April 13, 2008
Heretics 19 : Slum Novelists and the Slums
“There is nothing, for instance, particularly undemocratic about kicking your butler downstairs. It may be wrong, but it is not unfraternal. In a certain sense, the blow or kick may be considered as a confession of equality: you are meeting your butler body to body. You are almost according him the dignity of a duel…..The thing which is really undemocratic and unfraternal is to say, as so many modern humanitarians say, ‘Of course one must make allowances for those on a lower plane.’ All things considered, indeed, it may be said, without undue exaggeration, that the really undemocratic and unfraternal thing is the common practice of not kicking the butler downstairs.”
