eave the
door open for the equally natural demand that you should trust
particular men to do particular things in government and the coercing
of men. If, you feel it to be reasonable that one beetle should be the
only study of one man, and that one man the only student of that one
beetle, it is surely a very harmless consequence to go on to say that
politics should be the only study of one man, and that one man the only
student of politics. As I have pointed out elsewhere in this book, the
expert is more aristocratic than the aristocrat, because the aristocrat
is only the man who lives well, while the expert is the man who knows
better. But if we look at the progress of our scientific civilization
we see a gradual increase everywhere of the specialist over the popular
function. Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man
sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing better. If
scientific civilization goes on (which is most improbable) only one man
will laugh, because he can laugh better than the rest.

I do not know that I can express this more shortly than by taking as a
text the single sentence of Mr. McCabe, which runs as follows: "The
ballets of the Alhambra and the fireworks of the Crystal Palace and Mr.
Chesterton's Daily News articles have their places in life." I wish
that my articles had as noble a place as either of the other two things
mentioned. But let us ask ourselves (in a spirit of love, as Mr.
Chadband would say), what are the ballets of the Alhambra? The ballets
of the Alhambra are institutions in which a particular selected row of
persons in pink go through an operation known as dancing. Now, in all
commonwealths dominated by a religion--in the Christian commonwealths
of the Middle Ages and in many rude societies--this habit of dancing
was a common habit with everybody, and was not necessarily confined to
a professional class. A person could dance without being a dancer; a
person could dance without being a specialist; a person could dance
without being pink. And, in proportion as Mr. McCabe's scientific
civilization advances--that is, in proportion as religious civilization
(or real civilization) decays--the more and more "well trained," the
more and more pink, become the people who do dance, and the more and
more numerous become the people who don't. Mr. McCabe may recognize an
example of what I mean in the gradual discrediting in society of the
ancient European waltz or dan