armies.--Their action irresponsible.--Pugnacity human.--Barrack-room
philosophy.--Military virtues.--They are splendid vices.--Absolute value
in strife.--Sport a civilised way of preserving it.--Who shall found the
universal commonwealth? Pages 60-87

CHAPTER IV

THE ARISTOCRATIC IDEAL

Eminence, once existing, grows by its own operation.--Its causes natural
and its privileges just.--Advantage of inequality.--Fable of the belly
and the members.--Fallacy in it.--Theism expresses better the
aristocratic ideal.--A heaven with many mansions.--If God is defined as
the human ideal, apotheosis the only paradise.--When natures differ
perfections differ too.--Theory that stations actually correspond to
faculty.--Its falsity.--Feeble individuality the rule.--Sophistical
envy.--Inequality is not a grievance; suffering is.--Mutilation by
crowding.--A hint to optimists.--How aristocracies might do good.--Man
adds wrong to nature's injury.--Conditions of a just inequality Pages
88-113

CHAPTER V

DEMOCRACY

Democracy as an end and as a means.--Natural democracy leads to
monarchy.--Artificial democracy is an extension of privilege.--Ideals
and expedients.--Well-founded distrust of rulers. Yet experts, if
rational, would serve common interests.--People jealous of eminence.--It
is representative, but subject to decay.--Ancient citizenship a
privilege.--Modern democracy industrial.--Dangers to current
civilisation.--Is current civilisation a good?--Horrors of materialistic
democracy.--Timocracy or socialistic aristocracy.--The difficulty the
same as in all Socialism.--The masses would have to be plebeian in
position and patrician in feeling.--Organisation for ideal ends breeds
fanaticism.--Public spirit the life of democracy. Pages 114-136

CHAPTER VI

FREE SOCIETY

Primacy of nature over spirit.--All experience at bottom
liberal.--Social experience has its ideality too.--The self an
ideal.--Romantic egotism.--Vanity.--Ambiguities of fame.--Its possible
ideality.--Comradeship.--External conditions of friendship.--Identity in
sex required, and in age.--Constituents of friendship.--Personal
liking.--The refracting human medium for ideas.--Affection based on the
refraction.--The medium must also be transparent.--Common interests
indispensable.--Friendship between man and wife.--Between master and
disciple.--Conflict between ideal and natural allegiance.--Automatic
idealisation of heroes Pages 137-159

CHAPTER VII