The equality of men needs preaching quite as much as regards the ages as regards the classes of men. To feel infinitely superior to a man in the twelfth century is just precisely as snobbish as to feel infinitely superior to a man in the Old Kent Road. There are differences between the man and us, there may be superiorities in us over the man; but our sin in both cases consists in thinking of the small things wherein we differ when we ought to be confounded and intoxicated by the terrible and joyful matters in which we are at one.
— Charles Dickens (1906).
Today, we call this “chronological snobbery,” a phrase I think Chesterton would have enjoyed, and despaired over. (I’m now reading Ian Ker’s 2011 bio of GKC, by the way.)