Why does
the hotel, with its five hundred servants, its catering for three
thousand mouths, work smoothly, while the desirable family
residence, with its two or three domestics, remains the scene of
waste, confusion, and dispute? We are losing the talent of living
alone; the instinct of living in communities is driving it out."
"So much the worse for the community," was the comment of the
Philosopher. "Man, as Ibsen has said, will always be at his
greatest when he stands alone. To return to our friend Abraham,
surely he, wandering in the wilderness, talking with his God, was
nearer the ideal than the modern citizen, thinking with his morning
paper, applauding silly shibboleths from a theatre pit, guffawing at
coarse jests, one of a music-hall crowd? In the community it is the
lowest always leads. You spoke just now of all the world inviting
Samuel Johnson to its dish of tea. How many read him as compared to
the number of subscribers to the Ha'penny Joker? This 'thinking in
communities,' as it is termed, to what does it lead? To mafficking
and Dreyfus scandals. What crowd ever evolved a noble idea? If
Socrates and Galileo, Confucius and Christ had 'thought in
communities,' the world would indeed be the ant-hill you appear to
regard as its destiny.
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