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To men and women who had learned from childhood to find a certain brutish titillation in beholding the public humiliation and physical anguish of their acquaintances and fellow-townsmen, the prospect of seeing the scourge actually applied to the backs of envied and hated social superiors, could not be otherwise than delightfully agitating.
Scrupulosity was a word that Boswell had caught up from Johnson. 'Swift, he says, 'washed himself with oriental scrupulosity. Ib. viii. 222. 'When thou didst not, savage, Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes With words that made them known. The Tempest, act i. sc. 2.
Every eye was instantly turned toward the stately pillar of white granite that sparkled in the sunlight like an immense carven jewel, ... great Heaven! ... It was tottering to and fro like the unsteadied mast of a ship at sea! ... One look sufficed, and a frightful panic ensued a horrible, brutish stampede of creatures without faith in anything human or divine save their own wretched personalities, the King, infected by the general scare, urged his horses into furious gallop, and dashed through the cursing, swearing, howling throng like an embodied whirlwind, and for a few seconds nothing seemed distinctly visible But a surging mass of infuriated humanity, fighting with itself for life.
The torches, dripping fire in the wall-rings, cast their light over the faces of the wondering servants. The harp twanged its plaintive interlude; then the song continued, quavering, soaring, athrob with this new pathos and reverence, that had crept like the counterfeit of a celestial dawn upon a world long obscured by a brutish dusk.
And caught I the Maid in the dark, and thrust her under the side of a boulder; and I crouched then before her, with mine armour, that I should protect her from any Brutish thing. And the Diskos in my hand, and afterward an horrid time of waiting. And the stink of that part of the Gorge grew very dreadful, so that it did be as that we should not breathe, with the horror of the stink.
In like manner, he has no pleasure in merely seeing or finding a stag or wild goat, but in the prospect of a meal. The habits of Perfect Self-Mastery and entire absence of self-control have then for their object-matter such pleasures as brutes also share in, for which reason they are plainly servile and brutish: they are Touch and Taste.
In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and, which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
The 6th of September, having a fair north-north-west wind, having trimmed our barque, we purposed to depart, and sent five of our sailors, young men, ashore to an island to fetch certain fish which we purposed to weather, and therefore left it all night covered upon the isle; the brutish people of this country lay secretly lurking in the wood, and upon the sudden assaulted our men, which when we perceived, we presently let slip our cables upon the halse, and under our foresail bore into the shore, and with all expedition discharged a double musket upon them twice, at the noise whereof they fled; notwithstanding, to our very great grief, two of our men were slain with their arrows, and two grievously wounded, of whom, at this present, we stand in very great doubt; only one escaped by swimming, with an arrow shot through his arm.
It was an awful thought to me, ever present on those Sundays, and haunting me at other times, that men, women, and children were living in such brutish degradation, and that as they died others would take their place. Our civilisation seemed nothing but a thin film or crust lying over a volcanic pit, and I often wondered whether some day the pit would not break up through it and destroy us all.
He will help me to conquer this low, brutish nature of mine.
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