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
prefer to trip together; they pack as close as they can;
they have a suffocating passion of philanthropy.

. . . . .

But among the minor and milder aspects of the same principle,
I have no hesitation in placing the problem of the colloquial barber.
Before any modern man talks with authority about loving men, I insist
(I insist with violence) that he shall always be very much pleased
when his barber tries to talk to him. His barber is humanity:
let him love that. If he is not pleased at this, I will not accept any
substitute in the way of interest in the Congo or the future of Japan.
If a man cannot love his barber whom he has seen, how shall he love
the Japanese whom he has not seen?

It is urged against the barber that he begins by talking about
the weather; so do all dukes and diplomatists, only that they talk about
it with ostentatious fatigue and indifference, whereas the