individuals are originally responsible, society at large is all too
culpably _particeps criminis_ in this phenomenon under consideration. If
the prosperity of a jest be in the ears that hear it, the like is
certainly true of any piece of gossip. Whoever it may be that sows the
evil seed of slander, the human soil is all too evilly ready to receive
it, to give it nurture, and to reproduce it in crops persistent as the
wild carrot and flamboyant as the wild mustard.

There is something mean in human nature that prefers to think evil, that
gives a willing ear and a ready welcome to calumny, a sort of jealousy
of goodness and greatness and things of good report.

Races and nations are thus ever ready to believe the worst of one
another. In all times it has been in this field of inter-racial and
international prejudice that the gossip has found the widest scope for
his gleeful activity, sowing broadcast dissensions and misunderstandings
which have persisted for centuries. They are the fruitful cause of wars,
insuperable barriers to progress, fabulous growths which the
enlightenment of the world painfully labours to weed out, but will
perhaps never entirely eradicate.

Race-hatred is undoubtedly nine-tenths the heritage of ancient gossip.
Think of the generations of ill-feeling that kept England and France,
though divided but by a narrow strait, "natural enemies" and
misunderstood monsters to each other. In a less degree, the friendship
of England and America has been retarded by international gossips on
both sides. And as for races and nations more widely separated by
distance or customs, no lies have been bad enough for them to believe
about one another.