Second opinion

THE PHILOSOPHER David Hume, for whom I have nothing but the greatest of admiration and respect, wrote in his Treatise that 'the distinction of vice and virtue is not .founded merely on the rela- tions of objects, nor is perceiv'd by rea- son'. Obviously Hume never lived round here, or was robbed of his old-age pen- sion as he collected it from the post office on Monday morning. If he had been, the distinction between vice and virtue might have appeared to him a little more con- crete than he seemed to think.

Of course, not everyone agrees. A pris- oner complained the other day of abdominal pain that suggested a duode- nal ulcer.

`Do you smoke or drink?' I asked.

'I haven't got no vices, doctor,' he replied.

`And what are you in prison for?' I asked.

`Robbery, doctor — street robbery.' `Some people', I said, 'might consider street robbery a vice.' He laughed. 'But I've always done it, doctor. I've always done street rob- beries.'

`So a bad act becomes good by mere repetition, does it?'

He chuckled at the absurdity of his ethical theory. The next prisoner was only 24 years old, but had already received six prison sentences. He was therefore either a pro- lific or an incompetent criminal.

`So you like it here?' I said.

`No,' he replied. 'But I like the money when you get away with it.'

Full marks for candour, at least.

It is better on the whole to be known for virtue than for vice, but unfortunately in this world of appearances the seem- ingly virtuous are often vicious in reality. For example, later that day, back in the hospital, a young woman told me of her liaison (a word I much prefer to the more widely used 'relationship' with a body-building psychopath. Her selection of the fathers of her children down the years had been somewhat unfortunate and lacking in judgment, to say the least, there having been a marked tendency for her inseminators to abandon her shortly after the birth of the supposedly longed- for child, but the body-builder was clear- ly the worst of them so far.

He used his musculature regularly to inflict physical damage upon her frail per- son. It is perhaps no coincidence that an anagram of the word martial (as in mar- tial arts) is marital, for it is in the domes- tic situation that these arts are most frequently, and most freely, employed.

`When I ran away from him, I had to leave the city,' she said.

`Why was that?' I asked.

`He threatened to kill me.'

'Why?'

`You see, I told all his friends he was beating me up, and he said I was ruining his reputation. So he had to kill me.'

What had he a reputation for, I won- dered? Sweetness of disposition?

`With the others, I could give as good as I got, but he was too strong for me. I broke the nose of one of the others.'

`How?'

`I smashed his face with a frying pan.'

I looked at her address on the hospi- tal notes: about a hundred yards from my door. And I thought of what Thack- eray wrote of Mayhew's work: 'These wonders have been lying by your door and mine ever since we had a door of our own. We had but to go a hundred yards off and see for ourselves, but we never did.'

Theodore Dalrymple