and, oddly enough, it tells us this all the more the more
cynical and immoral be the motive of its manufacture. The more
dishonest a book is as a book the more honest it is as a public
document. A sincere novel exhibits the simplicity of one particular
man; an insincere novel exhibits the simplicity of mankind. The
pedantic decisions and definable readjustments of man may be found in
scrolls and statute books and scriptures; but men's basic assumptions
and everlasting energies are to be found in penny dreadfuls and
halfpenny novelettes. Thus a man, like many men of real culture in our
day, might learn from good literature nothing except the power to
appreciate good literature. But from bad literature he might learn to
govern empires and look over the map of mankind.

There is one rather interesting example of this state of things in
which the weaker literature is really the stronger and the stronger the
weaker. It is the case of what may be called, for the sake of an
approximate description, the literature of aristocracy; or, if you
prefer the description, the literature of snobbishness. Now if any one
wishes to find a really effective and comprehensible and permanent case
for aristocracy well and sincerely stated, let him read, not the modern
philosophical conservatives, not even Nietzsche, let him read the Bow
Bells Novelettes. Of the case of Nietzsche I am confessedly more
doubtful. Nietzsche and the Bow Bells Novelettes have both obviously
the same fundamental character; they both worship the tall man with
curling moustaches and herculean bodily power, and they both worship
him in a manner which is somewhat feminine and hysterical. Even here,
however, the Novelette easily maintains its philosophical superiority,
because it does attribute to the strong man those virtues which do
commonly belong to him, such virtues as laziness and kindliness and a
rather reckless benevolence, and a great dislike of hurting the weak.
Nietzsche, on the other hand, attributes to the strong man that scorn
against weakness which only exists among invalids. It is not, however,
of the secondary merits of the great German philosopher, but of the
primary merits of the Bow Bells Novelettes, that it is my present
affair to speak. The picture of aristocracy in the popular sentimental
novelette seems to me very satisfactory as a permanent political and
philosophical guide. It may be inaccurate about details such as the
title by which a barone