ian absence of prejudice, are
adoptive children of a plutocratic and aristocratic cultivation. It is
all the same even if they lay aside their stiff collars and
eye-glasses; their every word and argument, their forms of thought,
their range of knowledge, their strongly emphasized intellectuality
and taste for art and science, their whole handiwork and industry, are
an inheritance from what they supposed they had cast off and a tribute
to what they pretend to despise. Genuine radicalism is only to be
respected when it understands the connexion of things and is not
afraid of consequences. It must understand--and I shall make it
clear--that its rapid advance will kill culture; and the proper
conclusion is that it ought to despise culture, not to sponge on it.
The early Christians abolished all the heathen rubbish and
abominations, the early Radicals would have hurried, in the first
instance, to pick out the plums.

Culture and civilization, as we see, demand a continuous and enormous
outlay; an outlay in leisure, an outlay in working power, an outlay in
wealth. They need patronage and a market, they need the school, they
need models, tradition, comparison, judgment, intelligence,
cultivation, disposition, the right kind of nursery--an atmosphere.
One who stands outside it can serve it, often more powerfully with
his virgin strength than one who is accustomed to it--but he must be
carried along and animated by the breath of the same atmosphere.
Culture and civilization require a rich soil.

But the richness of the soil is not sufficient; culture must be based
upon, and increased by, contrast. Wealth must have at its disposal
great numbers of men who are poor and dependent. How otherwise shall
the outlay of culture be met? One man must have many at his disposal;
but how can he, if they are all his equals? The outlay will be large,
but it must be feasible; how can it, if the labour of thousands is not
cheap? The few, the exalted, must develop power and splendour, they
must offer types for imitation: how can they do that without a
retinue, without spectators, without the herd? A land of well-being,
that is to say, of equally distributed well-being, remains petty and
provincial. When a State and its authorities, councils of solid and
thrifty members of societies for this or that, take over the office of
a Maecenas or a Medici, with their proposals, their calculations, their
objections, their control, then we get things that l