And yet, notwithstanding all these vices and excesses of the democratic spirit, notwithstanding the meanness of the middle classes and the violence of the mob, there is one all-powerful reason why our best hopes for the liberal culture of the intellect are centred in the democratic idea. The reason is, that aristocracies think too much of persons and positions to weigh facts and opinions justly. In an aristocratic society it is thought unbecoming to state your views in their full force in the presence of any social superior. If you state them at all you must soften them to suit the occasion, or you will be a sinner against good-breeding. Observe how timid and acquiescent the ordinary Englishman becomes in the presence of a lord. No right-minded person likes to be thought impudent, and where the tone of society refers everything to position, you are considered impudent when you forget your station. But what has my station to do with the truths the intellect perceives, that lie entirely outside of me? From the intellectual point of view, it is a necessary virtue to forget your station, to forget yourself entirely, and to think of the subject only, in a manner perfectly disinterested. Anonymous journalism was a device to escape from that continual reference to the rank and fortune of the speaker which is an inveterate habit in all aristocratic communities. A young man without title or estate knows that he would not be listened to in the presence of his social superiors, so he holds his tongue in society and relieves himself by an article in the Times. The anonymous newspapers and reviews are a necessity in an aristocratic community, for they are the only means of attracting attention to facts and opinions without attracting it to yourself, the only way of escaping the personal question, “Who and what are you, that you venture to speak so plainly, and where is your stake in the country?”
The democratic idea, by its theoretic equality amongst men, affords an almost complete relief from this impediment to intellectual conversation. The theory of equality is good, because it negatives the interference of rank and wealth in matters that appertain to the intellect or to the moral sense. It may even go one step farther with advantage, and ignore intellectual authority also. The perfection of the intellectual spirit is the entire forgetfulness of persons, in the application of the whole power of the mind to things, and phenomena, and ideas. Not to mind whether the speaker is of noble or humble birth, rich or poor; this indeed is much, but we ought to attain a like indifference to the authority of the most splendid reputation. “Every great advance in natural knowledge,” says Professor Huxley, “has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates hold them, not because their verity is testified by portents and wonders, but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary source, Nature—whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment and to observation—Nature will confirm them.”
[8] I think it right to inform the reader that there is no fiction in this letter.
[9] The association between the two is this. If you believe that you are descended from a distinguished ancestor, you are simple enough to believe in his wife’s fidelity.