is entrusted to them, save that
they may do more work, and not less, than other men, under the
penalties pronounced against those to whom much is given, and of
whom much is required. It may lead them to discover that they are in a
world where it is not safe to sit under the tree, and let the ripe fruit drop
into your mouth; where the "competition of species" works with
ruthless energy among all ranks of being, from kings upon their thrones
to the weeds upon the waste; where "he that is not hammer, is sure to
be anvil;" and he who will not work, neither shall he eat. It may lead
them to devote that energy (in which they surpass so far the continental
aristocracies) to something better than outdoor amusements or indoor
dilettantisms. There are those among them who, like one section of the
old French noblesse, content themselves with mere complaints of "the
revolutionary tendencies of the age." Let them beware in time; for
when the many are on the march, the few who stand still are certain to
be walked over. There are those among them who, like another section
of the French noblesse, are ready, more generously than wisely, to
throw away their own social and political advantages, and play (for it
will never be really more than playing) at democracy. Let them, too,
beware. The penknife and the axe should respect each other; for they
were wrought from the same steel: but the penknife will not be wise in
trying to fell trees. Let them accept their own position, not in conceit
and arrogance, but in fear and trembling; and see if they cannot play the
man therein, and save their own class; and with it, much which it has
needed many centuries to accumulate and to organise, and without
which no nation has yet existed for a single century. They are no more
like the old French noblesse, than are the commercial class like the old
French bourgeoisie, or the labouring like the old French peasantry. Let
them prove that fact by their deeds during the next generation; or sink
into the condition of mere rich men, exciting, by their luxury and
laziness, nothing but envy and contempt.
Meanwhile, behind all classes and social forces--I had almost said,
above them all--stands a fourth estate, which will, ultimately, decide
the form which English society is to take: a Press as different from the
literary class of the Ancien Regime as is everything else English; and
different in this--that it is free.
The French Revolution, like every revolution (it seems to me) which
has convulsed the nations of Europe for the last eighty years, was
caused immediately--whatever may have been its more remote causes--
by the suppression of thought; or, at least, by a sense of wrong among
those who thought. A country where every man, be he fool or wise, is
free to speak that which is in him, can never suffer a revolution. The
folly blows itself off like steam, in harmless noise; the wisdom
becomes part of the general intellectual stock of the nation, and
prepares men for gradual, and therefore for harmless, change.
As long as the press is free, a nation is guaranteed against sudden and
capricious folly, either from above or from below. As long as the press
is free, a nation is guaranteed against the worse evil of persistent and
obstinate folly, cloaking itself under the venerable shapes of tradition
and authority. For under a free press, a nation must ultimately be
guided not by a caste, not by a class, not by mere wealth, not by the
passions of a mob: but by mind; by the net result of all the
common-sense of its members; and in the present default of genius,
which is un-common sense, common-sense seems to be the only, if not
the best, safeguard for poor humanity.
1867
LECTURE I--CASTE
[Delivered at the Royal Institution, London, 1867.]
These Lectures are meant to be comments on the state of France before
the French Revolution. To English society, past or present, I do not
refer. For reasons which I have set forth at length in an introductory
discourse, there never was any Ancien Regime in England.
Therefore, when the Stuarts tried to establish in England a system
which might have led to a political condition like that of the Continent,
all classes combined and exterminated them; while the course of
English society went on as before.
On the contrary, England was the mother of every movement which
undermined, and at last destroyed, the Ancien Regime.
From England went forth those political theories which, transmitted
from America to France, became the principles of the French
Revolution. From England went forth the philosophy of Locke, with all
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