which is always occurring in modern England. To get men out of a rookery
men are put into a tenement; and at the beginning the healthy human
soul loathes them both. A man's first desire is to get away as far
as possible from the rookery, even should his mad course lead him
to a model dwelling. The second desire is, naturally, to get away from
the model dwelling, even if it should lead a man back to the rookery.
But I am neither a Hudgian nor a Gudgian; and I think the mistakes
of these two famous and fascinating persons arose from one simple fact.
They arose from the fact that neither Hudge nor Gudge had ever thought
for an instant what sort of house a man might probably like for himself.
In short, they did not begin with the ideal; and, therefore, were
not practical politicians.

We may now return to the purpose of our awkward parenthesis
about the praise of the future and the failures of the past.
A house of his own being the obvious ideal for every man, we may now ask
(taking this need as typical of all such needs) why he hasn't got it;
and whether it is in any philosophical sense his own fault.
Now, I think that in some philosophical sense it is his own fault, I think
in a yet more philosophical sense it is the fault of his philosophy.
And this is what I have now to attempt to explain.

Burke, a fine rhetorician, who rarely faced realities,
said, I think, that an Englishman's house is his castle.
This is honestly entertaining; for as it happens the Englishman
is almost the only man in Europe whose house is not his castle.
Nearly everywhere else exists the assumption of peasant proprietorship;
that a poor man may be a landlord, though he is only lord
of his own land. Making the landlord and the tenant the same
person has certain trivial advantages, as that the tenant