Readers of
Huxley's attack on the Salvation Army will recall his penetrating
and stimulating condemnation of the debauch of sentimentalism which
expressed itself in so uncontrolled a fashion in the Victorian era. One
of the most penetrating of American thinkers, Henry James, Sr., sixty or
seventy years ago wrote: "I have been so long accustomed to see the most
arrant deviltry transact itself in the name of benevolence, that the
moment I hear a profession of good will from almost any quarter, I
instinctively look around for a constable or place my hand within reach
of a bell-rope. My ideal of human intercourse would be a state of things
in which no man will ever stand in need of any other man's help, but
will derive all his satisfaction from the great social tides which
own no individual names. I am sure no man can be put in a position of
dependence upon another, without the other's very soon becoming--if he
accepts the duties of the relation--utterly degraded out of his just
human proportions. No man can play the Deity to his fellow man with
impunity--I mean, spiritual impunity, of course. For see: if I am at all
satisfied with that relation, if it contents me to be in a position of
generosity towards others, I must be remarkably indifferent at bottom to
the gross social inequality which permits that position, and, instead
of resenting the enforced humiliation of my fellow man to myself in the
interests of humanity, I acquiesce in it for the sake of the profit it
yields to my own self-complacency.
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