and schoolmasters have borrowed from the aristocratic schools and
applied to the democratic, are by no means particularly appropriate
to an impoverished democracy
These 'healthy' ideals, as they are called, which our politicians
and schoolmasters have borrowed from the aristocratic schools and
applied to the democratic, are by no means particularly appropriate
to an impoverished democracy. A vague admiration for organized
government and a vague distrust of individual aid cannot be made
to fit in at all into the lives of people among whom kindness means
lending a saucepan and honor means keeping out of the workhouse.
It resolves itself either into discouraging that system of prompt
and patchwork generosity which is a daily glory of the poor,
or else into hazy advice to people who have no money not to give
it recklessly away. Nor is the exaggerated glory of athletics,
defensible enough in dealing with the rich who, if they did not romp
and race, would eat and drink unwholesomely, by any means so much
to the point when applied to people, most of whom will take a great
deal of exercise anyhow, with spade or hammer, pickax or saw.
And for the third case, of washing, it is obvious that the same sort
of rhetoric about corporeal daintiness which is proper to an ornamental
class cannot, merely as it stands, be applicable to a dustman.
A gentleman is expected to be substantially spotless all the time.
But it is no more discreditable for a scavenger to be dirty than for
a deep-sea diver to be wet. A sweep is no more disgraced when he is
covered with soot than Michael Angelo when he is covered with clay,
or Bayard when he is covered with blood. Nor have these extenders
of the public-school tradition done or suggested anything by way
of a substitute for the present snobbish system which makes cleanliness
almost impossible to the poor; I mean the general ritual of linen
and the wearing of the cast-off clothes of the rich. One man moves
into another man"s clothes as he moves into another man"s house.
No wonder that our educationists are not horrified at a man picking
up the aristocrat"s second-hand trousers, when they themselves
have only taken up the aristocrat"s second-hand ideas.
title=Branson
