n that which he hath. Very
literally, in a very fatal manner, that saying is here fulfilled.

Our 'Aristocracy of Talent' seems at a considerable distance yet; does
it not, O Bobus?

CHAPTER VI.

HERO-WORSHIP.

To the present Editor, not less than to Bobus, a Government of the
Wisest, what Bobus calls an Aristocracy of Talent, seems the one
healing remedy: but he is not so sanguine as Bobus with respect to the
means of realising it. He thinks that we have at once missed realising
it, and come to need it so pressingly, by departing far from the inner
eternal Laws, and taking-up with the temporary outer semblances of
Laws. He thinks that 'enlightened Egoism,' never so luminous, is not
the rule by which man's life can be led. That 'Laissez-faire,'
'Supply-and-demand,' 'Cash-payment for the sole nexus,' and so forth,
were not, are not and will never be, a practicable Law of Union for a
Society of Men. That Poor and Rich, that Governed and Governing,
cannot long live together on any such Law of Union. Alas, he thinks
that man has a soul in him, _different_ from the stomach in any sense
of this word; that if said soul be asphyxied, and lie quietly
forgotten, the man and his affairs are in a bad way. He thinks that
said soul will have to be resuscitated from its asphyxia; that if it
prove irresuscitable, the man is not long for this world. In brief,
that Midas-eared Mammonism, double-barrelled Dilettantism, and their
thousand adjuncts and corollaries, are _not_ the Law by which God
Almighty has appointed this his Universe to go. That, once for all,
these are not the Law: and then farther that we shall have to return
to what _is_ the Law,--not by smooth flowery paths, it is like, and
with 'tremendous cheers' in our throat; but over steep untrodden
places, through stormclad chasms, waste oceans, and the bosom of
tornadoes; thank Heaven, if not through very Chaos and the Abyss! The
resuscitating of a soul that has gone to asphyxia is no momentary or
pleasant process, but a long and terrible one.

* * * * *

To the present Editor, 'Hero-worship,' as he has elsewhere named it,
means much more than an elected Parliament, or stated Aristocracy, of
the Wisest; for in his dialect it is the summary, ultimate essence,
and supreme practical perfection of all manner of 'worship,' and true
worthships and noblenesses whatsoever. Such blessed Parliament and,
were it once in perfection, blessed Ar