It is
argued as a problem in pennies, not as a problem in people. It is not
the proposals of these reformers that I feel to be false so much as
their temper and their arguments. I am not nearly so certain that
communal kitchens are wrong as I am that the defenders of communal
kitchens are wrong. Of course, for one thing, there is a vast difference
between the communal kitchens of which I spoke and the communal meal
(_monstrum horrendum, informe_) which the darker and wilder mind of my
correspondent diabolically calls up. But in both the trouble is that
their defenders will not defend them humanly as human institutions. They
will not interest themselves in the staring psychological fact that
there are some things that a man or a woman, as the case may be, wishes
to do for himself or herself. He or she must do it inventively,
creatively, artistically, individually--in a word, badly. Choosing your
wife (say) is one of these things. Is choosing your husband's dinner one
of these things? That is the whole question: it is never asked.
And then the higher culture. I know that culture. I would not set any
man free for it if I could help it. The effect of it on the rich men who
are free for it is so horrible that it is worse than any of the other
amusements of the millionaire--worse than gambling, worse even than
philanthropy.
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