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. Nor is the mischief of this action now compensated
by signal services of a public kind. 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, as now, 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 materialized aristocracies most of all. In the immense spiritual
movement of our day, the English aristocracy, as I have elsewhere said,
always reminds me of Pilate confronting the phenomenon of Christianity.
Nor can a materialized class have any serious and fruitful sense for the
power of beauty. They may imagine themselves to be 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!
Let us return to their merits.
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