A certain haughty inaccessibility is very pleasant to the proud, and passes with them for noble. With God, however, this is not the case, and the man to whom he is merciful he transfers to conditions of life where that must be given up. For no one has any feeling for such distant demi-gods who do not share in the common human lot. They purchase their “exceptional position” much too dearly, since by it they are shut out from knowing what real love is.
Then, too, it is strange that the most useless of these birds-of-paradise of human society (and proud, too, of their uselessness) very often deport themselves as zealous followers of Christianity, while their whole mode of existence and their whole conception of the world stand in contradiction with the most elementary Christian principles.
It will therefore remain on the whole as Cromwell said, “The cause of Christ goes hand in hand with the cause of the people.” The spirit of nobility in the ordinary sense goes no further than a curious hearing of the gospel, or than the attempt to use the gospel for quite other ends than it was meant.
Still less noble than this aristocracy of birth (unless it is also inwardly noble) are, as a rule, the new arrivals into it from the lower classes, who mostly bring with them their inborn servile nature, or the arrogant money-aristocrats who have made themselves rich, but to whom the feeling of the rightfulness of their possessions must be wanting. Of such a man Demosthenes, in one of his finest speeches, asseverates that he was surely the child of some slave spuriously substituted in the place of the real child, and was not in the least fitted to belong in a free state.
All arrogance (even that over one’s talents or success) is an unfailing sign of a small soul. Of pride, however, one can not say quite the same. In Dante’s great poem it is very noteworthy that it is only inside the gate of grace that release from pride, that is, humility, is imparted to the man who is purifying himself from all his faults; before, he employs his pride in overcoming other and lower sins that conflict yet more with the nobility of the soul.
We can not, then, change this fact, that every genuine aristocracy rests upon the appointment of God, who is the only rightful “lord” upon earth, beside whom there is no other “right of lordship,” and who accepts those as his “vassals of the crown” whom he deems qualified. On the other hand, it is just as undoubted that individualism, the right of mastery over one’s own nature and over one’s free will so far as it is employed for good ends, is the most inalienable of all human rights, and one that no political democracy can or will ever set aside. To lower this individualism to a mere class or mass consciousness and to a common average of culture is barbarism; to develop it partially and selfishly only for oneself is criminal or insane. Beauty of form has its value and its right in the training of individual men and of whole generations, provided it is developed on the sound basis of the good—as if its blossom. But then it is the most perfect expression of manliness, of virtue in the ancient sense, of that chivalrous spirit of the Middle Ages which to-day is expressed in the word “gentlemanlike,” though this word often stands only for an empty mould without real contents. “Gentleness, when it weds to manhood, makes a man.” Otherwise not.
“The fear of man bringeth a fall,” says the wise Hebrew proverb-writer; “but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe.” That is very much in accordance with experience. The fear of man leads always into by-paths and is ever somewhat petty and ignoble. Yet no one, even the highest and strongest, can forever remain without fear, if he knows no invisible Lord above him on whose protection he may absolutely rely, so long as he acts rightly.
With the fear of men is allied a crowd of other petty vices which all take their origin therefrom. Hate, envy, jealousy, vengeance, resentment, readiness to take offence, malice, injustice in the judgment of others, all as little noble as possible, are nothing but the consequences of fear. Even covetousness, the restless struggle for money and property, often springs not so much from a mad propensity to scrape everything together for oneself alone, as from the necessity (justified if there were no God) of winning and maintaining in the “struggle for existence” a place which never can be sufficiently assured against all mischances, and against all the assaults of a like-minded overwhelming number of enviers and haters of every individual prosperity. Looking at the matter just from the standpoint of covetousness alone (which has its own great inconveniences), if this fear were not present, there would very likely be no men wholly dispossessed and no social question.
If one would remedy these conditions, otherwise so hopeless, then some must be freed from the fear of being obliged to spend a short life without a just share in the happiness earth has to offer, whereby they are necessarily driven to half-insane exertions to win it by force; and others must be freed from the apprehension lest they shall see all become poor and wretched on account of a new distribution of property equally among all. To desire to mediate between these two opposites by means of palliatives is the fruitless exertion of the hour. Neither attitude of mind, however, has anything noble about it.
A soul that has attained complete nobility, free from fear and resting upon a firm ground of faith, is the most beautiful but also the rarest thing there is now. Very few will arrive at this goal to-day otherwise than by roundabout paths, be it through great doubts or through great sorrows; though to some the way thereto is made easier because of their parentage and ancestry, so that they can already begin to strive after it with the advantage of a better footing.