's employees are bound to follow for ever the
cloven pennon of the Perfect Pair of Trousers, it is all the more true
that the pennon may, in point of fact, become imperfect. Granted that
all Barney Barnato's workers ought to have followed him to death or
glory, it is still a Perfectly legitimate question to ask which he was
likely to lead them to. Granted that Dr. Sawyer's boy ought to die for
his master's medicines, we may still hold an inquest to find out if he
died of them. While we forbid the soldier to shoot the general, we may
still wish the general were shot.

The fundamental fact of our time is the failure of the successful man.
Somehow we have so arranged the rules of the game that the winners are
worthless for other purposes; they can secure nothing except the prize.
The very rich are neither aristocrats nor self-made men; they are
accidents—or rather calamities. All revolutionary language is
a generation behind the times in talking of their futility. A
revolutionist would say (with perfect truth) that coal-owners know next
to nothing about coal-mining. But we are past that point. Coal-owners
know next to nothing about coal-owning. They do not develop and defend
the nature of their own monopoly with any consistent and courageous
policy, however wicked, as did the old aristocrats with the monopoly of
land. They have not the virtues nor even the vices of tyrants; they have
only their powers. It is the same with all the powerful of to-day; it is
the same, for instance, with the high-placed and high-paid official. Not
only is the judge not judicial, but the arbiter is not even arbitrary.
The arbiter decides, not by some gust of justice or injustice in his
soul like the old despot dooming men under a tree, but by the permanent
climate of the class to which he happens to belong. The ancient wig of
the judge is often indistinguishable from the old wig of the flunkey.

To judge about success or failure one must see things very simply; one
must see them in masses, as the artist, half closing his eyes against
details, sees light and shade. That is the only way in which a just
judgment can be formed as to whether any departure or development, such
as Islam or the American Republic, has been a benefit upon the whole.
Seen close, such great erections always abound in ingenious detail and
impressive solidity; it is only by seeing them afar off that one can
tell if the Tower leans.

Now if we thus take in the whole t