who centre round them are capable
of the good life. Nobility is a privilege of the nobleman, and
nobility is essential to goodness. We are told indeed, that Good is to
be found in virtue, in knowledge, in art, in love. I will not dispute
it; but we must add that only a noble man can be virtuous greatly, know
wisely, perceive and feel finely. And virtue that is mean, knowledge
that is pedantic, art that is base, love that is sensual are not Goods
at all. A noble man of necessity feels and expresses himself nobly.
His speech is literature, his gesture art, his action drama, his
affections music. About him centres all that is great in literature,
science, art. Magnificent buildings, exquisite pictures, statues,
poems, songs, crowd about his habitation and attend him from the cradle
to the grave. His fine intelligence draws to itself those of like
disposition. He seeks genius, but he shuns pedantry; for his knowledge
is part of his life. All that is great he instinctively apprehends,
because it is akin to himself. And only so can anything be truly
apprehended. For every man and every class can only understand and
practise the virtues appropriate to their occupations. A professor
will never be a hero, however much he reads the classics. A
shop-walker will never be a poet, however much he reads poetry. If you
want virtue, in the ancient sense, the sense of honour, of courage, of
self-reliance, of the instinct to command, you must have a class of
gentlemen. Otherwise virtue will be at best a mere conception in the
head, a figment of the brain, not a character and a force. Why is the
teaching of the classics now discredited among you? Not because it is
not as valuable as ever it was, but because there is no one left to
understand its value. The tradesmen who govern you feel instinctively
that it is not for them, and they are right. It is above and beyond
them. But it was the natural food of gentlemen. And the example may
serve to illustrate the general truth, that you cannot revolutionize
classes and their relations without revolutionizing culture. It is
idle to suppose you can communicate to a democracy the heritage of an
aristocracy. You may give them books, show them pictures, offer them
examples. In vain! The seed cannot grow in the new soil. The masses
will never be educated in the sense that the classes were. You may
rejoice in the fact, or you may regret it; but at least it should be
recognized