They are deficient in openness and
flexibility of mind, in free play of ideas, in faith and ardor.
Civilized they are, but they are not much of a civilizing force; they
are somehow bounded and ineffective.
So on the middle class they produce singularly little effect. What the
middle class sees is that splendid piece of materialism, the
aristocratic class, with a wealth and luxury utterly out of their reach,
with a standard of social life and manners, the offspring of that wealth
and luxury, seeming utterly out of their reach also. And thus they are
thrown back upon themselves--upon a defective type of religion, a narrow
range of intellect and knowledge, a stunted sense of beauty, a low
standard of manners. And the lower class see before them the
aristocratic class, and its civilization, such as it is, even infinitely
more out of _their_ reach than out of that of the middle class; while
the life of the middle class, with its unlovely types of religion,
thought, beauty, and manners, has naturally, in general, no great
attractions for them either.
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