First printed in the Smart Set, May 1919, p. 51. Reprinted in A Second Mencken Chrestomathy, 1994, p. 351.
Some of the loosest thinking in ethics has duty for its theme. Practically all writers on the subject agree that the individual owes certain inescapable duties to the race—for example, the duty of engaging in productive labor, and that of marrying and begetting offspring. In support of this position it is almost always argued that if all men neglected such duties the race would perish. The logic is hollow enough to be worthy of the college professors who are guilty of it. It simply confuses the conventionality, the pusillanimity, the lack of imagination of the majority of men with the duty of all men. There is not the slightest ground for assuming, even as a matter of mere argumentation, that all men will ever neglect these alleged duties. There will always remain a safe majority that is willing to do whatever is ordained—that accepts docilely the government it is born under, obeys its laws, and supports its theory. But that majority does not comprise the men who render the highest and most intelligent services to the race; it comprises those who render nothing save their obedience.
For the man who differs from this inert and well-regimented mass, however slightly, there are no duties per se. What he is spontaneously inclined to do is of vastly more value what the majority is willing to do. There is, indeed, no such thing as duty-in-itself; it is a mere chimera of ethical theorists. Human progress is furthered, not by conformity, but by aberration. The very concept of duty is thus a function of inferiority; it belongs naturally only to timorous and incompetent men. Even on such levels it remains largely a self-delusion, a soothing apparition, a euphemism for necessity. When a man succumbs to duty he merely succumbs to the habit and inclination of other men.
Ahhhhhhhhh, Mencken.