often far thinner and poorer stuff than those which others less
expressive than I half fail to communicate and half display to me. My
"inferiors," judged by the common social standards, seem indeed
intellectually more limited than I and with a narrower outlook; they are
often dirtier and more driven, more under the stress of hunger and
animal appetites; but on the other hand have they not more vigorous
sensations than I, and through sheer coarsening and hardening of fibre,
the power to do more toilsome things and sustain intenser sensations
than I could endure? When I sit upon the bench, a respectable
magistrate, and commit some battered reprobate for trial for this lurid
offence or that, or send him or her to prison for drunkenness or
such-like indecorum, the doubt drifts into my mind which of us after all
is indeed getting nearest to the keen edge of life. Are I and my
respectable colleagues much more than successful evasions of THAT?
Perhaps these people in the dock know more of the essential strains and
stresses of nature, are more intimate with pain. At any rate I do not
think I am justified in saying certainly that they do not know...

No, I do not want to raise people using my own position as a standard, I
do not want to be one of a gang of consciously superior people, I do not
want arrogantly to change the quality of other lives. I do not want to
interfere with other lives, except incidentally--incidentally, in this
way that I do want to get to an understanding with them, I do want to
share and feel with them in our commerce with the collective mind. I
suppose I do not stretch language very much when I say I want to get rid
of stresses and obstacles between our minds and personalities and to
establish a relation that is understanding and sympathy.

I want to make more generally possible a relationship of communication
and interchange, that for want of a less battered and ambiguous word I