might
be secret from a pure love of secrecy, of solitary self-control. I went
out of that garden with a blurred sensation of the million possibilities
of creative literature. The feeling increased as my way fell back into
the wood; for a wood is a palace with a million corridors that cross
each other everywhere. I really had the feeling that I had seen the
creative quality; which is supernatural. I had seen what Virgil calls
the Old Man of the Forest: I had seen an elf. The trees thronged behind
my path; I have never seen him again; and now I shall not see him,
because he died last Tuesday.

XXII. The Orthodox Barber

Those thinkers who cannot believe in any gods often assert that the love
of humanity would be in itself sufficient for them; and so, perhaps, it
would, if they had it. There is a very real thing which may be called
the love of humanity; in our time it exists almost entirely among what
are called uneducated people; and it does not exist at all among the
people who talk about it.

A positive pleasure in being in the presence of any other human being is
chiefly remarkable, for instance, in the masses on Bank Holiday; that is
why they are so much nearer Heaven (despite appearances) than any other
part of our population.

I remember seeing a crowd of factory girls getting into an empty train
at a wayside country station. There were about twenty of them; they all
got into one carriage; and they left all the rest of the train entirely
empty. That is the real love of humanity. That is the definite pleasure
in the immediate proximity of one's own kind. Only this coarse, rank,
real love of men seems to be entirely lacking in those who propose
the love of humanity as a substitute for all other love; honourable,
rationalistic idealists.

I can well remember the explosion of human joy which marked the sudden
starting of that train; all the factory girls who could not find seats
(and they must have been the majority) relieving their feelings by
jumping up and down. Now I have never seen any rationalistic idealists
do this. I have never seen twenty modern philosophers crowd into one
third-class carriage for the mere pleasure of being together. I have
never seen twenty Mr. McCabes all in one carriage and all jumping up and
down.

Some people express a fear that vulgar trippers will overrun all
beautiful places, such as Hampstead or Burnham Beeches. But their fear
is unreasonable; because trippers always pref