"We in Athens divided men only on lines of the greater or lesser political rights we gave them; but we never drew such lines in matters social and purely human. The freest Athenian readily shook hands with a _metic_ or denizen; and we ate all that was eatable and good. In England the higher class looks upon the next lower as the teetotaller looks upon beer, the vegetarian upon beef, or the Sabbatarian upon what they call the Continental Sunday. "Moreover, there is in England, in addition to the science of zoology or botany, such as my hearer Aristotle founded it, a social zoology and botany, treating of such animals and plants as cannot, according to English class Puritanism, be offered to one's friends at meals. Thus, mussels and cockles are socially ostracised, except in unrecognisable form; bread is offered in homoeopathic doses; beer at a banquet is simply impossible; black radishes, a personal insult. "In the same way, streets, squares, halls, theatres, watering-places--in short, everything in the material universe is or is not 'class'; that is, it is subject or not subject to social Puritanism. All this, as in the case of the Hebrews, who have an infinitely developed ritualism of eatables and drinkables, of things 'pure' or 'impure'; all this, I say, is the inevitable consequence of the unwillingness of the English to grant any considerable coercive power to the State, the Church, the nobility, the army, or any other organised corporate institution. "They hate the idea of conscription, because they hate to give power to the army, and prefer to fall into the snares of faddists. "The coercive power which they will not grant in one form, they must necessarily admit in another form. They destroy Puritanism as wielded by State or Church, and must therefore, since coercive powers are always indispensable, accept it as Puritanism of fads. "What are the Jews other than a nation of extreme faddists? Being quite apolitical, as we call it, they must necessarily be extremely Orphic--that is, extreme Puritans. "Political liberty is bought at the expense of social freedom. Nobody dares to give himself freely and naively; he must needs watch with sickly self-consciousness over every word or act of his, as a policeman watches over the traffic of streets. And lest he betray his real sentiments, he suppresses all gestures, because gestures give one away at once. One cannot make a gesture of astonishment without being really astonished at all, and _vice versâ_. "And so slowly, by degrees, the whole of the human capital is repressed, disguised, unhumanised, and, in a word, sacrificed at the altar of political liberty. "The Romans, much wiser than the Spartans, gave immense coercive power both to corporate bodies, such as the Roman Senate, and to single officials, such as a Consul, a Censor, a Tribune, or a Prætor. They therefore did not need any grotesque private coercive institutions or fads.