SNOBBISHNESS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3686, 3 September 1927, Page 4

SNOBBISHNESS.

What a surprisingly different world it would be if we could all discover our diverse forms of unconscious snobbishness and cut them out. Pride of race, which has been so long criticised and condemned, is perhaps, the least objectionable form of snobbishness that exists. Money snobbishness is wholly ugly, corrupting, and depressing, says a writer in the London “Daily Chronicle.” Moral snobbishness, which, of course, excludes the possibility of true morality, infuriates us even more than money snobbishness, because here a fine thing is imitated by a hateful, complacent sham. Besides, the moral snob is more active than the money snob; he or she is generally anxious to improve somebody else. The money snob at least ignores the existence of those of us who have no money.

The intellectual snob is a famidiar type and always something of to a mystery. It seems increditable that ,anyone who has read the masterpieces of literature should not thereby have had some daylight let in upon the mind. These people cause the unlearned to hate all forms of learning just as moral snobs cause the materially minded to suspect as fraudulent all forms of religion. There are smart snobs who could not bear to be thought earnest about anything, and there are sceptical snobs who fear that any venture of faith may seem unintelligent. So they shout their materialism at us as often as they can. The true sceptic is more tentative and more polite. There is a snobbery of ideals and a snobbery of lack of ideals. All snobbishness has in it patronage of some one else and a fear for self.

Among women who are particularly attractive to men there are a good many sex snobs. They look down on the woman of lesser attraction, emphasising the inferiority complex from which she may suffer. If she doesn’t suffer from it, it is because she has made a, world for herself, either -in some outward enterprise or some inner retreat, both of which the sex snob scorns as mere makeshifts. This, of course, is not the whole truth. The pathos of the snob is that the whole of the truth is never visible to snobbish eyes, and it is the truth, of course, that sets us free from false superiorities and fear*.