EQUALITY. 



491 



'' to him that understandeth ; " easy, he means, 

 to him who will use his mind simply and ration- 

 ally, and not to make him think he can know 

 what he cannot, or to maintain, per fas et nefas, 

 a false thesis with which he fancies his interests 

 to be bound up. And to him who will use his 

 mind as the wise man recommends, surely it is 

 easy to see that our shortcomings in civilization 

 are due to our inequality — or, in other words, 

 that the inequality of classes and property, which 

 came to us from the middle age, and which we 

 maintain because we have the religion of inequal- 

 ity, that this constitution of things, I say, has 

 the natural and necessary effect, under present 

 circumstances, of materializing our upper class, 

 vulgarizing our middle class, and brutalizing our 

 lower class. And this is to fail in civilization. 



For, only just look how the facts combine 

 themselves. I have said little as yet about our 

 aristocratic class, except that it is splendid. Yet 

 these, " our often very unhappy brethren," as 

 Burke calls them, are by no means matter for 

 nothing but ecstasy. Our charity ought certain- 

 ly, as he says, to extend " a due and anxious sen- 

 sation of pity to the distresses of the miserable 

 great." Burke's extremely strong language about 

 their miseries and defects I will not quote. For 

 my part, I am always disposed to marvel that 

 human beings, in a position so false, should be 

 so good as these are. Their reason for existing 

 was to serve as a number of centres in a world 

 disintegrated after the ruin of the Roman Em- 

 pire, and slowly reconstituting itself. Numerous 

 centres of material force were needed, and these 

 a feudal aristocracy supplied. Their large and 

 hereditary estates served this public end. The 

 owners had a positive function, for which their 

 estates were essential. In our modern world the 

 function is gone ; and the great estates, with an 

 infinitely multiplied power of ministering to mere 

 pleasure and indulgence, remain. The energy and 

 honesty of our race does not leave itself without 

 witness, and in no class are there more conspicu- 

 ous examples of individuals raised by happy gifts 

 of Nature far above their fellows and their cir- 

 cumstances. But on the whole, with no necessary 

 function to fulfill, never conversant with life as it 

 really is, tempted, flattered, and spoiled from 

 childhood to old age, our aristocratic class is 

 inevitably materialized, and the more so the more 

 the development of industry and ingenuity aug- 

 ments the means of luxury. Every one can see 

 how bad is the action of such an aristocracy upon 

 the class of newly-enriched people, whose great 

 danger is a materialistic ideal, just because it is 



the ideal they can easiest comprehend. The effect 

 on society at large, and on national progress, is 

 what we must regard. Turn even to that sphere 

 which aristocracies think specially their own, and 

 where they have under other circumstances been 

 really effective — the sphere of politics. When 

 there is need for any large forecast of the course 

 of human affairs, for an acquaintance with the 

 ideas which in the end sway mankind, and for an 

 estimate of their power, aristocracies are out of 

 their element, and materialist aristocracies most 

 of all. In the immense spiritual movement of our 

 day, the English aristocracy, as I have said, al- 

 ways reminds me of Pilate confronting the phe- 

 nomenon of Christianity. Nor can a materialized 

 class have a serious and fruitful sense for the 

 power of beauty. They may imagine themselves 

 in pursuit of beauty ; but how often, alas, does 

 the pursuit come to little more than dabbling a 

 little in what they are pleased to call art, and 

 making a great deal of what they are pleased to 

 call love ! For the power of manners, on the 

 other baud, an aristocratic class, whether mate- 

 rialized or not, will always from its circumstances 

 have a strong sense. And although for this 

 power of social life and manners, so important to 

 civilization, our race has no special natural turn, 

 in our aristocracy this power emerges, and mark 3 

 them. When the day of general humanization 

 comes, they will have fixed the standard of man- 

 ners. The English simplicity, too, makes the best 

 of the English aristocracy more frank and natural 

 than the best of the like class anywhere else, and 

 even the worst of them it makes free from the 

 incredible fatuities and absurdities of the worst. 

 Then the sense of conduct they share with their 

 countrymen at large. In no class has it such 

 trials to undergo ; in none is it more often and 

 more grievously overborne. But really the right 

 comment on this is the comment of Pepys upon 

 the evil 'courses of Charles II. and the Duke of 

 York, and the court of that day : " At all which 

 I am sorry; but it is the effect of idleness, and 

 having nothing else to employ their great spirits 

 upon." 



Heaven forbid that I should speak in dispraise 

 of that unique and most English class which Mr. 

 Charles Sumner extols — the large class of gentle- 

 men, not of the landed class or the nobility, but 

 cultivated and refined. They are a seemly prod- 

 uct of the energy and of the power to rise in 

 our race. Without, in general, rank and splendor, 

 and wealth and luxury to polish them, they have 

 made their own the high standard of life and man- 

 ners of an aristocratic and refined class. Not 



