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PUBLIC LIFE
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forget one thing : that the sweeper of India is not only a sweeper while he works as such, but all the twenty four hours of his life. His house, his furniture, his clothes, his surroundings, even his person, are all a mass of filth from one end of the year-rather from one end of lifem-to the other! Before him his father was exactly like him ; and if you go back to his past you will always find his ancestry filthy and unclean! It is very desirable that these people should be treated as human beings ; but it is not to be supposed that the cause of cleanliness (said to be a virtue only next to godliness) can be advanced in any way by eating food from hands that are covered with filth or from those that suggest the association with filth. The effect of suggestion is wellknown, so that the food that is taken from the hands of a person whose appearance, name or even voice is suggestive of filth and filthy surroundings will act exactly as if it consisted of actual filth! This is a powerful law of nature, as every one familiar with the theory and practice of hypnotism and auto-suggestion knows. Let us raise the depressed classes by all means ; but let us not lower those who are not depressed. The case of the European sweeper is not an instance in point. There are in Europe no such sweepers who can boast of a filthy ancestry as the Indian
