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1930 · PDF PAGE 16

The Banned Lecture

…spread. As I think you must all feel sure by now, I know nothing what- ever of my subject. But scientific experiment in those days was always a very prolonged operation. They thought nothing of exposing some unknown substance to the rays of the sun and moon for periods of three months at a time, in the hope that in some mysterious way the first stage of some dimly-visaged operation might be satisfactorily accomplished. And even if they sacrificed a child every day, it would have taken a matter of two and a half years to dispose of 800 children.…

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1930 · PDF PAGE 9

The Banned Lecture

qeard, of whom, even were he real, we know nothing much beyond that he reacted in the most manly way to the problem of domestic infelicity. A moment’s digression ; in fact, the main point. What is the most precise and most atrocious charge that is made against him ? That he sacrificed, in the course of Alchemical and magical experiments, a matter of 800 children ? I submit that, a priori, this sounds a little improbable. Gilles de Rais was the lord of a district whose population could not have been very extensive, and even in that age of slaver…

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1930 · PDF PAGE 11

The Banned Lecture

…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 compatible with the existence of villains, the Jews and the Arabs were at least allowed to live. Besides, the Arabs saw to that themselves. But no one was better aware than the Pope that knowledge was power. F…

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1930 · PDF PAGE 18

The Banned Lecture

…t 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 Dickens—who may yet go down to history for having wished to prosecute Holman Hunt, of all people in the world, for painting indecent pictures—takes very much this popular view of medicine and pharmacy in Pickwick. I think, then, it is not …

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1930 · PDF PAGE 13

The Banned Lecture

…people’s 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 scare about bogies than our propaganda in the recent scrap found it. I was in Venice just before the w…

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