Always it had been aristocratic, aristocratic in
the sense that it was the work of minorities, who took power, who
had a common resolution against the inertia, the indifference, the
insubordination and instinctive hostility of the mass of mankind.
And always the set-backs, the disasters of civilization, had been
failures of the aristocratic spirit. Why had the Roman purpose
faltered and shrivelled? Every order, every brotherhood, every
organization carried with it the seeds of its own destruction. Must
the idea of statecraft and rule perpetually reappear, reclothe
itself in new forms, age, die, even as life does--making each time
its almost infinitesimal addition to human achievement? Now the
world is crying aloud for a renascence of the spirit that orders and
controls. Human affairs sway at a dizzy height of opportunity.
Will they keep their footing there, or stagger? We have got back at
last to a time as big with opportunity as the early empire. Given
only the will in men and it would be possible now to turn the
dazzling accidents of science, the chancy attainments of the
nineteenth century, into a sane and permanent possession, a new
starting point.
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