nliness is our greatest class-symbol. In living with people who
have been brought up to different ways of life, a consideration
of cleanliness is forced upon one; for nothing else rouses so
instantaneously and violently the latent snobbery that one would fain
be rid of. Religiously, politically, we are men and brothers all. Yet
still--there _are_ men we simply cannot treat as brothers. By what term
of contempt (in order to justify our unbrotherliness) can we call them?
Not _poor men_; for we have _Poor but honest_ too firmly fixed in our
minds, and we would all like a colonial rich rough diamond of an uncle
to appear suddenly in our family circle. Hardly _men of no family_; for
men of no family are received at court. Not _workmen_; for behold the
Carlylese and Smilesian dignity of labour! Not _the masses_; for the
masses are supposed to be our rulers. What then can we call these
people with whom we really cannot associate on equal terms? Why,
call them THE GREAT UNWASHED. O felicitous phrase! O salve of the
conscience! That is the unpardonable social sin. At the bottom of our
social ladder is a dirty shirt; at the top is fixed not laurels, but a
tub! The bathroom is the inmost, the strongest fortress of our English
snobbery.

Cleanliness as a subject of discussion is, curiously enough, considered
rather more improper than disease. Yet it has to be faced, and that
resolutely, if we would approach, and approaching, understand, the
majority of our fellow-creatures.

Chemically all dirt is clean. Just as the foods and drinks of a good
dinner, if mixed up together on a dish, would produce a filthy mess, so
conversely, if we could separate any form of dirt into the pure solid,
liquid and volatile chemical compounds of which it is composed, into
pretty crystals, liquids and gases, exhibited in the scientific manner
on spotless watch-glasses and in thrice-washed test-tubes,--we might
indeed say that some of these chemicals had an evil odour, but we could
not pronounce them unclean. Prepared in a laboratory, the sulphuretted
hydrogen gas which makes the addled egg our national political weapon,
is a quite cleanly preparation. Dirt is merely an unhappy mixture of
clean substances. The housewife is nearest a scientific view of the
matter when she distinguishes between 'clean dirt' and 'dirty dirt,'
and does not mind handling coal, for instance, because, being clean
dirt, it will not harm her. Cleanliness is a process by which we