"Ask the preachers. Gin they meant brothers, they’d say brothers, be sure; but because they don’t mean brothers at a’, they say brethren--ye’ll mind, brethren--to soun’ antiquate, an’ professional, an’ perfunctory-like, for fear it should be ower real, an’ practical, an’ startling, an’ a’ that; and then jist limit it down wi’ a ’in Christ,’ for fear o’ owre wide applications, and a’ that. But For a’ that, and a’ that, It’s comin’ yet, for a’ that, When man an’ man, the warld owre, Shall brothers be, for a’ that-- An’ na brithren any mair at a’!" Social inequality between human beings can never be a permanent relation. Ordinarily between normal human beings it is a hateful and demoralizing relation. It is twice cursed. It curses him who is down and him who is up. It powerfully tends to make the one who is down and knows he is down, subservient, a truckler, a fawner. If a man is wise enough and strong enough to withstand the influence, the probability is that the very effort at resistance, unless he is very wise and very strong, will develop an unlovely and ungracious spirit of defiance, sometimes of hostility. In any case, human nature generally sours under it. It is, perhaps, even worse in its effects on the one who is up. At the best he becomes condescending, affable, gracious, patronizing--intolerable attitudes every one. At the worst he becomes arrogant and insolent. Always he tends to become suspicious and cynical. He learns to distrust the forced respectfulness and obligingness everywhere shown to himself, and so comes to distrust courtesy and good-will in general. H. G. Wells in his _The Future in America_ inserts a picture of "one of the most impressive of these very rich Americans." "My friend beheld him, gross and heavy, seated in an easy chair in the centre of his private car, among men who stared and came and went. He clutched a long cigar with a great clumsy hand. He turned on you a queer, coarse, disconcerting bottle nose with a little hard, blue, wary, hostile eye that watched out from the roots of it. He said nothing. He attempted no civility, he looked pride and insults--you ceased to respect yourself.... ’It was Roman,’ my friend said. ’There has been nothing like it since the days of that republic. No living king would dare to do it. And these other Americans! These people walked up to him and talked to him--they tried to flatter him and get him to listen to projects. Abjectly. And you knew, he _grunted_. He didn’t talk back. It was beneath him. He just grunted at them!" Just as clear as the incompatibility of Christianity with social inequality is its incompatibility with business competition.