Hence most governments have been oligarchies–ruled by a minority,
chosen either by birth, as in aristocracies, or by a religious organization, as
in theocracies, or by wealth, as in democracies. It is unnatural (as even
Rousseau saw) for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be
organized for united and specific action, and a minority can. If the majority
of abilities is contained in a minority of men, minority government is as
inevitable as the concentration of wealth; the majority can do no more than
periodically throw out one minority and set up another. The aristocrat holds
that political selection by birth is the sanest alternative to selection by
money or theology or violence. Aristocracy withdraws a few men from the
exhausting and coarsening strife of economic competition, and trains them
from birth, through example, surroundings, and minor office, for the tasks
of government; these tasks require a special preparation that no ordinary
family or background can provide. Aristocracy is not only a nursery of
statesmanship, it is also a repository and vehicle of culture, manners,
standards, and tastes, and serves thereby as a stabilizing barrier to social
fads, artistic crazes, or neurotically rapid changes in the moral code. See
what has happened to morals, manners, style, and art since the French
Revolution.
Aristocracies have inspired, supported, and controlled art, but they have
rarely produced it. The aristocrat looks upon artists as manual laborers; he
prefers the art of life to the life of art, and would never think of reducing
himself to the consuming toil that is usually the price of genius. He does
not often produce literature, for he thinks of writing for publication as
exhibitionism and salesmanship. The result has been, in modern
aristocracies, a careless and dilettante hedonism, a lifelong holiday in
which the privileges of place were enjoyed to the full, and the
responsibilities were often ignored. Hence the decay of some aristocracies.
Only three generations intervened between “L’état c’est moi” and “Après
moi le deluge.”
