iumph, the triumph over nobody.

But when we come to the last test of nationality, the test of art and
letters, the case is almost terrible. The English colonies have
produced no great artists; and that fact may prove that they are still
full of silent possibilities and reserve force. But America has
produced great artists. And that fact most certainly proves that she
is full of a fine futility and the end of all things. Whatever the
American men of genius are, they are not young gods making a young
world. Is the art of Whistler a brave, barbaric art, happy and
headlong? Does Mr. Henry James infect us with the spirit of a
schoolboy? No; the colonies have not spoken, and they are safe. Their
silence may be the silence of the unborn. But out of America has come
a sweet and startling cry, as unmistakable as the cry of a dying man.

XIX Slum Novelists and the Slums

Odd ideas are entertained in our time about the real nature of the
doctrine of human fraternity. The real doctrine is something which we
do not, with all our modern humanitarianism, very clearly understand,
much less very closely practise. 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 privilege of
the duel. There is nothing, undemocratic, though there may be
something unreasonable, in expecting a great deal from the butler, and
being filled with a kind of frenzy of surprise when he falls short of
the divine stature. The thing which is really undemocratic and
unfraternal is not to expect the butler to be more or less divine. 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.

It is only because such a vast section of the modern world is out of
sympathy with the serious democratic sentiment that this statement will
seem to many to be lacking in seriousness. Democracy is not
philanthropy; it is not even altruism or social reform. Democracy is
not founded on pity for the common man; democracy is found