Saturday, September 28, 2024
The Salt of Society
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), The Path to Rome (1902; rpt. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1916), p. 72:
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And those who blame the middle-class for their conventions in such matters, and who profess to be above the care for cleanliness and clothes and social ritual which marks the middle-class, are either anarchists by nature or fools who take what is but an effect of their wealth for a natural virtue.
I say it roundly; if it were not for the punctiliousness of the middle-class in these matters all our civilisation would go to pieces. They are the conservators and the maintainers of the standard, the moderators of Europe, the salt of society.
