My other reason lay in the conviction that the time has gone by for the scrupulous caution which Green displayed in estimating the value of the State to its members. I have referred to this subject in the body of my work (ch. x.); but I desire to emphasise my belief that our growing experience of all social “classes” proves the essentials of happiness and character to be the same throughout the social whole. Scepticism on this point is the product, I am convinced, of defective social experience. Indeed, it seems worth while to observe that the attention which is now rightly paid to such disadvantages, affecting the poorer classes of citizens, as it may be possible to remedy, has given rise to a serious confusion. The zeal of the advocate has led him to slander his client. In proving that under such and such conditions it would be no wonder if “the poor” were bad, he forgets to observe that in fact they are generally just as good as other people. The all-important distinction between a poor home and a bad home is neglected. And yet it seems probable that, omitting the definitely criminal quarters, there is no larger proportion of bad homes among the poor than among the rich. Such terms as “den” and “slum” {x} are too freely used, with an affectation of intimacy, for homes in which thousands of respectable citizens reside. Our democratic age will be remarkable to posterity for having dimmed the time-honoured belief in the virtues of the poor. There was cant, no doubt, in the older doctrine, but it was not so far from the fact as the opposite cant of today, and it is time that the truth in it should be revived. I must repeat that these remarks are not intended to be controversial. There is nothing in them which serious men of all schools may not accept. They are meant to defend my attitude in treating the Real Will, and Freedom in the greater Self, as matters of universal concern, and not merely as hopes and fancies cherished by “educated” persons. Indeed, although it would be churlish for a student to disparage literary education, it must never be forgotten that, as things are today, the citizens who live by handicraft possess a valuable element of brain-culture, which is on the whole denied to the literary class. Whatever, therefore, may be wanting in the following pages, it is not, I think, the relation of their subject-matter to the general life of peoples.