There is much to be said in favor of our schools and universities entering heartily into the lives of the communities that surround them; but if the communities are of a spirit hostile or indifferent to culture they may, and partly do, submerge the latter in their own barbarism. The democratization of higher traditions must be on a plane of militant leadership, not of concession, or it is pernicious. Better a real culture, though in monasteries, than a general vulgarization. The same considerations may serve to qualify our democratic criticism of hereditary wealth and of the class differences based upon it. The man with an inherited competence is in a position to separate himself from the rush of competition enough to make a fresh estimate of things, and to use his independence as a fulcrum for starting a new movement. No doubt the great majority fail to do this; it requires other qualifications than pecuniary; still, much fruitful initiative in science, art, literature and social reform has in fact been supplied by people having this advantage, and until we provide for leisure and independence in some other way the argument for hereditary wealth will have force. In the same way the finest ideals of life and conduct—as distinguished, possibly, from the highest ideals—have often been the tradition of an upper class, upon which their continuance depended. If we are to dispense with upper classes we must at the same time provide for continuous culture groups of a more democratic sort. It is much the same with national variation as with that of individuals and groups. Bagehot, in the earliest and perhaps the ablest attempt to apply Darwinism to society, pointed out that “all great nations have been prepared in privacy and in secret. They have been composed far away from all distraction. Greece, Rome, Judea, were framed each by itself, and the antipathy of each to men of different race and different speech is one of their most marked peculiarities, and quite their strongest common property.”[76] In modern life, however, as nations come to share consciously and with good-will in a common organic life, this differentiation should not be one of isolation or antipathy, but of pride in a distinctive contribution to the higher life of the world. I need hardly add that the independence and individuality of small nations—which has seemed to be threatened—is essential to the general good.