Mushy Sentimentality

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 21, 1911

Mushy Sentimentality

This is the term which the Nation of Nov. 30, 1911, uses in speaking of the “kind letters” and “expressions of interest and sympathy” which have been showered upon a recent criminal sent to the electric chair:—

Mushy sentimentality, of which this case has furnished a somewhat extreme illustration, is a more serious element in our national life than most people realize. In the matter of homicide itself, we have no doubt that it constitutes one of the chief reasons of our country’s most unenviable preeminence. . . . Yet the most serious consequence of this shallow sentimentality is not to be found in its immediate effects upon action in specific cases. More deplorable is its inevitable weakening of profound instincts that have their root in ages of human experience — of real and effective sentiments in regard to crime. More than in police and juries and judges, society finds its protection from crime in the instinctive association of it with feelings of abhorrence, and with the stigma of universal disgrace. To be a thief is to be not only punished, but despised and shunned; to be a murderer is not only to subject one’s self to the danger of death, but to be detested and cast out by all men. Children no sooner learn the meanings of the words than they acquire along with them those sentiments of abhorrence which, far more than any calculation of chances, make the very thought of the commission of these crimes impossible to the vast majority of mankind. To trifle with this inherited defense — not merely of society against evil-doers, but, what is even more important, of individuals against temptation to evil — is no light matter.