ABSTRACT
As an education in morals there seems to me to be no comparison between the ‘bourgeois’ and the 36‘proletarian’ ideal of civilization. Thus, in theory, as Christians, we attach great importance to sympathy (as an essential element in the higher forms of love). But in practice we set little store by it. It is often asked: “How is it that when people rise from a humble origin in life they so seldom retain sympathy for the class they leave behind?” The answer surely is: “Because they enter a society which has no use for the virtue of sympathy.” The middle classes, by their whole standard of life, disavow sympathy for the worker, and the worker who is admitted through the sacred portals of the temple of wealth must disavow it too. He may do it lip-service, but he must join with his new class in doing everything to preserve a form of society which renders the exercise of sympathy, and therefore of real love, as difficult as possible.
