Note the result at this stage of the process: it is precisely those books which are, on the whole, least likely to be of present value to mankind, which are regarded with superstitious reverence. The most striking example is found in pre-revolutionary China, where the relics of an age utterly out of touch with the newer achievements in human adaptation were learned by heart in the schools and made the basis of civil-service examinations.
At this point of our ideal but not at all fanciful sketch, a new factor enters—class jealousy. The literate caste is found to be associated and partly identified with the leisure class. Sacred literature has become leisure class literature, and the aspirations of the less fortunate classes toward leisure class prerogatives include a special desire, tinged with the old superstitious reverence, for the forbidden books. These were more or less unconsciously supposed to be, if not actually responsible for, at least bound up with, leisure class power. And finally the great democratizing movements in which some enterprising lower class wrests from some moribund leisure class its possessions, seizes triumphant hold on its “classics” and makes them a general possession.
This sketch is so pieced together from all times and places that it may decidedly seem to need the reinforcement of evidence. Let us therefore call to the stand that young man over there who looks like an Intelligent Young Immigrant. He comes unabashed, and we proceed to question him:
Q. Do you buy books?
A. Yes, of course.
Q. Admirable! You need a new pair of shoes, and yet you buy books! Well, what books do you buy?
A. Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpenter, Zola, Nietzsche—
Q. See here, you must be a Socialist!
A. Yes. What of it?
Q. What of it! Why, I’m talking about Reverence, and you haven’t got any. You’re not looking for the noblest utterances of mankind, you’re looking for weapons with which to cut your way through the jungle of contemporary hypocrisies!