ng and yielding because it is alive. A
bad civilization stands up and sticks out above us like an
umbrella--artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but
uniform. So it is with the contrast between the substances that vary and
the substances that are the same wherever they penetrate. By a wise doom
of heaven men were commanded to eat cheese, but not the same cheese.
Being really universal it varies from valley to valley. But if, let us
say, we compare cheese with soap (that vastly inferior substance), we
shall see that soap tends more and more to be merely Smith's Soap or
Brown's Soap, sent automatically all over the world. If the Red Indians
have soap it is Smith's Soap. If the Grand Lama has soap it is Brown's
soap. There is nothing subtly and strangely Buddhist, nothing tenderly
Tibetan, about his soap. I fancy the Grand Lama does not eat cheese (he
is not worthy), but if he does it is probably a local cheese, having
some real relation to his life and outlook. Safety matches, tinned
foods, patent medicines are sent all over the world; but they are not
produced all over the world. Therefore there is in them a mere dead
identity, never that soft play of slight variation which exists in
things produced everywhere out of the soil, in the milk of the kine,
or the fruits of the orchard. You can get a whisky and soda at every
outpost of the Empire: that is why so many Empire-builders go mad. But
you are not tasting or touching any environment, as in the cider of
Devonshire or the grapes of the Rhine. You are not approaching Nature in
one of her myriad tints of mood, as in the holy act of eating cheese.

When I had done my pilgrimage in the four wayside public-houses I
reached one of the great northern cities, and there I proceeded, with
great rapidity and complete inconsistency, to a large and elaborate
restaurant, where I knew I could get many other things besides bread and
cheese. I could get that also, however; or at least I expected to get
it; but I was sharply reminded that I had entered Babylon, and left
England behind. The waiter brought me cheese, indeed, but cheese cut up
into contemptibly small pieces; and it is the awful fact that, instead
of Christian bread, he brought me biscuits. Biscuits--to one who had
eaten the cheese of four great countrysides! Biscuits--to one who had
proved anew for himself the sanctity of the ancient wedding between
cheese and bread! I addressed the waiter in warm and movi