IT is usually assumed that the distinctively social end of life begins “after business hours.” There is, we say, “no room for sentiment in business,”—which is part of the intolerable price we pay for our subjection to the economic motive. In business the presumption is that we are all competitors; when business is over we are prepared to be friends. The formality and the insincerity of much social intercourse in our time—not to speak of its utter fruitlessness for any healthy human good—has its origins largely in the banishment of fellowship from the “business end” of life. This is not to say that there is not a great deal of wholesome human intercourse in modern life or that there are not genuine friendships between business competitors and between principals and subordinates in industry; but it is generally true that we conceive of commerce and industry as admitting of no extensive exercise of the humanities; and for this habit of mind we are punished by a deep impoverishment of life. There is a sense in which the struggle for liberty may be regarded as being essentially a struggle to broaden the basis of human fellowship; and it is undoubtedly true that forms of privilege are the most prolific causes of social schism. No community possesses the conditions of real fellowship while it is (as modern communities are) divided into topdogs and underdogs, whether the topdogs be aristocrats or plutocrats, and the underdogs be serfs or wage-slaves. For the poison of privilege is apt to permeate the whole body; and an exploited class may itself be composed of exploiters. In our day the quest and the possession of pecuniary advantage has so grievously muddied the springs of fellowship that we live in a chronic temper of mutual suspicion and distrust. We do not constitute living societies; we are but collections of individuals who live together because we must, and come no nearer to each other than is necessary for the indispensable common operations of life. Lord Morley has pointed out that the business of the Irish Land League lay as much in adjusting feuds among its own members as in carrying on their common feud against the landlords. Within small circles there is, of course, much genuine friendly exchange and co-operation; there are holiday occasions when good temper and good fellowship rule; but for the rest, we chiefly live under jungle law.