I am no friend of the people. As a force, by which the tenor of the time
is conditioned, they inspire me with distrust, with fear; as a visible
multitude, they make me shrink aloof, and often move me to abhorrence.
For the greater part of my life, the people signified to me the London
crowd, and no phrase of temperate meaning would utter my thoughts of them
under that aspect. The people as country-folk are little known to me;
such glimpses as I have had of them do not invite to nearer acquaintance.
Every instinct of my being is anti-democratic, and I dread to think of
what our England may become when Demos rules irresistibly.
Right or wrong, this is my temper. But he who should argue from it that
I am intolerant of all persons belonging to a lower social rank than my
own would go far astray. Nothing is more rooted in my mind than the vast
distinction between the individual and the class. Take a man by himself,
and there is generally some reason to be found in him, some disposition
for good; mass him with his fellows in the social organism, and ten to
one he becomes a blatant creature, without a thought of his own, ready
for any evil to which contagion prompts him. It is because nations tend
to stupidity and baseness that mankind moves so slowly; it is because
individuals have a capacity for better things that it moves at all.
In my youth, looking at this man and that, I marvelled that humanity had
made so little progress. Now, looking at men in the multitude, I marvel
that they have advanced so far.
Foolishly arrogant as I was, I used to judge the worth of a person by his
intellectual power and attainment. I could see no good where there was
no logic, no charm where there was no learning. Now I think that one has
to distinguish between two forms of intelligence, that of the brain, and
that of the heart, and I have come to regard the second as by far the
more important. I guard myself against saying that intelligence does not
matter; the fool is ever as noxious as he is wearisome. But assuredly
the best people I have known were saved from folly not by the intellect
but by the heart. They come before me, and I see them greatly ignorant,
strongly prejudiced, capable of the absurdest mis-reasoning; yet their
faces shine with the supreme virtues, kindness, sweetness, modesty,
generosity. Possessing these qualities, they at the same time understand
how to use them; they have the intelligence of the heart.
This poor woman who labours for me in my house is even such a one. From
the first I thought her an unusually good servant; after three years of
acquaintance, I find her one of the few women I have known who merit the
term of excellent. She can read and write--that is all. More
instruction would, I am sure, have harmed her, for it would have confused
her natural motives, without supplying any clear ray of mental guidance.
She is fulfilling the offices for which she was born, and that with a
grace of contentment, a joy of conscientiousness, which puts her high
among civilized beings. Her delight is in order and in peace; what
greater praise can be given to any of the children of men?
The other day she told me a story of the days gone by. Her mother, at
the age of twelve, went into domestic service; but on what conditions,
think you? The girl's father, an honest labouring man, _paid_ the person
whose house she entered one shilling a week for her instruction in the
duties she wished to undertake. What a grinning stare would come to the
face of any labourer nowadays, who should be asked to do the like! I no
longer wonder that my housekeeper so little resembles the average of her
kind.