Our insular arrogance is the twin sister of respectability. When we are not taking pride in the personal possession of a pot-hat and a frock coat, we go about bragging of national respectability and superiority. "Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud," says Schopenhauer, "adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his inferiority. For example, if you speak of the stupid and degrading bigotry of the English nation with the contempt it deserves, you will hardly find one Englishman in fifty to agree with you; but if there should be one, he will generally happen to be an intelligent man!" Nothing can destroy Respectability but a gradual extirpation of the _bourgeoisie_. I say gradual advisedly, and in a double sense; first, because we have many respectable relatives and friends whom we would be grieved to asphyxiate; and, second, because gradual processes in social evolution have more permanent resultants than cataclysms. Diderot, with wonderful prescience, asserted that a scientific anarchism is the extreme goal of social progress. This was in 1776. In 1897 a thousand sociologists recognise this fact, this "_diablement idéal_," as Diderot termed it. CHAPTER II. THE PATHOLOGY OF THE DISEASE. "The evil is not merely a stagnation of blood, but a stagnation of spirit. Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and by habit, or they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are." THOREAU. I had written my first chapter when I met a friend possessed of the qualities of moral and intellectual seriousness, which, when conjoined with a sense of humour, are proper elements for the making of a fine man. This estimable Mentor had read my midnight lucubration with a sad heart. He told me, with appropriate gravity, that his standpoint was the ethical-cum-philosophic. Judged from that imposing standard, my "screed" depressed him by reason of its "cynicism." "I wish," said he, "that you had dealt less ruthlessly with the Philistine. Is he not a man and a brother?" Whereupon he proceeded to administer reproof with Demosthenic eloquence, concluding with the altruistic admission, "Though I have endured much from the Philistine, I still love him."