I have often wondered, while 'dolling up,' as the strikingly appropriate modernism puts it, for such a function, whether there is any universal reason why a reluctant man should go to an afternoon tea. There are, of course, many individual reasons, more or less important to the individual tea-goer; but for us the impulsion comes inevitably from without. The verb 'drag,' often applied to the process by which a man is brought to a tea, indicates how valuable would be the discovery of a Universal Reason wherefore any man might hope to derive some personal good from this inescapable experience.
An excellent place for the thinker to examine this problem is in his bath-tub preparatory to dolling up. He is alone and safe from interruption, unless he has forgotten to lock the door; his memory and observation of afternoon teas past is stimulated by afternoon tea to come; and he is himself more like the Universal Man than on most other occasions. Featherless biped mammals that we are, what need have we in common that might conceivably provide a good and sufficient reason for the dolling up to which I am about to subject myself? Substantial food, less fleeting, however, than a lettuce or other sandwich and a dainty trifle of pastry; protective clothing; a house, or even a cave, to shelter us in cold or stormy weather--these, evidently, are clearly apprehended necessities, and we will march on the soles of our feet, like the plantigrade creatures we are, wherever such goods are obtainable.
If all men were hungry, naked, and homeless, and the afternoon tea provided food, clothes, and a home, any man would jump at an invitation. But there are other necessities of living--and here, too, I in my porcelain dish am one with Christopher Columbus, Lord Chesterfield, Chang the Chinese Giant, the Editor of the _Atlantic_, and the humblest illiterate who never heard of him--of which we are not so vividly conscious. Yet we seek them instinctively, each in his own manner and degree--amusement, useful experience, friends, and his own soul. So I read and accept Tagore when he says, 'Man's history is the history of man's journey to the unknown in quest of his immortal self--his soul.' Willy-nilly, even higglety-pigglety and helter-skelter, these are what the featherless biped is after.