From the point of view of
personal aristocracy they make men vulgar, violent, unjust and
futile. All the conscious life of the aristocrat must be a constant
struggle against false generalizations; it is as much his duty to
free himself from that as from fear, indulgence, and jealousy; it is
a larger and more elaborate task, but it is none the less cardinal
and essential. Indeed it is more cardinal and essential. The true
knight has to be not only no coward, no self-pamperer, no egotist.
He has to be a philosopher. He has to be no hasty or foolish
thinker. His judgment no more than his courage is to be taken by
surprise.
"To subdue fear, desire and jealousy, is the aristocrat's personal
affair, it is his ritual and discipline, like a knight watching his
arms; but the destruction of division and prejudice and all their
forms and establishments, is his real task, that is the common work
of knighthood. It is a task to be done in a thousand ways; one man
working by persuasion, another by example, this one overthrowing
some crippling restraint upon the freedom of speech and the spread
of knowledge, and that preparing himself for a war that will shatter
a tyrannous presumption.
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