But it would of course have been preferable if justice not been deferred to the point where the culprits were adults with hard lives etched deep into their faces.

What is interesting is that, by saying that the faces of the culprits have their lives etched on their faces, the Guardian is implicitly endorsing the necessity, inevitability and wisdom of prejudice and discrimination. A person who failed to take notice of what is “etched” on the faces of the two convicted men would not be saintly, but a fool worthy to be Archbishop of Canterbury, even if not everyone with the face of a thug is actually a thug.

The desire to have no prejudices is therefore absurd, both because in practice it is impossible and because it is the desire to be a fool. The point is not to have no prejudices, but to be aware of them and also to have the constant mental flexibility to override them if the evidence requires it. That people can put aside their prejudices is, after all, the basic principle of the jury trial. People are not to be convicted because they have nasty faces etched by nasty lives, but because the evidence proves that they did what they are accused of having done. But even if acquitted, we still avoid people with nasty faces, and usually (though not always) rightly so.

Gamgee argued that there should be no medical monopoly and no medical orthodoxy, because it was from the free play of ideas and practices that truth and improvement emerged. He then, somewhat inconsistently, argued that the bill held doctors to a standard that did not apply to quacks but would not prevent them from practising: “The quack is a business-man, and always takes his fee before he gives his advice. And if he cannot be legally appointed surgeon to a hospital or a ship, may I ask, Has the ignorant, mischievous quack ever applied for those offices? You will say he will incur penalties if he does anything to imply that he is registered under the Act: then he will glory in his superior freedom, and have a large brass plate in his door, deeply lettered, ‘John Snooks, Herbal Doctor and water-caster, not registered.’”

Not that he thought quacks should be driven out of business: “As to the question of QUACKS, I have nothing to propose for their regulation; because I am unable to define them as to ensure their recognition by the officers of the law. Such a definition would be a real addition to the English Language and to lexicography generally.”

He then utters a cry anathema to all modern British politicians: “More reality, less tinsel, is what we want.” On the contrary, reply the politicians: more tinsel, less reality.

“Downton Abbey” comes, then, as a relief to Americans, in the way that a politically incorrect remark comes as a relief when something that’s true has been exiled from polite speech. Class does not just speak its name in “Downton Abbey,” it screams it.

What is given as of right is harmful alike to the donor and the recipient. It shrivels the donor’s heart and turns kindness into an unwanted obligation; it renders the recipient incapable of gratitude, to such an extent that he might not even realise that he has received anything (the rioters in London, for example, said they had nothing, when those of them who had never worked or been net taxpayers had never gone hungry, never lacked for clothes or shelter, were provided with electronic gadgets, were guaranteed free healthcare and had received a free education – for them, this was nothing because it all came as of right).

That judgments in the past were harsh or unfeeling is, alas, the case. But that is a reason for refining our judgment, not for refraining from exercising it at all. If we do that, we shall end up with a society of cold comfort, where the faculty of kindness will wither, and where the expression of human solidarity will be confined to paying taxes, an indefinitely large proportion of which will never even reach their supposed beneficiaries.

Very often my patients would tell me that they would stop drinking to excess (or indulging in some other kind of patently self-destructive behavior) if only they understood why they did it. “What,” I asked them, “would count as an explanation? Give me an example.”

They were never able to do so. Their very attempts died on their lips as they made them. Was it their genes, their peculiar biochemistry, their upbringing, their drinking environment, the price of alcohol?…Some algebraic combination of all these? No human being believes or can possibly believe this of himself, except perhaps for self-exculpatory purposes that he knows in his heart to be dishonest. It is possible to believe it only of others. The man who claims to understand himself in this fashion is like an army that declares victory and goes home.

Of course, intellectuals are as avid for fame and power as for truth, and deep skepticism or the acknowledgment of radical ignorance is not the way to create a following. Claims to total understanding, at least in outline, of human existence have not been lacking, most notably in the last century by Marxists and Freudians, with Behaviorists coming in a poor third. No human conduct ever puzzled a psychoanalyst, at least not for long, only until he had successfully fitted a few facts into the Procrustean bed of his theoretical presuppositions; likewise no Marxist possessed of the laws of dialectical materialism ever found any historical development surprising. And since the numbers of intellectuals in the last century desirous of a non-religious explanation of everything increased very rapidly, the number of people thinking that the heart had been plucked out of man’s mystery was greater than ever before. Meanwhile, of course, men continued to behave badly and history continued to produce its surprises.

The philosophers Paul and Patrician Churchland, among others, hope that one day such retrograde and primitive expressions as Juliet’s “Alack, alack, that heaven should practise stratagems/ Upon so soft a subject as myself” will be replaced, or at any rate be replaceable, with purely scientific terms in a strict physico-chemical denotation. They would prefer Juliet, or that organism temporarily occupying such and such a space on stage, commonly but no doubt inaccurately known as the actress playing Juliet (because personal identity is itself part of that folk psychology that is destined for the dustbin of history), to tell us that neuronal connections 39947474747, 58883883821, and 979333002842 of the brain of the actress are now firing. Then, of course, we should know precisely what was really going on, without all that blather about heaven practicing stratagems.

There is something irreducibly individual in human conduct, and once again we are left trying to capture water vapor with a butterfly net….Whether we like it or not, we live in a world of meaning irreducible to physical processes: even if, as with some regret I believe, we are merely physical beings.

Dalrymple had this essay in the Daily Mail last week:

More than one patient in my medical career gave her profession as dominatrix. Some found their clients among the lower classes, and some among the upper. Those who flogged the lower orders tended to be older, smaller, weaker and less pretty; those who serviced the upper were beautiful in what might be called a strapping way.

One even had an international clientele: she would travel the world to whip judges and other members of the local establishment or intelligentsia. Whether the fact that she had flown in from thousands of miles away added to the sexual excitement she provided, or whether she was in demand for her special skills, I cannot say; but to judge by her address, she made a good living. She kept a bag of equipment ready at all times for immediate – emergency? – departure.

….

In any case, if people want to be flogged, why not? The dominatrixes (or is it dominatrices?) who were my patients added to the pleasure of the world, and one of them even contributed to our balance of payments.