Social Equality and Civilization

Early 20th C. British class system snobbery on display was just one of the many reasons for the popularity of the television hit series, “Downton Abbey”
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On the one hand, the aristocratic class, with all its power of social life and manners, is invariably materialized, while for the class of newly enriched people it sets the example of a materialistic ideal, which is accepted just because it is the ideal they can easiest comprehend. On the other, the people of the lower class, with the life of the middle class and its unlovely types of religion, thought, beauty and manners having no great attractions for them, fall back upon themselves— upon what Mr. Goldwin Smith calls “their, beer, their gin and their fun.” — Image source, Twitter

Matthew Arnold in his new book, “Mixed Essays,” maintains that with such inequality as now exists in England “a perfect civilization is impossible.” On the one hand, the aristocratic class, with all its power of social life and manners, is invariably materialized, while for the class of newly enriched people it sets the example of a materialistic ideal, which is accepted just because it is the ideal they can easiest comprehend. On the other, the people of the lower class, with the life of the middle class and its unlovely types of religion, thought, beauty and manners having no great attractions for them, fall back upon themselves— upon what Mr. Goldwin Smith calls “their, beer, their gin and their fun.” All this tends to failure in civilization. There are many qualities which go to complete a full humanization which means a true civilization.

England, it is true, has a strong sense of the power of conduct which Mr. Arnold regards as the chief power in the life and progress of man. But in the power of knowledge, of beauty and of social life, she is inferior to other nations. Certain races are on certain lines preeminent and representative. The Hebrew nation was pre-eminent on one great line— its statutes and righteous judgments; the Hellenic race on another— its philosophy and its eloquence. The power of beauty has been so great among Italians that it was they who revived the almost lost idea of beauty and the serious and successful pursuit of it. To the Germans belong the power of knowledge, which in the same way is eminently an influence with them. Last of these elements of civilization, and one of the greatest, is the power of social life and manners which the French possess above all other modern people. Without this a nation is incomplete.

Men are made equal by the humanity of their manners. Hence it was not the spirit of philanthropy which mainly impelled the French to the great revolution, nor was it the spirit of envy or a love of abstract ideas, though all these did something toward it; what did most was the spirit of society. Thus it was equality which has given to France so much of the goodness and agreeableness of life, and brought her to a really admirable and enviable pitch of humanization in one important line; so much so that some writers have been inclined to call France the most civilized of nations. To remedy the inequality that exists in England there must be a change in the law of bequest, as there has been in France, The code Napoleon, the actual law of France, forbids entails altogether.— N. Y. Home Journal, 1879

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