Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/492

476 quotes? Nothing. Abstinence tends toward virtue, hypocrisy toward vice. But this is a minor matter, since Hamlet is scarcely a safe social guide.

A like confusion of ideas arises when he quotes these words, which he appears to fancy contain an element of hypocrisy:

 ". . . rise to higher things, With their dead selves as stepping-stones."

Tennyson's arrangement is better, but that is an error in taste. It is a more serious error to confound hypocrisy with the grandest attribute of man, the power to set his feet on his dead sins and rise toward the Throne. Not so hypocrisy. It hugs its sin in secret and sneaks toward hell. Better any day the bold sinner than the hypocrite.

Congratulations are in order for the Pharisees. They have at last found an apologist, perhaps an admirer; rather late, to be sure, but better late than never. It seems that "they were powerful promoters of the ethical development of the Jews," etc. There must be a big mistake somewhere, for it was said of them by one who surely had better opportunities for observing and knowing the Pharisees than Mr. McElroy, "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayer; therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation." Rather a harsh way to address "powerful promoters of ethical development"!

But the excellence of the Pharisees is hardly a subject for serious consideration, and we hasten on to those portions of the argument which have some plausibility, viz., the cases of patriotism, women, and religion. The key-note of this hymn to hypocrisy is struck in the remark on the second page, "No man is worse by simulating goodness." This may sound finely epigrammatic, but unfortunately there is not a word of truth in it. Any one is always worse by simulating goodness, for that means assuming the appearance of it without the reality. Not only is he no more virtuous than before, but his vice has acquired an additional sneaking quality, which makes the man more contemptible per se, and infinitely more dangerous to the community. Imitation is the tribute which vice pays to virtue, doubtless, but the vice is none the less vicious.

In the case of patriotism it is doubtless true that exaggerated statements of the virtues and greatness of the past do little harm and often good, but it is rather far-fetched to endeavor to class such exaggerations as hypocrisy. The hypocrite is not anxious to exalt others, but himself; even if, in exalting himself, he pulls down others. But, waiving this confusion of terms, does any one