The pity is pitiful, but not respectful

"CRUELTY to animals is cruelty and a vile thing; but cruelty to a man is not cruelty; it is treason.

Tyranny over a man is not tyranny: it is rebellion, for man is royal. Now, the practical weakness of the vast mass of modern pity for the poor and the oppressed is precisely that it is merely pity; the pity is pitiful, but not respectful. Men feel that the cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is injustice to equals; nay, it is treachery to comrades. This dark, scientific pity, this brutal pity, has an elemental sincerity of its own, but it is entirely useless for all ends of social reform. Democracy swept Europe with the sabre when it was founded upon the Rights of Man. It has done literally nothing at all since it has been founded only upon the wrongs of man. Or, more strictly speaking, its recent failure has been due to its not admitting the existence of any rights or wrongs, or indeed of any humanity. Evolution (the sinister enemy of revolution) does not especially deny the existence of God: what it does deny is the existence of man. And all the despair about the poor, and the cold and repugnant pity for them, has been largely due to the vague sense that they have literally relapsed into the state of the lower animals."
~G.K. Chesterton: 'Charles Dickens.'

• Charles Dickens, Part I (1906) -- html (199K) -- text (195K) -- zipfile (75K) -- LibriVox 
• Charles Dickens, Part II (1906) -- html (189K) -- text (185K) -- zipfile (70K)