4. The Theory of Scapegoats

"Alas, how easily things go wrong!" says Dr. George MacDonald. And all
the world over, when things do go wrong, the natural and instinctive
desire of the human animal is--to find a scapegoat. When the great
French nation in the lump embarks its capital in a hopeless scheme for
cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Panama, and then finds out too
late that Nature has imposed insuperable barriers to its completion on
the projected scale--what does the great French nation do, in its
collective wisdom, but turn round at once to rend the directors? It
cries, "A Mazas!" just as in '71 it cried "Bazaine à la lanterne!" I
don't mean to say the directors don't deserve all they have got or ever
will get, and perhaps more also; I don't mean to deny corruption
extraordinary in many high places; as a rule the worst that anybody
alleges about anything is only a part of what might easily be alleged if
we were all in the secret. Which of us, indeed, would 'scape whipping?
But what I do mean is, that we should never have heard of Reinach or
Herz, of the corruption and peculation, at all if things had gone well.
It is the crash that brought them out. The nation wants a scapegoat.
"Ain't nobody to be whopped for this 'ere?" asked Mr. Sam Weller on a
critical occasion. The question embodies the universal impulse of
humanity.

Tracing the feeling back to its origin, it seems due to this: minds of
the lower order can never see anything go wrong without experiencing a
certain sense of resentment; and resentment, by its very nature, desires
to vent itself upon some living and sentient creature, by preference a
fellow human being. When the child, running too fast, falls and hurts
itself, it gets instantly angry. "Naughty ground to hurt baby!" says the
nurse: "Baby hit it and hurt it." And baby promptly hits it back, with
vicious little fist, feeling every desire to revenge itself. By-and-by,
when baby grows older and learns that the ground can't feel to speak of,
he wants to put the blame upon somebody else, in order to have an object
to expend his rage upon. "You pushed me down!" he says to his playmate,
and straightway proceeds to punch his playmate's head for it--not
because he really believes the playmate did it, but because he feels he
_must_ have some outlet for his resentment. When once resentment is
roused, it will expend its force on anything that turns up handy, as the
man who has quarrelled with his wife about a question of a bonnet, will
kick his dog for trying to follow him to the club as he leaves her.

The mob, enraged at the death of Cæsar, meets Cinna the poet in the
streets of Rome. "Your name, sir?" inquires the Third Citizen.