William Hogarth: Cruelty in Perfection
Series/Book Title: The Four Stages of Cruelty (1751)

"May we finally rest in peace without him."

As The First Stage of Cruelty finding a foothold created space for the institutionalization of cruelty in the Second Stage, the efficient expansion of cruelty within Stage Two burst the barriers into casually practicing any and every perversion after guilt-free cruelty becomes unimaginable brutality. What might have started as torture morphs into murder. No limits exist for the experienced. Those who might have dabbled in Stage One Cruelty or felt sucked into Stage Two, if they didn't excuse themselves or flee, finally feel free to simply go off the rails into Stage Three. Hogarth referred to this stage as Perfection because nothing inhibited its excess. It could no longer be considered anomalous. It became just whatever it always was, but now without limits. No guilt intrudes—no sense of error or danger. If pure evil exists, it only persists after reaching Stage Three. Stage Three Cruelty puts everybody at risk because its artillery knows no trajectory. There will be accidents, and innocents will, of course, be destroyed. The perpetrator will have lost their inhibitions by then.

There will be no reformation. Much time can and usually does get wasted attempting to inform or reform, as if our protagonist really should otta wanta get better. That will to achieve decency cannot be injected then. Yes, a few extreme cases have miraculously managed to recover from inflicting Stage Three Cruelty. They populate the salvation stories favored by those still trying to curry favors in Stage One or Two. The Stage Three sufferers suddenly find themselves alone. The allies whose favor they curried on their way mostly fell away and couldn't follow. The liberty and freedom so long aspired to is finally granted, but it does not seem nearly as worthwhile as it did while still aspiring. Now, there are obligations to fulfill, expanding expectations. No mere run-of-the-mill cruelty suffices. Vices don't suffice, either. The murders committed must be most foul. The assaults, horrific. The thefts, colossal! Every infraction must feature some shock quotient. Each should be heinous and performed with casual ease. The protagonist will, however, find themself ultimately unable to satisfy their bloodlust. They might even lose their taste for gore. They will eventually find themselves indictable and get themselves convicted and sentenced.

Throughout their infamous career, the cruel practitioner seemed to have been coated in Teflon®. Their many infractions might not have resulted in that many indictments and probably even fewer convictions. They, of course, insisted on their own innocence. Sentences tended to get reduced for those who inflicted with true impunity. Those who actually felt guilty carried much of their own indictment, for they knew they did something wrong, and a jury could sense that remorse. Those incapable of experiencing that remorse seem to bob through the courts like corks. They collect more benefits of more doubts than dozens of similar career criminals, and not just because they hire shyster lawyers. They seem to be able to slither through the inherent cracks in the justice system. What might have been turned had they been sentenced when passing through Stage One or Two persisted until they could no longer even hope of helping themselves. Beyond Stage Two institutionalized Cruelty comes the first and second-nature varieties. Stage Three Cruelty becomes a rampage, pure and simple. It corrupts and ultimately destroys everything it touches, including the practitioner. Prevention passes into a promise of punishment.

Once instilled, Stage Three will ultimately smother on its own excesses. There have been cases where whole societies have adapted to a Stage Three Cruelty intrusion to displace even the most common decencies. There have been few instances, though, where a more mature democracy was seriously threatened. Sure, Western European societies swapped out Prime Ministers like socks in the immediate post-WWII period, but even Italy eventually settled into some semblance of regularity. It might be that Cruelty has a remarkably short shelf life. It spoils itself rather quickly because it knows no steady state. It cannot cease committing increasingly senseless crimes. What might have seemed at least somewhat reasonable when inflicted on some Other loses its attraction when its victims start to look a little too much like your mother. What might have seemed liberating eventually comes to seem like it's violating with indifferent impunity. Even the most fervent libertarian eventually understands the reasoning behind limiting some behaviors.

The entropy of dignity degrades into simple disorder. What might have begun as efforts to induce or enforce law and order matures into chaos. Too much strong-arming weakens one's hold. Tough guys grow tired. Even saviors eventually feel the need to retire. The cruel mature into genuine monsters. They eventually embody their misdeeds. Their earlier charisma goes to fat, and they no longer cut the alluring figure they first used to gain entry into the once-innocent system. They grow wobbly and careless. Frankly, they eventually can't seem to give even a mediocre goddamn anymore. They become increasingly sloppy in their execution. Once everybody's already heard the excuse at least a half-dozen times, it no longer elicits forgiveness or loyalty. This protagonist will not eventually be put out to pasture. They will be put down with extreme prejudice, hopefully in a somewhat less cruel way than they vanquished their predecessor, but they will have to be put down.

The Final Stage of Cruelty, following the casually random, wide-ranging cruelties practiced through Stage Three, occurs posthumously via some form of autopsy. The corpus will be literally cut open as if to find the source of the evil he incarnated. The coroner will find nothing to explain the behavior. No brain tumor or pituitary problem. He will ultimately be judged as apparently normal except for those disturbing behaviors he seemed compelled to inflict. He was not, as many speculated through his life, particularly sick. Anyone with a dick even that size might have been tempted to act out, but he went beyond mere over-compensating behavior. His performance eclipsed acting. He will have died at his own hand. Not necessarily suicidally, but as a direct result of casually inflicting some genuine cruelty. Eventually, even the universe loses her patience and takes out a particularly errant child. This one never matured into an actual adult. He died as he existed, at the emotional age of about eight. May we finally rest in peace without him.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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