world been distinguished from the ordinary suburban season-ticket
holder more than in their straightforward perception of the fact
that mankind is practically a single species, and not a menagerie
of gentlemen and bounders, villains and heroes, cowards and
daredevils, peers and peasants, grocers and aristocrats, artisans
and laborers, washerwomen and duchesses, in which all the grades
of income and caste represent distinct animals who must not be
introduced to one another or intermarry. Napoleon constructing a
galaxy of generals and courtiers, and even of monarchs, out of
his collection of social nobodies; Julius Caesar appointing as
governor of Egypt the son of a freedman--one who but a short time
before would have been legally disqualified for the post even of
a private soldier in the Roman army; Louis XI making his barber
his privy councillor: all these had in their different ways a
firm hold of the scientific fact of human equality, expressed by
Barbara in the Christian formula that all men are children of one
father. A man who believes that men are naturally divided into
upper and lower and middle classes morally is making exactly the
same mistake as the man who believes that they are naturally
divided in the same way socially. And just as our persistent
attempts to found political institutions on a basis of social
inequality have always produced long periods of destructive
friction relieved from time to time by violent explosions of
revolution; so the attempt--will Americans please note--to found
moral institutions on a basis of moral inequality can lead to
nothing but unnatural Reigns of the Saints relieved by licentious
Restorations; to Americans who have made divorce a public
institution turning the face of Europe into one huge sardonic
smile by refusing to stay in the same hotel with a Russian man of
genius who has changed wives without the sanction of South