. Crudely, the poet differs from the mob by his sensibility;
the professor differs from the mob by his insensibility. He has not
sufficient finesse and sensitiveness to sympathize with the mob.
His only notion is coarsely to contradict it, to cut across it, in
accordance with some egotistical plan of his own; to tell himself that,
whatever the ignorant say, they are probably wrong. He forgets that
ignorance often has the exquisite intuitions of innocence.

Let me take one example which may mark out the outline of the
contention. Open the nearest comic paper and let your eye rest lovingly
upon a joke about a mother-in-law. Now, the joke, as presented for the
populace, will probably be a simple joke; the old lady will be tall and
stout, the hen-pecked husband will be small and cowering. But for all
that, a mother-in-law is not a simple idea. She is a very subtle idea.
The problem is not that she is big and arrogant; she is frequently
little and quite extraordinarily nice. The problem of the mother-in-law
is that she is like the twilight: half one thing and half another. Now,
this twilight truth, this fine and even tender embarrassment, might be
rendered, as it really is, by a poet, only here the poet would have to
be some very penetrating and sincere novelist, like George Meredith,
or Mr. H. G. Wells, whose "Ann Veronica" I have just been reading with
delight. I would trust the fine poets and novelists because they follow
the fairy clue given them in Comic Cuts. But suppose the Professor
appears, and suppose he says (as he almost certainly will), "A
mother-in-law is merely a fellow-citizen. Considerations of sex should
not interfere with comradeship. Regard for age should not influence
the intellect. A mother-in-law is merely Another Mind. We should free
ourselves from these tribal hierarchies and degrees." Now, when the
Professor says this (as he always does), I say to him, "Sir, you are
coarser than Comic Cuts. You are more vulgar and blundering than the
most elephantine music-hall artiste. You are blinder and grosser than
the mob. These vulgar knockabouts have, at least, got hold of a social
shade and real mental distinction, though they can only express it
clumsily. You are so clumsy that you cannot get hold of it at all. If
you really cannot see that the bridegroom's mother and the bride have
any reason for constraint or diffidence, then you are neither polite nor
humane: you have no sympathy in you for the deep and d