le solely because
of such suffocating vulgarities and tyrannies. It is not humanity that
disgusts us in the huge cities; it is inhumanity. It is not that there
are human beings; but that they are not treated as such. We do not, I
hope, dislike men and women; we only dislike their being made into a
sort of jam: crushed together so that they are not merely powerless but
shapeless. It is not the presence of people that makes London appalling.
It is merely the absence of The People.

Therefore, I dance with joy to think that my part of England is being
built over, so long as it is being built over in a human way at human
intervals and in a human proportion. So long, in short, as I am not
myself built over, like a pagan slave buried in the foundations of a
temple, or an American clerk in a star-striking pagoda of flats, I am
delighted to see the faces and the homes of a race of bipeds, to which
I am not only attracted by a strange affection, but to which also (by a
touching coincidence) I actually happen to belong. I am not one desiring
deserts. I am not Timon of Athens; if my town were Athens I would stay
in it. I am not Simeon Stylites; except in the mournful sense that every
Saturday I find myself on the top of a newspaper column. I am not in
the desert repenting of some monstrous sins; at least, I am repenting of
them all right, but not in the desert. I do not want the nearest human
house to be too distant to see; that is my objection to the wilderness.
But neither do I want the nearest human house to be too close to see;
that is my objection to the modern city. I love my fellow-man; I do not
want him so far off that I can only observe anything of him through a
telescope, nor do I want him so close that I can examine parts of him
with a microscope. I want him within a stone's throw of me; so that
whenever it is really necessary, I may throw the stone.

Perhaps, after all, it may not be a stone. Perhaps, after all, it may be
a bouquet, or a snowball, or a firework, or a Free Trade Loaf; perhaps
they will ask for a stone and I shall give them bread. But it is
essential that they should be within reach: how can I love my neighbour
as myself if he gets out of range for snowballs? There should be no
institution out of the reach of an indignant or admiring humanity. I
could hit the nearest house quite well with the catapult; but the
truth is that the catapult belongs to a little boy I know, and, with
characteristic youthful '