124 



ARISTOCRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



A lofty im- 

 agination is 

 often the 

 enemy to 

 practical 

 efficiency ; 



Book ii classes boots, jackets, or shirts better in quality 

 and very much less in price than those which 

 they are accustomed to buy now, would probably 

 have to devote a large part of his life to the 

 consideration of a particular kind of seemingly 

 sordid detail. To a man of wide culture and 

 brilliant imagination, the concentration of his 

 faculties on details such as these would be im- 

 possible ; and if he wished to produce any of the 

 results in question, he would soon discover that 

 he could not. The men who do produce them are 

 rendered capable of doing so, not by the width of 

 their minds, but by the exceptional narrowness. 

 The intellectual stream flows strongly because it 

 is confined in a narrow channel, and thus what to 

 the superficial observer seems a sign of their inferi- 

 ority, is really, so far as the results are concerned, 

 one of the chief causes of their greatness. 



The mean man with the little thing to do 



Sees it and does it ; 

 The great man with the great end to pursue 



Dies ere he knows it. 



Robert Browning very tersely puts the case thus. 

 We have only to alter his language in one respect. 

 Seeing that the results we have now in view 

 are realised results or nothing, the "mean man" 

 as an agent of material progress, will be the 

 "great man," and the "great man" will be the 

 little. 



So, too, with regard to the man who affects 



