d itself
means two things: a government by the best and most able citizens and,
to quote a standard dictionary "Persons noted for superiority in any
character or quality, taken collectively." There is no harm here, but
the harm comes, and the odium also, and justly, when an aristocratic
government degenerates into an oligarchy of privilege without
responsibility, and when socially it is not "superiority in character or
quality" but political cunning, opulence and sycophancy that are the
touchstones to recognition and acceptance. The latter are the antithesis
of Christianity and common sense, the former is consonant with both and,
paradoxical as it may seem, it is also the fulfilling of the ideals of a
real democracy, since its honours and distinctions imply service, its
relations with those in other estates are reciprocal, it is not a closed
caste but the prize of meritorious achievement, and it is therefore
equality of opportunity, utilization of ability and the abolition of
privilege without responsibility.

Men are forever and gloriously struggling onward towards better things,
but there is always the gravitational pull of original sin which
scientists denominate "reversion to type." The saving grace in the
individual is the divine gift of faith, hope and charity implanted in
every soul. These every man must guard and cherish for they are the way
of advancement in character. But society is man in association with men,
in a sense a new and complex personality, and the same qualities are as
necessary here as in the individual. Society, like man, may be said to
possess body, soul and spirit, and it must function vitally along all
these lines if it is to maintain a normal and wholesome existence.
Somewhere there must be something that achieves high ideals of honour,
chivalry, courtesy; that maintains right standards of comparative value,
and that guards the social organism as a whole from the danger of
surrender to false and debased standards, to plausible demagogues, and
to mob-psychology.

The greater the prevalence of democratic methods, the greater is the
danger of this surrender to propaganda of a thousand sorts and to the
dominance of the demagogue, and the existence of an estate fortified by
the inheritance of high tradition, measurably free from the necessity of
engaging too strenuously in the "struggle for life," guaranteed security
of status so long as it does not betray the ideals of its order, but
open to