An atrocious event like the Aurora massacre brings us up sharply against something that for the most part we ignore: that, for metaphysical reasons, our explanatory reach exceeds our grasp and will do so forever.

Nothing infuriates like the truth, especially when it controverts a deeply-held prejudice such as that censorship is bad for great art and even incompatible with its production. Whenever, therefore, I adduce a certain truth that is obvious to the point of truism, namely that the majority of great art in human history has been produced in conditions of censorship, or at least of such severe self-inhibition because of social or political pressure that it amounts to censorship, I find that I am the object of fury, as if I were personally the Chief Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition. Here is a truth that, even if it is true, ought never to be uttered: that ought, in fact, to be the object of self-censorship.

[J]udges in Leeds have knowingly been handing down sentences that they believed were less effective than those they were permitted by law to impose.

What is true… of judges in Leeds is likely to be true of judges in the rest of the country who, whether from moral cowardice, careerist opportunism, or some other reason, have acted and continue to act on what they don’t believe—namely, that prison does not work. In doing so, they have created many more victims of burglary (and no doubt other crimes) than there need be.

From my own British perspective, what is so remarkable about the French commentary is its lack of concern about constitutional checks and balances. There seems to be very little worry, at least among those who write in the newspapers, about the exercise of unbridled power by supposedly beneficent authority.

Reader Dominic sent along this link to a July 13th Dalrymple piece in The Times, which we missed. Though it is behind a paywall, our helpful reader says, “It’s just a brief article about the lenient sentencing of a recidivist criminal who was once sent on safari at tax payers’ expense.” A few minutes Googling tells me the criminal in question is Mark Hook, who was recently arrested (yet again) for mugging a woman, his 112th offense.

And if, after an extra glass of wine or two, I were forced to answer the question Why now? I would answer two things.

First there has been a profound cultural shift in the direction of the abandonment of self-control as a virtue. Thanks to the cultural revolution of the 50s and 60s (of which I am a product), people have fewer self-patrolled boundaries than they once would have had. Managers who once would have felt ashamed to deprive shareholders of their funds no longer do so. One sees this loss of self-control in all walks of life. In the public sector, for example, in which I have spent much of my adult life, the public purse is now shamelessly looted by those who work in it in a way that was inconceivable when I started my career (inefficiency is another question entirely). I could give many other examples, from obesity to gambling to drug-taking and binge-drinking.

A second factor that I think has been much underestimated in the promotion of the most naked self-seeking is the now more-or-less permanent unsoundness of money as a store of value. No one can trust a dollar – or any other currency – to hold its value, bearing in mind that asset inflation is inflation like any other. Therefore, in order to secure ourselves against future impoverishment, we need to accumulate vastly more than we should if money were a real store of value. We must all speculate if we do not want to condemn ourselves to poverty. The unsoundness of money shifts the bell-curve of greed to the right, so that more people become what would formerly have been thought of as extremely greedy; while even the other-worldly now fall into the category of speculator.

They produced a mathematical model of what would happen to their own patients at risk of cardiovascular disease if they took dark chocolate for medicinal purposes over a prolonged period. They worked out how many would have been expected to have fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular events (strokes and heart attacks) if they took no therapeutic chocolate; then they worked out how many would have fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular events if they took dark chocolate, on the presumption that the beneficial effects of that chocolate on high blood pressure and low-density lipoproteins persisted.

They came to the conclusion that, if compliance was 100%, a regime of dark chocolate taken for 10 years by 10,000 people at high risk of cardiovascular disease would prevent 15 fatal cardiovascular events and 70 non-fatal ones. If compliance was only 90 percent, the figures would be 10 and 60 respectively.

Of course, one must remember that this was a virtual trial, not a real one. As Goethe said, grey is theory, but green is the tree of life: in other words, full of surprises. It is possible that dark chocolate does not continue to exert a beneficial effect upon the risk factors for cardiovascular disease beyond 18 weeks. It is also possible that harmful effects of dark chocolate consumption would become evident after 18 weeks.

If [a particular] journalist’s disdain for subordinates were habitual rather than occasional – as my eye-witness, who met him on several occasions, suggested that it was – then his professions of egalitarianism were insincere. But even this would not prove that egalitarianism were wrong, only that he did not truly believe in it. The work is distinct from the man.

It is this distinction that assists the talented in their career of bad behaviour (if they exhibit it). For it is likely that they believe that their work is of great importance for humanity, greater importance at any rate than that of many men; so that their reputation finally relies on their work rather than on their conduct. That being the case, they have more leeway than others to behave badly.

Moreover, the difference between the significance of the work and conduct is likely to increase with time, at least if the work survives the death of its author. If it were to be shown conclusively from impeccable sources that Shakespeare had been a villain all his life, it would hardly affect our estimation of his work at all. A man can be a sublime artist but an unattractive figure, and in the long run it is the former that counts.

I was faced with this problem once when I was writing about Arthur Koestler, a man whose work and intellectual capacity and vigour I greatly admire. He might not have been right about everything, but he was dull about nothing. Yet it was revealed, and widely accepted, that in his private life he had behaved reprehensibly, even criminally, towards woman. When I read him now, the word ‘Rapist’ echoes through my mind. What weight was I to put on his behaviour in the assessment of his work?

“The answer, in a word, is no.”

According to Dalrymple in this Pajamas Media piece, smoking is not a “chronic relapsing brain disease” treatable by doctors, and, shockingly, the people who succeed in quitting are those who actually want to quit and who pull themselves together.