Justice & Law Quote by Max Beerbohm

Beerbohm’s jab lands because it’s dressed up as a scientific observation while quietly operating as a social assassination. “Law of nature” is mock-Newtonian authority, the kind of phrase people use when they want their prejudice to sound inevitable. Then he narrows the “law” to a very particular vanity: the near-universal willingness to be looked at, fixed in oil, made permanent. In an era when portraiture was both status symbol and self-branding, he treats the sitting not as art appreciation but as a hunger for curated immortality.

The nasty little hinge is the exception clause: “unless he has some obvious physical deformity.” Beerbohm exposes how admiration of the self depends on the expectation of being admired by others. Portraiture isn’t just self-love; it’s a bet on the audience. If you can’t count on the room to flatter you, you might suddenly become “loth” to participate. The line reads as a critique of beauty standards and ableist social calculus, but it’s also about masculine entitlement. He doesn’t say “no one”; he says “no man,” skewering a culture in which male self-regard is treated as default and female self-display is policed. Men are allowed to presume they are worth depicting.

Beerbohm, a professional performer and a master satirist, understood the mechanics of being seen. The portrait is an early 20th-century influencer post: controlled lighting, softened edges, a claim that your face should outlast your actual life. His wit isn’t gentle; it’s diagnostic. Vanity, he implies, is not a flaw some people have. It’s the operating system, interrupted only by fear of being judged.