there are moments, and notably in the doubt of a war, when the fanatic may do great ill indeed. then it is men's business to have him out at once and if necessary to put him to death, but whether by beheading, by hanging, or by crucifixion it is for sober judges to decide.
the irish are very fanatical, and have driven from their country many landlords formerly wealthy who were the support and mainstay of all the island. it may be seen in ireland how fanaticism can impoverish. upon the other hand, the people of the mile end road and[pg 313] round by the north into hackney downs and so southward and westward into the city of london by houndsditch are not fanatical at all, and enjoy for their reward an abounding prosperity.
