28 JULY 1906, Page 9

LASHING THE VICES OF SOCIETY. D URING the last few months

Father Bernard Vaughan has been edifying large congregations with his denunciations of fashionable sins. We do not question the integrity of his purpose, but we are far from certain about the wisdom of his methods. He denounces what he calls the "smart set" for their godlessness, their luxury, their frivolity, and especially for their gambling. No doubt it is partly true in detail ; chapter and verse may con- ceivably be found for every statement; and yet the result is, to our mind, far from true. It takes two people to make a trut13,—one to hear it and one to speak it; and the preacher is too often prone to forget this. He may be clear in his own mind as to what impression he desires to make, but we venture to say that it is a very different impression which is left upon his hearers and upon the larger public which reads the reports next day in the halfpenny papers. To generalise about "society" is like dogmatising about a nation ; and there can never be more than a suspicion of truth in the generalisation. In its proper sense the word is used to describe that large body of people distinguished by birth, intellect, or means who can afford to live a life undistracted by petty cares. In this broad sense it denotes the governing class, the men and women who in every department of life set the standards and perform the higher tasks. At one period in our history it had a narrow basis, determined mainly by birth, but nowadays the terms of admis- sion to its portals are generously conceived. There was never a time when capacity was more willingly welcomed, whether it show itself in the form of wealth or intellect. Obviously in so large a class there must be many worthless members, who will naturally draw into a set by themselves. People who have wealth and position, without brains or character to corre- spond, will spend their days in the idle pursuit of pleasure. There are ne'er-do-weels in society, as there are ne'er-do-weels among shopkeepers and dock-labourers; only their position advertises their worthlessness, and sets them on a pedestal for men to gape at. We are far from denying the vice and silliness of these people; but we maintain that they are a very

little part of society, and that their influence is negligible. They are admired and followed only by the very young or the very foolish. To identify them with society, as the pulpit moralist is wont to do, is not only unfair and untrue, but a danger to the existence of any wholesome public opinion. It is Burke's metaphor over again of the noisy grasshoppers and the placid oxen. Remember that this identification will be made by Father Vaughan's hearers and readers even if it is not countenanced by the words of the preacher himself. The spread of cheap newspapers has given the public a morbid curiosity about the doings of the richer classes. The fiction which they read draws a sufficiently lurid picture, and the cheap scandal printed everywhere heightens the colours. When the pulpit adds its testimony their suspicion is con- firmed, and the "wicked Baronet" of melodrama becomes the type of our ruling classes. It is idle to point out that he is an exception. When you condemn society in the mass, your hearer is entitled to argue that it is sanity which must be the exception and folly tbe rule.

Such hasty generalisations miss the truth on another side. The preacher becomes unconsciously a latulator tempods ad, and argues that the wickedness of his age is unexampled in history. Modern society is assumed to have attained a pitch of wrongdoing for which past ages provide no equivalent, and if a parallel must be sought we must fly to that old haunt of irrelevant moralists, the decadence of the Roman Empire. The danger of fixing such an impression in the popular mind is obvious, even if it were true, and its untruth is manifest to any one with a slight knowledge of history. We are convinced that society has never shown so high a level of good conduct, intelligence, and public spirit as it shows to-day. For one young man who remains at home to go to the devil there are a dozen performing the task of the State under difficult conditions in far countries. For one fashionable lady who lives only for pleasure there are twenty who spend much of their time in serious and intelligent public work. Let any one compare the life of a "smart" woman as be will find it in Pope or Horace Walpole with the life of her sister to-day, and he will grant the reality of the change. It is not only more innocent, but infinitely more useful. Many women, no doubt, lose a great deal of money at bridge and get into trouble. But there will always be idle people to gamble, and the bridge of to-day is a small evil compared with the outhre and faro of a hundred years ago, or the 'Comte of fifty. Bridge for high points is a craze with a particular set, who would always find a means of losing and winning money. pa the game in an ordinary sense is much less a tyranny in Mayfair than in Surbiton.

Our real complaint, however, against the pulpit moralist is that nothing can come of his denunciations. Unlike Savonarola, his sermons will not be followed by a bonfire of vanities. The "smart set"—whoever they may be—will not profit by an exposure of their shortcomings. Vulgar people, without culture, often without traditions of birth or good manners, desire nothing so much as publicity, and these sermons are like the columns of gossip in society papers,—they give them the advertisement which their vanity desires. An idle class may cultivate extravagance as a cure for ennui, but the cure will fail if the extravagance remains unremarked. They must either be gossiped about, or written about in the papers, or, best of all, preached against. The man who spends five thousand pounds on a fantastic dinner at a restaurant would be miserable if the picture papers did not describe it and serious papers declaim against it. There is a distinction in folly, a "bad pre-eminence," which is impossible unless the world knows about it and complains. To dream of converting the idle rich by exposing their miadoings is like the attempt to crush Anarchism by dwelling upon its terrors. In both cases you treat the guilty exactly as they desire.

Nor do we see what beneficent influence these diatribes can have upon the public. To denounce the vices of an upper class will always please the lower. It will satisfy the curiosity of the less reputable portion of that class, flatter their self-righteonaness, and, we fear, create a sneak- ing desire of emulation. Human nature is such that it will not be warned off the gross obvious sins if it has the wish or means to compass them; and if it has not, it will not be appreciably the better for hearing them described and abused. The worst of the "racy sermon against vice," as Stevenson has pointed out, is that there is always present is "secret element of gusto," if not in the preacher, in the hearer. There is no obscurity about the facts. No one needs to be convinced that immorality and gambling are wrong. But if they are associated with a particular class, men and women who do not belong to that class will not take warning —they cannot imagine that the lesson applies to theiti—but will feel only a prurient or self-righteous satisfaction in this dmwing of the veil from a life which they believe to be more deshable than their own. They will thank God that they are not as such people, and wish in their hearts that they bad the chance. All preaching at classes is apt to have this disastrous result. It does not touch the culprits, who are glad of the advertisement ; and it stimulates idle curiosity and an unjustifiable satisfaction in others who would be better employed in reflecting on their own shortcomings. We are far from being optimists about the modern world, but it is reasonable to see in the very relief with which the vices of individuals or sets stand out a real lightening of the baok- ground. The peccadilloes of an earlier generation are recog- nised as gross sins in our own, their area is strictly delimited, and they flourish in defiance of an active public conscience. If we have fewer saints and prophets, we have a higher average of decent citizenship. If this be ilaiiiittea, it is hard to justify the man who devotes himself to the exposure of the sins of a class when it needs no preacher's testimony to secure their facile condemnation, when there is small chance of influencing the sinner, and, above all, when the revela- tions will only pander to the prurience and Self-righteousness of his hearers.