nces: 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 wicke