of art, or aesthetic beauty.  This again depends on the circumstances:  in order to be quite certain that the appearance of the old lady has definitely deteriorated under the process of being beaten to death, it is necessary for the philosophical critic to be quite certain how ugly she was before.  Another school of thinkers will say that the action is lacking in efficiency:  that it is an uneconomic waste of a good grandmother.  But that could only depend on the value, which is again an individual matter.  The only real point that is worth mentioning is that the action is wicked, because your grandmother has a right not to be beaten to death.  But of this simple moral explanation modern journalism has, as I say, a standing fear.  It will call the action anything else—­mad, bestial, vulgar, idiotic, rather than call it sinful.

One example can be found in such cases as that of the prank of the boy and the statue.  When some trick of this sort is played, the newspapers opposed to it always describe it as “a senseless joke.”  What is the good of saying that?  Every joke is a senseless joke.  A joke is by its nature a protest against sense.  It is no good attacking nonsense for being successfully nonsensical.  Of course it is nonsensical to paint a celebrated Italian General a bright red; it is as nonsensical as “Alice in Wonderland.”  It is also, in my opinion, very nearly as funny.  But the real answer to the affair is not to say that it is nonsensical or even to say that it is not funny, but to point out that it is wrong to spoil statues which belong to other people.  If the modern world will not insist on having some sharp and definite moral law, capable of resisting the counter-attractions of art and humour, the modern world will simply be given over as a spoil to anybody who can manage to do a nasty thing in a nice way.  Every murderer who can murder entertainingly will be allowed to murder.  Every burglar who burgles in really humorous attitudes will burgle as much as he likes.

There is another case of the thing that I mean.  Why on earth do the newspapers, in describing a dynamite outrage or any other political assassination, call it a “dastardly outrage” or a cowardly outrage?  It is perfectly evident that it is not dastardly in the least.  It is perfectly evident that it is about as cowardly as the Christians going to the lions.  The man who does it exposes himself to the chance of being torn in pieces by two thousand people.  What the thing is, is not cowardly, but profoundly and detestably wicked.  The man who does it is very infamous and very brave.  But, again, the explanation is that our modern Press would rather appeal to physical arrogance, or to anything, rather than appeal to right and wrong.