cleanliness. In a still more elevated sphere, education means all
this with the addition of the English language, and a diploma from
the highest educational institution. But education is precisely the
same thing in the first, the second, and the third case. Education
consists of those forms and acquirements which are calculated to
separate a man from his fellows. And its object is identical with
that of cleanliness,--to seclude us from the herd of poor, in order
that they, the poor, may not see how we feast. But it is impossible
to hide ourselves, and they do see us.

And accordingly I have become convinced that the cause of the
inability of us rich people to help the poor of the city lies in the
impossibility of our establishing intercourse with them; and that
this impossibility of intercourse is caused by ourselves, by the
whole course of our lives, by all the uses which we make of our
wealth. I have become convinced that between us, the rich and the
poor, there rises a wall, reared by ourselves out of that very
cleanliness and education, and constructed of our wealth; and that in
order to be in a condition to help the poor, we must needs, first of
all, destroy this wall; and that in order to do this, confrontation
after Siutaeff's method should be rendered possible, and the poor
distributed among us. And from another starting-point also I came to
the same conclusion to which the current of my discussions as to the
causes of the poverty in towns had led me: the cause was our
wealth.] {14}



CHAPTER XV.