was a version of the fall of Parnell; the idea that
a quite honest man might be secret from a pure love
of secrecy, of solitary self-control. I went out
of that garden with a blurred sensation of the million
possibilities of creative literature. The feeling
increased as my way fell back into the wood; for a
wood is a palace with a million corridors that cross
each other everywhere. I really had the feeling
that I had seen the creative quality; which is supernatural.
I had seen what Virgil calls the Old Man of the Forest:
I had seen an elf. The trees thronged behind
my path; I have never seen him again; and now I shall
not see him, because he died last Tuesday.
The Orthodox Barber
Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often
assert that the love of humanity would be in itself
sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it would, if
they had it. There is a very real thing which
may be called the love of humanity; in our time it
exists almost entirely among what are called uneducated
people; and it does not exist at all among the people
who talk about it.
A positive pleasure in being in the presence of any
other human being is chiefly remarkable, for instance,
in the masses on Bank Holiday; that is why they are
so much nearer Heaven (despite appearances) than any
other part of our population.
I remember seeing a crowd of factory girls getting
into an empty train at a wayside country station.
There were about twenty of them; they all got into
one carriage; and they left all the rest of the train
entirely empty. That is the real love of humanity.
That is the definite pleasure in the immediate proximity
of one’s own kind. Only this coarse, rank,
real love of men seems to be entirely lacking in those
who propose the love of humanity as a substitute for
all other love; honourable, rationalistic idealists.
I can well remember the explosion of human joy which
marked the sudden starting of that train; all the
factory girls who could not find seats (and they must
have been the majority) relieving their feelings by
jumping up and down. Now I have never seen any
rationalistic idealists do this. I have never
seen twenty modern philosophers crowd into one third-class
carriage for the mere pleasure of being together.
I have never seen twenty Mr. McCabes all in one carriage
and all jumping up and down.
Some people express a fear that vulgar trippers will
overrun all beautiful places, such as Hampstead or
Burnham Beeches. But their fear is unreasonable;
because trippers always prefer to trip together; they
pack as close as they can; they have a suffocating
passion of philanthropy.
. . . . .
But among the minor and milder aspects of the same
principle, I have no hesitation in placing the problem
of the colloquial barber. Before any modern man
talks with authority about loving men, I insist (I
insist with violence) that he shall always be very
much pleased when his barber tries to talk to him.
His barber is humanity: let him love that.
If he is not pleased at this, I will not accept any
substitute in the way of interest in the Congo or the
future of Japan. If a man cannot love his barber
whom he has seen, how shall he love the Japanese whom
he has not seen?
