he world itself. I know nothing,
and am told nothing, of those whose lives do not lie in the direct line
of my limited vision. The process of education removes me at each
stage further from the likelihood of knowing them. I acquire ideals,
habits, and manners of which they are destitute. I come to regard an
acquaintance with various forms of knowledge as essential to life, and
I am naturally disdainful of those who do not possess this knowledge.
In the same way I regard a certain code of manners as binding, and the
lack of this code of manners in others as an outrage. My very thoughts
have their own dialect, and I am totally unacquainted with the dialect
of those whose thoughts differ from my own. Thus with the growth of my
culture there is the equal growth of prejudice; with the enjoyment of
my privilege, a tacit rejection and repudiation of the unprivileged.

How then am I ever to find myself in any relation of affection towards
these human creatures from whom I am alienated by the nature of my
education? If, by any chance, I come in contact with them, it is
certain that they will arouse in me repugnance and perhaps disgust. I
shall find them coarse, crude, and ignorant; their methods of speech
will grate upon me, their manners will repel me; they will be as truly
foreign to me as the natives of New Guinea, and their total incapacity
to share the thoughts which compose my own inner life will be scarcely
less complete. It is a truly humiliating thing to admit that
differences of nationality separate men less effectually than disparity
of manners. If I am at all fastidious I am more likely to be repelled
by coarse language, gross habits, or vulgar behaviour in my fellow
mortal than by all his errors in creed or morals. So little parts men,
and is permitted to part them, that it is very likely that some mere
awkwardness of behaviour in my fellow man may extirpate effectually the
regard I might have had for him. How little indeed is permitted to
part friends--often nothing more than a tone of voice, a word
misinterpreted, or something equally slight, the product very possibly
of shyness, or inability for right expression on a sudden call. And
there is all that goes by the name of antipathy, the nameless and quite
irrational repulsions which we permit ourselves to cherish, for which
we have no better excuse than that they are instinctive. With all
these forces against us how can we love our neighbour as oursel