Mumbo-Jumbo is that department in the ruling of men which is made of dead, false, apparatus; unreasonable; contemptible to the free; unworthy of authority—and Mumbo-Jumbo is the most necessary ingredient in all government.

All government is by persuasion. Odd it is that so many do not yet see this! Perhaps not so odd after all; for words trick the mind, and the words of government are not the words of persuasion.

But think of the matter for a moment, and you will see that government is of necessity by persuasion. Here I catch the voices of two men, an ass and his uterine brother—that sort of braying centaur, half a rational being and half an ass. The ass tells me that government is merely the use of force; the centaur, half man half donkey, tells me that it lives by the threat of force.

Well, take an example. I come to a properly governed State: a State, that is, where government is taken for granted and obeyed; why is it so? Because that government works for the good of the Governed. But an individual desiring to break a commandment even in such a state refrains only from fear of force? True; but who executes that force? Not the person who gave the command; not one man—for one is not strong. No, what executes the force is many; and how are many got to obey the will of one? It is by a process of suggestion, dope; that is, persuasion. While men were persuaded of the rights of private property, private property stood secure. Now that they are in transition it is insecure. If ever they are persuaded that private property is an injury, the institution will no longer be merely insecure; it will perish; and no amount of force will save it. It will perish as a general institution and only millionaires and the mass of their servile dependents will remain.

Now, in this function of persuasion (which is the life of government) mark the imperative power of Mumbo-Jumbo! And mark it not only in political government, but in all those subsidiary forms of government (or persuasion) by which one mind influences another and directs it towards an end not originally its own. When the Police were on their last strike (I forget when it was—they succeed each other and will probably continue), an aged woman of means said in my hearing—seeing a batch go by in civilian clothes—"Surely those can't be policemen!" By these words did the Crone prove how powerfully Mumbo-Jumbo had worked upon her mind. For her the Policeman was the helmet, the coat, the belt.

With soldiers it is even more so (I am prepared to defend the use of this elliptic idiom in private when next I have the leisure). Men used to wearing some particular accoutrement cannot regard another accoutrement as military; what is more, it is with difficulty—unless their profession is to judge armies—that they can see any military qualities in human beings clothed too much out of their fashion. When I was in garrison in the town of Toul in the year 1891, there came an English circus, with the men of which I made friends at once, for I had not heard English for a weary while. One of them said to me sadly: "They seem to have a lot of military about here, but they are not real soldiers." I have no doubt that if you got a man out of the fourteenth century and showed him suddenly a modern regiment in peace (without tin hats), he would think they were lackeys or pages; certainly not soldiers.

Once and again in the history of mankind has there arisen Iconoclasm, which is but a fury against Mumbo-Jumbo. There was a great outburst of it throughout the West at the end of the eighteenth century. Men were too classic then to break statues with hammers, but they were all for tearing the wigs off Judges and the crowns off Kings and patchwork off Lords and Clowns, and for getting rid of titles, and the rest of it. They argued thus—"Such things are unworthy of Authority and even of men. They are lies: they therefore degrade us." And they foamed at the mouth.

Ah, witless! All these things had a strict, even a logical connection with public function. You may put it easily in two syllogisms: (1) Without Mumbo-Jumbo there is no permanent subconscious impression upon the mind, but without some permanent subconscious impression upon the mind there is no permanent persuasion; therefore, without Mumbo-Jumbo there is no persuasion. Now (2) without persuasion there is no government. Therefore (to take a short cut) there is no government without Mumbo-Jumbo. And those excellent men, of whom my own ancestry, French, English, Irish and American, were composed ("And what," you will say, "has that to do with the matter?" Nothing), having got rid of Mumbo-Jumbo in a greater or less degree—less in England, more in France, most in America—immediately proceeded to set it up again.

Carefully did they scoop out the turnip, carefully did they light the candle within, carefully did they dress it up in rags and tinsel, and set it on its pole: there it stands to-day.

Flags in particular got a spurt through the slump in Kings. Formal play-acting in public assemblies got a vast accession through the contempt of Lords; and now, after a hundred years, we have so much fiddle-faddle of ceremonious "rules" and "Honourable gentlemen" and "law of libel" and uniform here and uniform there that the State is now omnipotent, thanks to Mumbo-Jumbo, god and master of the broken Human Heart.

Of the Mumbo-Jumbo of the learned in footnotes I shall later write. And (as you will discover) I shall write also of the Mumbo-Jumbo of technical words—a most fascinating department of my subject.

The Mumbo-Jumbo of the learned is indeed the very life of all teaching, of all academic authority. A man never teaches so well as when he is dressed up in a teaching fashion, and even those who still foolishly refuse so to dress him up (I quote with sorrow the Sorbonne) none the less put him on a raised platform; and he is better with a desk, and I think he is the better also with a certain artificial voice. The really great teachers also invent a certain artificial expression of face and affected unnatural accent, which they adopt at the beginning of a lecture and try to drop at the end of it; but in the process of years these get fixed and may be recognised at a hundred yards. For Mumbo-Jumbo holds his servants tight. So also the authority of religion is badly wounded unless you have an archaic language; and every religion whatsoever adopts one as soon as it can. Some say that the most powerful of these instruments is a dead language; others say old, odd, mouldy forms of a living language, but at any rate Mumbo-Jumbo is of the essence of the contract.

Then there is the Mumbo-Jumbo of command: Thackeray used to ridicule it with the phrase "Shaloo-Hump!" or some such sounds, and there is, as we all know, "Shun" rapidly shouted, and many another. But any one who has had to drill recruits will admit that he would never have got them drilled at all if instead of using these interesting idols of language he had given his commands in a rational and conversational tone with hesitation and urbanity.

Note you the Mumbo-Jumbo which may everywhere be classed under the term "Official." A common lie has no such effect as a lie with "Official" at the top in brackets. Yet no one could tell you exactly what "Official" meant. It suggests only this: that the news has been given by the Officer of some organisation. Thus, if you say that a man has been declared mad, and put "Official," you mean that two members of the Doctors' Guild have been at work; or, if you are told that a funeral will not take place ("Official") you mean that a member of the Undertakers' Union has given you the information, or perhaps even a member of the family of the dead man. In this class we must also put the two phrases "By Order" (used in this country) and "Tremble and Obey," which, till recently stood (I understand) at the foot of Chinese documents.

"By Order" is a Mumbo-Jumbo pearl! How often in lonely walks through the London streets have I mused within my own dear mind and marvelled at "By Order." When I read for instance "No Whistling Allowed (By Order)" I wonder who gave the order and how he climbed to such a novel power. How came he so strong that he could prevent my whistling or in any other way enlivening London? And why did he hide his magic name? I take it that he had no vulgar legal power, but something more compelling and more mysterious, a priestly thing. And there are others. People who own more than 2,000 acres of land love to paint "By Order" in black letters on little white boards. With these they ornament the boundaries of their possessions.

Mumbo-Jumbo has this defect, that if the spell fails through unfamiliarity it looks grotesque; therefore is it essential for all governments to shoe-horn any new Mumbo-Jumbo very carefully into its place.

It must begin with some little habit, hardly acknowledged, hardly noticeable, and it must only gradually grow into admitted authority. Turn Mumbo-Jumbo on too suddenly and people would only laugh. And while I think of it let me say that paint is a main incarnation of Mumbo-Jumbo; paint with varnish—the complete form of paint. People who sail boats know this very well. I will buy you for a few pounds a very rotten old hulk, abandoned in Hamble River, I will stop up the leaks with cement, paint her sides a bright colour, varnish the paint and then varnish her decks, and sell her at an enormous profit. It is done continually; lives are lost through it, of course; the boat bursts asunder in the midst of the sea; but the cheat never fails. Those who understand the art of horse dealing (which I do not) assure me that much the same thing attaches to that also. It seems there are poisons which you can give a horse whereby it acquires a glossy coat, and that even the eyes of the stupid beast can be made vivacious after long dulness. It may be so.

But of all the Mumbo-Jumbos, that which I admire most, because of its excess and potency combined, is the Mumbo-Jumbo of wine. One would think that in such a matter, where the senses are directly concerned, and where every man can and should act for himself, there was no room for this element in persuasion. It would be an error so to think. There is not one man in a hundred who is not almost entirely guided in a matter of wine by Mumbo-Jumbo. There is here the Mumbo-Jumbo of particular terms, very well-chosen metaphors, and a man is told that a Wine is "full," or "curious," or "dry," or "pretty," or "sound," or something of that kind, and even as he tastes the ink he does not doubt, but believes.

And there is the Mumbo-Jumbo of the years ("This is a '75 Brandy!"—What a lie!), and there is the Mumbo-Jumbo of labels. And there is the arch-Mumbo-Jumbo of little wicker baskets and dust. And the whole of that vast trade, the source of so much pleasure and profit to mankind, floats upon an ocean of Mumbo-Jumbo. Most of the claret you drink is either a rough Algerian wine filled out with dirty water of great Garonne, or wine from the HÉrault, or the two mixed. But Lord! what names and titles the concoction bears, including the Mumbo-Jumbo of "Bottled at the Chateau."

And do you think that men would be happier in the drinking of wine if they dropped all this? They would not; and that for two reasons. First, that this would be making them work. They would have to judge for themselves. It would be calling upon them for Effort, and that is hateful to all mankind. Secondly, without the Mumbo-Jumbo, most men would not know whether they were enjoying the wine or not. Therefore I say let Mumbo-Jumbo flourish—and even increase—if that be possible.

Let Mumbo-Jumbo flourish, not only in the matter of wine, and not only in the matter of learning, and not only in the matter of positive government (where it is absolutely essential), and not only in the falsehoods of the daily Press, and not only in the Ecclesiastical affair, nor only in that still more Mumbo-Jumbo world of sceptical philosophy, but also in all the most intimate personal relations of men. I am for it! I am for it! I am for it! Born a Mumbo-Jumboite, I propose to die in the happy air which surrounds my nourishing Divinity.