he former
say that poverty leads to drink. I can only wonder at their either of
them being content with such simple physical explanations. Surely it
is obvious that the thing which among the English proletariat leads to
poverty is the same as the thing which leads to drink; the absence
of strong civic dignity, the absence of an instinct that resists
degradation.

When you have discovered why enormous English estates were not long
ago cut up into small holdings like the land of France, you will have
discovered why the Englishman is more drunken than the Frenchman.
The Englishman, among his million delightful virtues, really has this
quality, which may strictly be called "hand to mouth," because under
its influence a man's hand automatically seeks his own mouth, instead of
seeking (as it sometimes should do) his oppressor's nose. And a man who
says that the English inequality in land is due only to economic causes,
or that the drunkenness of England is due only to economic causes, is
saying something so absurd that he cannot really have thought what he
was saying.

Yet things quite as preposterous as this are said and written under the
influence of that great spectacle of babyish helplessness, the economic
theory of history. We have people who represent that all great historic
motives were economic, and then have to howl at the top of their voices
in order to induce the modern democracy to act on economic motives. The
extreme Marxian politicians in England exhibit themselves as a small,
heroic minority, trying vainly to induce the world to do what, according
to their theory, the world always does. The truth is, of course, that
there will be a social revolution the moment the thing has ceased to be
purely economic. You can never have a revolution in order to establish a
democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

.....

I get up from under the trees, for the wind and the slight rain have
ceased. The trees stand up like golden pillars in a clear sunlight.
The tossing of the trees and the blowing of the wind have ceased
simultaneously. So I suppose there are still modern philosophers who
will maintain that the trees make the wind.

XIII. The Dickensian

He was a quiet man, dressed in dark clothes, with a large limp straw
hat; with something almost military in his moustache and whiskers, but
with a quite unmilitary stoop and very dreamy eyes. He was gazing with a
rather gloomy interest a