powerful of the modern world than in the comparatively impotent or poor.
To take a rough working example of what I mean, take the case of advertisement, that predominating feature of modern society. In all ages everywhere, quite naturally, people have had a tendency to write up something in very large letters, to chalk up something on the wall. There is an honest farmer living in my own district of Buckinghamshire who writes up in enormous letters on barns sentiments such as, "Prepare to meet your God." I do not think that that is vulgar. I think that it is insane, perhaps, but it is not in any sense vulgar, because it is a natural expression commensurate with the importance of the occasion. If he thinks that God is going to immediately visit that village with judgment, it is a very important piece of news, and it is perfectly natural and very right that he should write up so important a fact in large letters where people can see it. You know, of course, that other people of perhaps insufficient education, like himself, often scribble up on walls other statements less lofty but equally direct. I do not think that they are vulgar. They are sometimes coarse; but they have not this particular quality of showing an insensibility to the thing which is involved. God is an important thing, and even the heathen god Priapus is an important thing, and even horse-racing is an important thing for people who put money into it, and so on.
The kind of thing that I mean is a certain familiarity with things that are the materials of Culture, and, at the same time, an insensibility to them, To take a sort of rough and working
