terialism of plutocracy.

If it could have lost itself in plutocracy the harm would not have been
so great; but it still remains for the multitude a true aristocracy, and
looking up to that aristocracy for its standards--an aristocracy whose
private life is now public property--the multitude has become
materialistic, throwing Puritanism to the dogs, and pushing as heartily
forward to the trough as any full-fed glutton in the middle or the upper
ranks of life.

The standards set by the privileged classes at this time are the same
standards as ruled in France before the Revolution. There is no example
of modesty, earnestness, restraint, thrift, duty, or culture. Everything
is sensual and ostentatious, and shamefacedly sensual and ostentatious.

It is time for the best people in aristocracy to set their faces against
this wanton and destructive spirit. It is time a halt was called to
luxury and profligacy; time that the door was shut in the face of
invading vulgarity. Creation has not agonized in bloody sweat through
countless ages of suffering and achievement that those who possess the
highest opportunities for doing good should pervert those opportunities
into a mere platform for the display of a harmful badness. Evolution was
not aiming at Belgravia when it set out on its long journey from the
flaming mist of the nebula. We cannot suppose that Nature is content
with the egoism of the social butterfly. The very blood of dead humanity
cries out for a higher creature.

Aristocracy, one sees, is too apt to regard itself as the spoilt child
of material fortune, instead of humbly and with a sense of deepest
responsibility accepting the heavy duties of moral leadership imposed
upon it by the labours of evolution.

It is to be hoped that the children of the present generation of
aristocracy may grow up with no taste for the betting ring, the card
room, and the night club, or, at any rate, that a certain number of them
may find their highest happiness in knowledge and wisdom rather than in
amateur theatricals and fancy-dress balls. The human mind, after all,
cannot find rest in triviality, and after so long a period of the most
sordid and vulgar self-indulgence it is reasonable to hope that our
aristocracy may experience a reaction.

If men would ask themselves, before they rush out to seek her, What is
Pleasure? and consult the past history of humanity as well as their own
senses and inclinations they could hardly fail, e