The Glory of Being Wicked

NOT long ago I happened to pass two little boys on a street corner, standing close together with faces nearly touching, and so intent on the difficult operation they were performing as to be quite unconscious of being in every one’s way. The operation in question was the feat of lighting one cigarette-stub from another cigarette-stub, each stub being firmly held in one of the respective mouths. They had apparently picked up the two half-smoked cigarettes from the gutter, one still burning, and the other out. Just why the burning one had to be held by mouth, rather than by hand, did not appear; but the operation of lighting and smoking the cigarettes was obviously great fun. Moreover, to all appearances at least, the fun did not come from the taste of the smoke, nor from the burning of fingers and lips, nor from the nasty tobacco that got into their mouths. The fun lay deeper than that; it was not physical, but spiritual in its nature. There was a third boy — a still smaller one — standing by, looking on with open mouth and admiring eyes. And I am sure that the real inwardness of the smokers’ fun consisted in the consciousness that the other boy and the public in general could see plainly that they were really very wicked.

This aspiration toward wickedness dominates a great part of ‘child-psychology,’— of boy-psychology at any rate, — and has its ramifications in most of the activities of the boy. He learns to ‘cut’ Sunday School, and throw stones and swear and say darn, largely out of loyalty to this ideal. He brings with him into the world a strong tendency toward resistance to authority, and a genuine admiration for the law-breaker; and all this is as real a part of his ‘social psychology’ as is his tendency to imitation and suggestion. And he is led in the same direction by his natural desire to ‘show off.’ It is the fact that the other boy is watching that lends most of the spice to the situation. Wickedness is pretty sure to command attention even when it fails to command respect. And the small boy who wants you to think him ‘tough’ — together with his relatives, the big boy and the overgrown boy and the old boy who cherish the same ambition — will generally be found to be acting (if I may be pardoned an impossible figure) with one eye on the gallery and the other on the mirror.

This, to my thinking, is one of the reasons for the ‘ignominy of being good.’ Its roots go rather deep into human nature. There is nothing particularly new about it, nor is it in any sense peculiar to our age and generation. To be good has always been ignominious, and the ignominy is not chiefly due, as a recent writer in the Atlantic seems to think, to our failure to admire the conventional standards.

We may not admire them, to be sure; but we also have a sneaking desire to attract attention by being ‘ different,’ and we like to rebel against any standard that has been prescribed for us. Rebellion is good fun for its own sake, and submission, even to that which we approve, often seems ‘conventional,’ and has for the natural man a certain element of ignominy. The ‘ fear of being caught reading your Bible’ will probably never die out of the world; and for the same reason that the fear of being caught studying your lesson will never die out. This fear, as I have suggested, very considerably antedates St. Augustine, or any assignable era. And I am sure that, in so far as Homer was made required reading in the Age of Pericles, many an Athenian lad was rather proud of his ignorance of the Story of Troy.

It is, moreover, a curious fact that some of the things which we really consider supremely good have this in common with the ignominious, that we wish to conceal them. We don’t care to wear everything we possess on our sleeves; we should be ashamed to display there either the shameful or the sacred. Some one has called public prayer an indecent exposure of soul. The little boy who would blush to be found reading his Bible might also blush to be found kissing his mother, — just as the big boy would pretty certainly blush to be found kissing his sweetheart. But the fear of being found kissing your sweetheart is not generally taken to indicate that the custom is a conventional retention of an effete ideal.

Doubtless the native, untutored tendencies and tastes of the boy (of various ages) rebel against some of the ideals which the Present receives from the Past. And doubtless also these spontaneous and unreflective impulses and feelings must contribute, and ought to contribute, their share in the formation of our ideas of moral excellence. But they must not be taken as the only criterion. The true, moral ideal for the twentieth century A. D. is not so simple a thing as it was for the fifth century B. C. It includes many different elements — Barbarian, Hebrew, Greek, Christian, Teutonic. It has been built up laboriously by the experience of the race through all its painful education. Hence it is not something that we can expect the individual fully to appreciate, without considerable education on his own part. If, then, the boy or the young man—who, it must be remembered, comes originally into the world on a level much lower than that of the Greeks — does not fully grasp the beauty of the ideal which the race has formed for him and holds up to him, we must not conclude that therefore the ideal is wrong. Of course it may be wrong; some ideals doubtless are. But the question whether or not it is wrong cannot be settled by showing simply that it is not up-to-date and that some of us blush when found with it in our possession. For a great deal of the ignominy of being good is due to the rather sophomoric glory of being wicked.