LONDON AT LEISURE
enjoins hygienic ablutions, abstinence from certain meats, usuries, fornications, and the depicting of actual objects.)
But this other barbarism, which comes after a race, a Society, or a family, has passed upwards through the painful strata of observances and of tribal laws, is a breaking of all bonds. It is humanity drawing a deep breath, "going fanti", running amuck through the laws of public opinion. It is the man that is in all of us breaking loose and seeking to wallow. It may not go further than putting our feet on the dining table, than pouring champagne cup upon our host's head, or, as an amiable bishop put it the other day, "neighing after our neighbours' wives," but, having arrived at that stage, these "sets" begin again to evolve their tribal laws, so that not to put up our feet, not to pour champagne cup, or not to "neigh" is to be an enemy to that particular republic. This phenomenon does not matter, it is past banning and past curing. You cannot learn any moral lesson from a Malay running amuck—and, as the Chinese proverb has it, "It would be hypocrisy to seek for the person of the Sacred Emperor in a low tea house." Thus it is really much better for the moralist not to think about them. If, in the guise of a Savonarola, he fill them with fear for their immortal souls, it will not mean any more than a hysterical revival. In the body politic they do not "count", they are a shade more hopeless than the very poor, they will run their course towards ruin, physical decay, or towards that period of life when
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