Page:Early Essays by George Eliot (1919).djvu/50

 triumphant feeling of superiority: substitute snubbing for laughter and you have a more just definition. The idea of snubbing presupposes inferiority in the snubbed. You can no more snub your betters than you can patronize them; on the contrary, toadyism towards superiors is the invariable attendant on a large endowment of the snubbing faculty. Toadyism, in fact, is the beautiful concavity which corresponds to the snubbing convexity: the angular posture of Baillie MacWheeble's body is a perfect illustration.

Snubbing is a generic term, comprehending many species; as the snub monarchical, the snub political, the snub social, the snub religious, and the snub domestic. Each of these varieties has its different and appropriate kind of language, from the delicate modifications of voice, the refined nuances of demeanour, the degrees of temperature indicated in the glance—which belong to the higher, branches—down to those coarser manifestations of the snub social and domestic familiarly known as the cut direct, tipping the cold shoulder, snapping off the nose and the like. The monarchical species of snubbing is doubtless an interesting subject of investigation, but the urgent wants of society point rather to the social, political, religious, and domestic species. We throw out a few hints on these, as mere finger-posts to the rich mines below: 44