129
XVII. ON BLACK CATS 137
XVIII. ON BEING SHOCKED 145
XIX. CONFESSIONS 154
XX. THE TERRORS OF POLITICS 162
XXI. ON DISASTERS 170
XXII. THE RIGHTS OF MURDER 180
XXIII. THE HUMOUR OF HOAXES 188
XXIV. ANATOLE FRANCE 197
XXV. THE SEA 205
XXVI. THE FUTURISTS 215
XXVII. A DEFENCE OF CRITICS 224
XXVIII. ON THE BEAUTY OF STATISTICS 232

_These essays have appeared from week to week in_ The New
Statesman, _to the Editor and Proprietors of which I make
grateful acknowledgment._

R. L.

THE BOOK OF THIS AND THAT

I

SUSPICION

Suspicion is a beast with a thousand eyes, but most of them are blind,
or colour-blind, or askew, or rolling, or yellow. It is a beast with a
thousand ears, but most of them are like the ears of the deaf man in
the comic recitation who, when you say "whiskers" hears "solicitors,"
and when you are talking about the weather thinks you are threatening
to murder him. It is a beast with a thousand tongues, and they are all
slanderous. On the whole, it is the most loathsome monster outside the
pages of _The Faerie Queene_. Just as the ugliest ape that ever was
born is all the more repellent for being so like a man, so suspicion
is all the more hideous because it is so close a caricature of the
passion for truth. It is a leering perversion of that passion which
sent Columbus looking for a lost continent and urged Galileo to turn
his telescope on the heavens. Columbus may, in a sense, be said to
have suspected that America was there, and Galileo suspected more than
was good for his comfort about the conduct of the stars. But these
were noble suspicions--leaps into the light. They are no more
comparable to the suspicions which are becoming a feature of public
life than the energies of an explorer of the South Pole are comparable
to the energies of one of those private detectives who are paid to
grub after evidence in d