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Wells, H. G. (Herbert George), 1866-1946

"First and Last Things"

Vigorous persons do look naturally for help
and service to persons of less initiative, and we are all more or less
capable of admiration and hero-worship and pleased to help and give
ourselves to those we feel to be finer or better or completer or more
forceful and leaderly than ourselves. This is natural and inevitable
aristocracy.
For that reason it is not to be organized. We organize things that are
not inevitable, but this is clearly a complex matter of accident and
personalities for which there can be no general rule. All organized
aristocracy is manifestly begotten by that fallacy of classification my
Metaphysical book set itself to expose. Its effect is, and has been in
all cases, to mask natural aristocracy, to draw the lines by wholesale
and wrong, to bolster up weak and ineffectual persons in false positions
and to fetter or hamper strong and vigorous people. The false aristocrat
is a figure of pride and claims, a consumer followed by dupes. He is
proudly secretive, pretending to aims beyond the common understanding.
The true aristocrat is known rather than knows; he makes and serves.


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