“In my country, we’re all kings and queens,” as the American lady said, being a bit sick of certain British snobbery. She was quite right: they are all potential kings and queens. But until they come into their kingdom—five hundred thousand dollars minimum—they might just as well be commoners.
Yet even still, there is natural aristocracy.
Aristocracy of birth is bunk, when a Kaiser Wilhelm and an Emperor Franz-Josef and a Czar Nicolas is all that noble birth will do for you.
Yet the whole of life is established on a natural aristocracy. And aristocracy of birth is a little more natural than aristocracy of money. (Oh, for God’s sake, the gold standard!)
But a millionaire can do without birth, whereas birth cannot do without dollars. So, by the all-prevailing law of pragmatism, the dollar has it.
What then does natural aristocracy consist in?
It’s not just brains! The mind is an instrument, and the savant, the professor, the scientist, has been looked upon since the Ptolemies, as a sort of upper servant. And justly. The millionaire has brains too: so does a modern President or Prime Minister. They all belong to the class of upper servants. They serve, forsooth, the public.
“Ca, Ca, Caliban!
Get a new master, be a new man.”
What does a natural aristocracy consist in? Count Keyserling says: “Not in what a man can do, but what he is.” Unfortunately what a man is, is measured by what he can do, even in nature. A nightingale, being a nightingale, can sing: which a sparrow can’t. If you are something you’ll do something, ipso facto.
The question is what kind of thing can a man do? Can he put more life into us, and release in us the fountains of our vitality? Or can he only help to feed us, and give us money or amusement.