In the past it was possible to take all sorts of things
for granted and be loyal to unexamined things. One could be loyal
to unexamined things because they were unchallenged things. But now
everything is challenged. By the time of his second visit to
Russia, Benham's ideas of conscious and deliberate aristocracy
reaching out to an idea of universal responsibility had already
grown into the extraordinary fantasy that he was, as it were, an
uncrowned king in the world. To be noble is to be aristocratic,
that is to say, a ruler. Thence it follows that aristocracy is
multiple kingship, and to be an aristocrat is to partake both of the
nature of philosopher and king. . . .
Yet it is manifest that the powerful people of this world are by no
means necessarily noble, and that most modern kings, poor in
quality, petty in spirit, conventional in outlook, controlled and
limited, fall far short of kingship. Nevertheless, there IS
nobility, there IS kingship, or this earth is a dustbin and mankind
but a kind of skin-disease upon a planet. From that it is an easy
step to this idea, the idea whose first expression had already so
touched the imagination of Amanda, of a sort of diffused and
voluntary kingship scattered throughout mankind.
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