racy of ability. In other words, we do not know the great until they tell us by their income that they are really great. We elect them after the fact. Third, the claim that wealth is the only motive strong enough to evoke productive genius. Fourth, the implication that the unequal distribution of wealth corresponds roughly to fundamental differences in productive capacity, i.e. in contributions to progress. But it is not difficult to show, as many able thinkers have done,1 that capitalists have invented nothing, organized nothing, discovered nothing. Moreover, ability, as Shaw demonstrates, is not an abstract thing. It always means ability for some definite feat or function. A man is fit or able for certain duties under a given set of conditions, and perhaps under no other. Imagine Plato in the New York Stock Exchange or Pierpont Morgan in the Oneida Community. Napoleon or Bismarck would hardly shine in Mr. Carnegie's temple of peace at The Hague. Nor would Mr. Carnegie appear to advantage in a state administered by Fabian Socialists. These men are able in their own peculiar cast of society. Change the social contours or internal arrangements and they are ghastly or ludicrous misfits. We may associate the possession of millions with the gift of genius and say therefore let us continue so beneficent an order. But our ergo is fallacious unless we have already examined that order and have pronounced its exploitative spirit beneficial to present and future generations.2 Granting, then, that leadership of real ability is an absolute and fundamental necessity, both because some 1 E.g., Crozier, History of Intellectual Development, vol. iii, chap. vi. 2 This same general criticism applies to Mr. P. E. More, who rides with Mr. Mallock, Erste Klasse. In his Aristocracy and Justice he assumes the very question he ought to prove, viz.: that a natural aristocracy based upon native inequality, bulwarked by law and custom, does produce in society that harmony of reason and feeling which he calls justice; that is, which at once satisfies the fine reason of the superior and does not outrage the feelings of the inferior. men want to lead and more want to be led, it still remains true that leaders are not created out of nothing. They are. born of society; they are therefore accountable to it. Men make their leaders as they make their gods: poor enough sometimes, but still their own. For this reason it is futile to argue that leadership can be had only on its own terms. Men will submit to grievous pangs for the privilege of showing off; for showing off is an imperious demand, not too inquisitive about its reward. Hence the demands of a supposed natural aristocracy of ability must always be qualified and subject to review. Their true worth must be ascertained by searching examination. Will this critical attitude inhibit or repress genius? Civil service examinations were formerly accused of recruiting only the mediocre; but by adapting them somewhat it is now possible to secure the highest talent for public service. Snobbery refuses the comparative test, but real ability welcomes and thrives on it. CHAPTER XXVII GREAT MEN, HEROES, THE ÉLITE (Continued) THE problem of the élite in the service of progress reduces finally to a question of what form of social organization is best adapted to evoking and utilizing superior ability. Through pure democracy, or a system of castes, inherited or definitely drawn classes? Through fostering an aristocracy or the middle class? Through limiting education or universalizing it? Through encouraging study of the old humanities or developing new ones? The breeding of leaders and setting them apart as a class has always been an attractive ideal to the Utopist. But the theory is fraught with difficulties and perils. Selective breeding is not only arduous but dangerous. Stocks bred for a specific quality tend to peter out. Moreover, in breeding geniuses, there is the danger of a type's becoming more and more out of joint with the environment in which it is designed to function. Remember that the great man is only great as he vibrates to the winds of his age; he must be both in and of it. The same objections hold to a certain extent of specialists and classes trained for certain definite vocations. The specialist is always limited by his preponderant interest, the class likewise. The diplomatic service is accused of weaving webs of policy remote from concern with real public good, largely because diplomats are recruited from aristocracy. Military leaders fall frequently under the same criticism. If not specialists, then a ruling class? But what class? Was Federici right in concluding that progress slackens and disappears whenever public power is concentrated in a single class or institution, because it requires freedom and variety for its nourishment? The proletariat have not yet the education nor grip on the technique of rulership to warrant faith. The middle classes are often liabilities rather than assets so far as leadership and progress are concerned. They need leadership and guidance rather than are capable of giving it. A natural aristocracy of some sort is the other alternative? Let us see. This involves the whole question of social classes. Classes are inseparable from social life: there is no getting around it. And they are as numerous as our common interests are varied. They are as powerful and effective as those interests are intensive. Their function and their persistence vary with the character and militancy of human needs. The bases of class differentiation and class rule lie directly in race collisions, specialization of occupation, and property; indirectly in law, custom, and religion as favoring and maintaining them. Classes are the great bogey to rampant democracy. But like every other bogey, they lose their terrifying aspect when you march boldly up to them. Classes and class interests, rightly viewed, are neither dangerous nor abnormal. They are, as was recently pointed out, "the driving forces which keep public life centered upon essentials. They become dangerous to a nation when it denies them, thwarts them, and represses them so long that they burst out and become dominant. Then there is no limit to their aggression until another class appears with contrary interests. . . . Social life has nothing whatever to fear from group interests so long as it doesn't try to play the ostrich in regard to them." 2 1 R. Federici, Les lois du progrès, ii, 186, 222. It may be true, as Ross maintains, that the props of class rule are force, superstition, fraud, pomp, and prescription; nevertheless, from the point of view of specialized function classes have been serviceable to human progress. From the medicine men and priests have sprung many arts and many useful educational devices. From the wealthy aristocracy has come a certain patronage of learning and the arts. Whether some other distribution of wealth and leisure would have been still more advantageous to art and learning it is now too late to say. It is also admitted that in those ancient communities whose social organization was based predominantly upon castes and the hereditary following of certain trades or occupations, education served to perpetuate these castes; for it was usually given by and within the particular family or other group practicing a given calling. The most striking examples are of course the military and priestly classes; for example, the Brahmans in India. On the other hand no society ever split itself up into mutually exclusive classes or castes. Classes always cut through each other; they are never water-tight. They are never secure from the intrusion of foreign influences; hence they are always in danger of education. and disruption. The chief concern of social polity with classes is to prevent a class organization from acquiring so solid a structure that it will persist and suck up energies long after it has ceased to perform the functions which originally created it. The danger is all the more insidious in that an ascendant class colors the entire moral fabric. It imbues men with a belief in the essential inequality of men, not in degree alone, but in kind as well. This belief tends, under aristocratic rule, to harden to the point of stifling legitimate 1 Cf. in general, J. S. Mill, On Liberty, chap. i; Crozier, Civilization and Progress, 285 ff. |