incidentally, but all round? How far can you educate sons beyond
the outlook of their fathers, and how far lift a rich, proud, self-
indulgent class above the protests of its business agents and
solicitors and its own habits and vanity? Is chivalry in a class
possible?-was it ever, indeed, or will it ever indeed be possible?
Is the progress that seems attainable in certain directions worth
the retrogression that may be its price?
4
It was to the Pentagram Circle that I first broached the new
conceptions that were developing in my mind. I count the evening of
my paper the beginning of the movement that created the BLUE WEEKLY
and our wing of the present New Tory party. I do that without any
excessive egotism, because my essay was no solitary man's
production; it was my reaction to forces that had come to me very
large through my fellow-members; its quick reception by them showed
that I was, so to speak, merely the first of the chestnuts to pop.
The atmospheric quality of the evening stands out very vividly in my
memory. The night, I remember, was warmly foggy when after midnight
we went to finish our talk at my house.
We had recently changed the rules of the club to admit visitors, and
so it happened that I had brought Britten, and Crupp introduced
Arnold Shoesmith, my former schoolfellow at City Merchants, and now
the wealthy successor of his father and elder brother. I remember
his heavy, inexpressively handsome face lighting to his rare smile
at the sight of me, and how little I dreamt of the tragic
entanglement that was destined to involve us both. Gane was
present, and Esmeer, a newly-added member, but I think Bailey was
absent. Either he was absent, or he said something so entirely
characteristic and undistinguished that it has left no impression on
my mind.
I had broken a little from the traditions of the club even in my
title, which was deliberately a challenge to the liberal idea: it
was, "The World Exists for Exceptional People." It is not the title
I should choose now-for since that time I have got my phrase of
"mental hinterlander" into journalistic use. I should say now, "The
World Exists for Mental Hinterland."
The notes I made of that opening have long since vanished with a
thousand other papers, but some odd chance has preserved and brought
with me to Italy the menu for the evening; its back black with the
scrawled notes I made of the discussion for my reply. I found it
the other day among some letters from Margaret and a copy of the
1909 Report of the Poor Law Commission, also rich with pencilled
marginalia.
My opening was a criticism of the democratic idea and method, upon
lines such as I have already sufficiently indicated in the preceding
sections. I remember how old Dayton fretted in his chair, and
tushed and pished at that, even as I gave it, and afterwards we were
treated to one of his platitudinous harangues, he sitting back in
his chair with that small obstinate eye of his fixed on the ceiling,
and a sort of cadaverous glow upon his face, repeating-quite
regardless of all my reasoning and all that had been said by others
in the debate-the sacred empty phrases that were his soul's refuge
from reality. "You may think it very clever," he said with a nod of
his head to mark his sense of his point, "not to Trust in the
People. I do." And so on. Nothing in his life or work had ever
shown that he did trust in the people, but that was beside the mark.
He was the party Liberal, and these were the party incantations.
After my preliminary attack on vague democracy I went on to show
that all human life was virtually aristocratic; people must either
recognise aristocracy in general or else follow leaders, which is
aristocracy in particular, and so I came to my point that the
reality of human progress lay necessarily through the establishment
of freedoms for the human best and a collective receptivity and
understanding. There was a disgusted grunt from Dayton, "Superman
rubbish-Nietzsche. Shaw! Ugh!" I sailed on over him to my next
propositions. The prime essential in a progressive civilisation was
the establishment of a more effective selective process for the
privilege of higher education, and the very highest educational
opportunity for the educable. We were too apt to patronise
scholarship winners, as though a scholarship was toffee given as a
reward for virtue. It wasn't any reward at all; it was an
invitation to capacity. We had no more right to drag in virtue, or
any merit but quality, than we had to involve it in a search for the
tallest man. We didn't want a mere process for the selection of
good as distinguished from gifted and able boys-"No, you DON'T,"
from Dayton-we wanted all the brilliant stuff in the world
concentrated upon the development of the world. Just to exasperate
Dayton further I put in a plea for gifts as against character in
educational, artistic, and legislative work. "Good teaching," I
said, "is better than good conduct. We are becoming idiotic about
Dayton was too moved to speak. He slewed round upon me an eye of
agonised aversion.
I expatiated on the small proportion of the available ability that
is really serving humanity to-day. "I suppose to-day all the