DIGNITY OF THE ORDINARY MAN 257 



advance or to maintain civilisation at all. No one, Bookin 

 for example, who knows anything of English society 

 will deny that conversational wit is one of the rarest 

 faculties to be met with in it, and earns for its 

 possessor the reputation of an exceptionally brilliant 

 man ; but its possession by one man does not cause 

 its existence in others. The wit leaves the rest of 

 society precisely where he found it. The same is 

 the case with private goodness and wisdom. They 

 may indeed affect an exceedingly small circle, but 

 there is in their influence nothing certain or lasting. 

 The most highly moral parents have often the most 

 dissipated sons ; it requires almost as much wisdom 

 to take sound advice as to give it ; even if the 

 sensible and the excellent exert a good influence on 

 their own friends, they have no tendency to inaugurate 

 any general moral advance ; and a man whose life is 

 rendered interesting by an exceptionally romantic 

 passion may illustrate the capacities of human 

 nature, but he does nothing to expand them. 



It will thus be seen that when we describe the Therefore the 

 majority of mankind as being so far passive with whoT7not en> 

 regard to the production of progress that unless P romote P ro ; 



gress, are not 



there were a minority of men with faculties which asserted to be 



lacking in high 



the majority do not possess, no progress or civilisa- qualities. 

 tion would take place at all, we are not declaring 

 that the larger part of mankind are stupid, foolish, 

 unskilful, or void of resource, or that human 

 nature as exemplified in the normal man or woman 

 is not often noble and beautiful, and is not always 

 interesting. On the contrary, the very reverse is the 



17 



