What if the people who spit on the street disappeared?

…reads

he fingers of Providence, probably bored by the grandeur of galaxies, decided one Tuesday to lift into heaven only one precisely defined category of mortals: those who feel a visceral need to clear their throats directly onto the paving. No thunder announced the miracle; the pavements simply remained dry, while the owners of suede shoes watched the sky with an almost religious dread. Pangloss the philosopher would have sworn this was the final proof of supreme goodness, though the mayors of great cities panicked at once.

bandoned by their natural enemy, street sweepers felt their work had lost both poetry and tragedy. The urban matinée became sterile, a spectacle without friction, in which citizens walked with morbid caution, deprived of the daily slalom that had given them the feeling of surviving a great adventure. Without phlegm on the paving, conversations at bus stops went quiet; people no longer had anyone to unite against in silent indignation, and eyes once trained downward in civic alertness began to wander into space.

oon a metaphysical sadness settled over the cities. People understood that the mess of others had offered them a free certificate of moral nobility: without the barbarian who spits, the decent citizen had nobody against whom to shine. Deprived of the tangible filth of the pavement, modern people had to look at their own inner ugliness, much harder to step around than a patch of saliva on asphalt.

ll things are arranged for the best possible purpose in this world: the disappearance of the small and uncivilised has left room for the great and polite to destroy one another with perfect elegance. We must cultivate our garden, certainly, but sometimes we need a little mud under our boots to remember that we are not angels yet.