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Page 1 of 11930 · PDF PAGE 13
Now, in this particular sport of suppressing earnest enquirers, it was not much good trying to play on peoples greed. For everyone knew that even if the Jews had wealth, they managed to hide it very successfully, and that they had a nasty way of arranging for protection with people who were too powerful to be bullied, and too good business men to be fooled into killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. So the only motive available was fear, and in those ages where ignorance was fostered with infinite devotion, it was even easier to create a…
1930 · PDF PAGE 11
ledge were at the best under strong suspicion of heresy. I need not quote the obvious names. But there were certain bodies of people who did carry on the old knowledge, mostly by oral tradition, and who were perforce tolerated to a certain extent, because even the little knowledge that they did possess was so exceedingly useful. The best way to make armour, or to build Cathedrals, or to heal sickness would enable the Christian to get ahead of his friends. Therefore, although conscience evidently demanded the maximum amount of persecution compat…
1930 · PDF PAGE 18
… For at that time, it will be remembered, hospitals were not as flourishing as they are to-day, and it was very difficult to find living people whom you could cut up to see what came of it. The surgeon was, in fact, not understood at all, except in the one way which such people were capable of understanding ; i.e., as the body-snatcher. The rest of his proceedings were perfectly mysterious to them. You notice that even Charles Dickenswho may yet go down to history for having wished to prosecute Holman Hunt, of all people in the world, for pain…
1930 · PDF PAGE 10
…e portions of this globe which it had sufficiently corrupted, the pursuit of knowledgeknowledge of any kindwas justly estimated by the people in power as the one and only dangerous pursuit. Even so, as late as 300 years ago, it was not considered very gentlemanly to be able to read and write. I am not sure that it is. In any case, it is a great error in education to teach these things. Grammar, we must never forget, appears in the word Gramarye, beloved of Sir Walter Scott, and grimoire, a black magical ritualthat is to say, any writte…
1930 · PDF PAGE 15
…d even voluptuous young women of high social position, and that the wicked president had blackmailed them out of vast sums. You see, the people for whom this dear young gentle- man was writing all get sexually excited by pictures of young women, and also by any statement about large sums of money. For they immediately have a wish phantasmif they had large sums themselves, what terrible fellows they could be. In the Middle Ages, the art of exciting the people was not very different. The Jew had always an immense hoard of ill-gotten wealth, and …
1930 · PDF PAGE 8
…ion was that he frequented the society of learned men. We know finally that he was accused of the same crimes as Joan of Arc by the same people who accused her, and that he was condemned by them to the same penalty. I do not think that I have left out any verifiable fact. I think that all the rest amounts to speculation. The real problem of Gilles de Rais amounts, accord- ingly, to this. Here we have a person who, in almost every respect, was the male equivalent of Joan of Arc. Both of them have gone down in history. But history is somewhat cur…
1930 · PDF PAGE 14
…not take that word com- muning in any bad sense ; if it were not for Baldwin, I would be a Conservative myself)the instinct of some people, who at the bottom of their hearts, did not so much believe in these phantasms. It was not so easy to get them to go out and murder a lot of inoffensive people at the word jump. They had to be supplied with something a little more tangible. You will notice how all this sort of argument is invariably of the ad captandum variety. It is pro- duced out of nowhere for a definite purpose ; and, as the French …
1930 · PDF PAGE 4
…ound himself threatened by a predicament similar to that in which I stand tonight. He had been asked to lecture a distinguished group of people. What bothered him was this : what assumption was he to make about the existing knowledge of the audience ? He adopted the sensible course of asking the advice of an old hand at the game ; and was told You must do one of two things. You may assume that they know everything, or that they know nothing. Thomas Henry thought it over, and decided that he would assume that they know nothing. I think that m…
1930 · PDF PAGE 17
… best evidence in support of my thesiswhatever that is, I am not quite sure that it is possible to adduce. In the minds of the kind of people who believe in their neighbours making candles of infants fat and digging up corpses to economise on the butchers bill, the surgeonthat is to say, the man in pursuit of knowledge which it is hoped may alleviate human painis the same kind of animal as the witch and the ritual-murdering Jew. It is, no doubt, because it is a part of the old taboo complex about the corpses of ones relatives,
1930 · PDF PAGE 12
…re a communist, and thereforewell, the Pope too believed in preparedness, though he probably called it a programme of disarmament. When people scrap battleships in the name of peace on earth and goodwill to men, it means that they have found battleships useless and too expensive, and that they have found something cheaper and more deadly. So the Curia kept a weapon in reserve, in order to be sure of having a nice jolly pogrom whenever they gave the word. And what was the word to be ? Nice quiet peasant folk, or genial hard-working hunters and …