THE WORLD AS BOOTS AND SUPERSTRUCTURE

Too Long; Didn't Read

“It does not do,” said a friend of mine, “to think about boots.” For my own part, I have always been particularly inclined to look at boots, and think about them. I have an odd idea that most general questions can be expressed in terms of foot-wear—which is perhaps why cobblers are often such philosophical men. Accident it may be, gave me this persuasion. A very considerable part of my childhood was spent in an underground kitchen; the window opened upon 6a bricked-in space, surmounted by a grating before my father’s shop window. So that, when I looked out of the window, instead of seeing—as children of a higher upbringing would do—the heads and bodies of people, I saw their under side. I got acquainted indeed with all sorts of social types as boots simply, indeed, as the soles of boots; and only subsequently, and with care, have I fitted heads, bodies, and legs to these pediments.