of
philosophers. And we certainly are not a nation of philosophers. We
must not then be too hasty in calling all contempt for intellect
vulgar. We have sinned by undervaluing the life of reason; but we are
not really a vulgar people. Our secular faith, the real religion of
the average Englishman, has its centre in the idea of a gentleman,
which has of course no essential connection with heraldry or property
in land. The upper classes, who live by it, are not vulgar, in spite
of the absence of ideas with which Matthew Arnold twits them; the
middle classes who also respect this ideal, are further protected by
sound moral traditions; and the lower classes have a cheery sense of
humour which is a great antiseptic against vulgarity. But though the
Poet Laureate has not, in my opinion, hit the mark in calling
vulgarity our national sin, he has done well in calling attention to
the danger which may beset educational reform from what we may call
democratism, the tendency to level down all superiorities in the name
of equality and good fellowship. It is the opposite fault to the
aristocraticism which beyond all else led to the decline of Greek
culture--the assumption that the lower classes must remain excluded
from intellectual and even from moral excellence. With us there is a
tendency to condemn ideals of self-culture which can be called
"aristocratic." But we need specialists in this as in every other
field, and the populace must learn that there is such a thing as real
superiority, which has the right and duty to claim a scope for its
full exercise.

The fashionable disparagement of reason, and exaltation of will,
feeling or instinct would be more dangerous in a less scientific age.
The Italian metaphysician Aliotta has lately brought together in one
survey the numerous leaders in the great "reaction against science,"
and they are a formidable band. Pragmatists, voluntarists, activists,
subjective idealists, emotional mystics, and religious conservatives,
have all joined in assaulting the fortress of science which half a
century ago seemed impregnable. But the besieged garrison continues to
use its own methods and to trust in its own hypotheses; and the
results justify the confidence with which the assaults of the
philosophers are ignored. We are told that the scientific method is
ultimately appropriate only to the abstractions of mathematics. But
nature herself seems to have a taste for mathematical methods. A sane
ideal