s. He
worries less and less over the particular rightness of his
definite acts. In these later papers White found Benham abstracted,
self-forgetful, trying to find out with an ever increased
self-detachment, with an ever deepening regal solicitude, why there are
massacres, wars, tyrannies and persecutions, why we let famine, disease
and beasts assail us, and want dwarf and cripple vast multitudes in the
midst of possible plenty. And when he found out and as far as he found
out, he meant quite simply and earnestly to apply his knowledge....

3

The intellectualism of Benham intensified to the end. His definition of
Prejudice impressed White as being the most bloodless and philosophical
formula that ever dominated the mind of a man.

"Prejudice," Benham had written, "is that common incapacity of the human
mind to understand that a difference in any respect is not a difference
in all respects, reinforced and rendered malignant by an instinctive
hostility to what is unlike ourselves. We exaggerate classification and
then charge it with mischievous emotion by referring it to ourselves."
And under this comprehensive formula he proceeded to study and attack
Family Prejudice, National Prejudice, Race Prejudice, War, Class
Prejudice, Professional Prejudice, Sex Prejudice, in the most
industrious and elaborate manner. Whether one regards one's self or
others he held that these prejudices are evil things. "From the point
of view of human welfare they break men up into wars and conflicts,
make them an easy prey to those who trade upon suspicion and hostility,
prevent sane collective co-operations, cripple and embitter life. From
the point of view of personal aristocracy they make men vulgar, violent,
unjust and futile. All the conscious life of the aristocrat must be a
constant struggle against false generalizations; it is as much his duty
to free himself from that as from fear, indulgence, and jealousy; it is
a larger and more elaborate task, but it is none the less cardinal and
essential. Indeed it is more cardinal and essential. The true knight has
to be not only no coward, no self-pamperer, no egotist. He has to be a
philosopher. He has to be no hasty or foolish thinker. His judgment no
more than his courage is to be taken by surprise.

"To subdue fear, desire and jealousy, is the aristocrat's personal
affair, it is his ritual and discipline, like a knight watching his
arms; but the destruction of division and prejudi