Mencken claimed that universal imbibing would have biblical results, “My proposal would restore Christianity to the world.”1 This reference to Christianity has much weight to it, including absence of pride, equality under G-d, and, most obviously, the immortal words of the Apostle Paul, which Mencken often referenced, “Drink no water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine often infirmities” (I. Timothy 5:23, see also I. Corinthians 11:25). There is also Christianity’s generally pessimistic — that is, accurate — treatment of man. Here are some supporting excerpts from the old and new testaments:
According to highest authority, “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis 8:21). Moses — who had a direct relationship with G_d — observed, “while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the Lord; and how much more after my death?” (Deuteronomy 31:27). We are later advised, “It is better to trust in the Lord [an incorporeality and creator of man] than to put confidence in man [who else is to interpret and pass down to us the teachings of G-d?]” (Psalms 118:8). King Solomon claimed, “Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain” (Proverbs 31:30); and, “in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” (Ecclesiastes 1:18). John quotes Jesus admitting, “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?” (John 3:12). And unsurprisingly, in light of all this, John said of those who actually witnessed the miracles of Jesus — not merely heard of them thousands of years later (as Moses said earlier) — “But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him” (John 12:37, see also such passages as Mark 16:11-14 and Luke 24:11, and also Romans 3:12-17). Now initially it appears that any religion that believes in the authenticity, sanctity and truth of any of these observations would have quite a difficult time attracting supporters. When it comes to finding followers, it would appear from the previous quotes that they don’t and didn’t expect any. But on reflection, if people are as error prone as this paragraph suggests, then the opposite is more likely to be true.
Furthermore, there are biblical passages which seem to say that because of our, or merely our parents, or even our great-grandparents ignorance or wickedness, we are cursed: “If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the Lord of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart. Behold, I will corrupt your seed” (Malachi 2:2-3); and “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me” (Exodus 20:5, repeated at Exodus 34:7 and Deuteronomy 5:9). Mencken agreed, saying, “The only really safe skeptic is of the third generation: his grandfather must have taken the Devil’s shilling as a bachelor.”2 But honestly, Mencken’s interpretation of God’s Will slightly differed from the biblical passages above, believing omission rather than commission to be His Will Manifest. Mencken empathised, “Do I let the chandala suffer, and consign them, as old Friedrich used to say, to statistics and the devil? Well, so does God.”3 Consider also this passage:
[Quack doctors attract people with] defective reasoning powers. They slaughter these unfortunates by the thousand … Does anyone seriously contend that this butchery is anti-social? It seems to me to be quite the reverse. The race is improved as its misfits and half-wits are knocked off. And life is thereby made cheaper and safer for the rest of us. [Otherwise, we] carry them on our backs [and then] they multiply gloriously, and so burden our children and grandchildren … Thus a genuinely enlightened State would endow Christian Science and chiropractic on eugenic principles, as our great universities already endow football. Failing that, it is the plain duty of statesmanship to let nature take its course.4
Mencken blasphemes that the creator of man Himself is imperfect:
Man’s limitations are also visible in his gods. Yahveh seems to have had His hands full with the Devil from the start. His plans for Adam and Eve went to pot, and He failed again with Noah. His worst failure came when He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to rescue man from sin. It would be hard to imagine any scheme falling further from success.5
At least He hasn’t tried it again recently. He doesn’t try it every election season and oftener, as mere man does.
Mencken summarised, “Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again next time.”6 Of course, this is the “ought” rather than the “is” of the case, for what most people learn from failure is nothing at all; they just go on failing. They believe that the wrong path leads to the right path; that after a storm things clear up; that it is darkest before the dawn; that the roses of success grow from the ashes of failure; that every clouded mind has a silver lining, which is not merely old age; and that old age itself has a silver lining. Mistakes made are confused with lessons learnt. As Mencken said, “The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”7 People believe that “The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.”8 And democracy itself consists of attempts “to remedy the irremediable, to succor the unsuccorable, to unscramble the unscrambleable, to dephlogisticate the undephlogistacable … to solve the insoluble and unscrew the inscrutable.”9
For a final comment on Mencken’s Christianity, Benjamin De Casseres observed:
FootnotesMencken is so completely civilized that he will not even respond to his critics. He turns the other cheek to them, and with impudent boyishness says, “Smack this one!” He is the only man I know who subtly reconciles two of Christ’s heretofore irreconcilable sayings – to turn the other cheek and I bring not peace, but a sword.10
- A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 391. Another example of Mencken’s Holy Wit is his proposal for random election (Ibid., pp. 378-80) and marriage (Ibid., pp. 58-60). Such revered Catholics as Cervantes, Saint Thomas More and G.K. Chesterton endorsed it, as I illustrate in my unpublished, “A Proposal for Electoral Reform.” [↩]
- H.L. Mencken, Treatise on the Gods (New York: Knopf, 1930), p. 333. [↩]
- A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 618. [↩]
- Ibid., pp. 344-46; see also pp. 376-77, where Mencken credits the Black Death with the Renaissance. [↩]
- Minority Report, p. 260. [↩]
- A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 617. For a similar sentiment, see David Cecil, The Young Melbourne (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1939), p. 254-55. There is also Aldous Huxley’s comment, “That men do not learn very much from history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” From: “A Case of Voluntary Ignorance,” Complete Essays of Aldous Huxley, vol. VI (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), p. 59. See also such texts as: H.J. Haskell, The New Deal in Old Rome (New York: Knopf, 1947), esp. pp. 237-241; James Henry Breasted, The Dawn of Conscience (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934), esp. p. 223; and Robert Scheuttinger and Eamonn Butler, Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls: How not to fight inflation (Wash., D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 1979), esp. p. 150. [↩]
- H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: Third Series (New York: Octagon Books, 1985), p. 311. [↩]
- A Mencken Chrestomathy, p. 154. [↩]
- Ibid., p. 150; and Minority Report, p. 199. [↩]
- Benjamin De Casseres, Mencken and Shaw (New York: Silas Newton, 1930), p. 10. [↩]