It is as natural as it is evident that this adhesion of the ‘clerks’ to the passions of the laymen fortifies these passions in the hearts of the latter. In the first place, it abolishes the suggestive spectacle (which I mentioned above) of a race of men whose interests are set outside the practical world. And then especially, the ‘clerk’ by adopting political passions, brings them the tremendous influence of his sensibility if he is an artist, of his persuasive power if he is a thinker, and in either case his moral prestige.[32] Before proceeding any further, I feel I ought to make myself clear on certain points:-- (_a_) I have been talking of the _whole_ of the men of thought anterior to our own age. When I say that the ‘clerks’ in the past opposed the realism of the laymen and that the ‘clerks’ of to-day are in its service, I am considering each of these groups as a whole; I am contrasting one general characteristic with another. This means that I shall not feel myself contradicted by a reader who takes pains to point out to me that so-and-so in the former group was a realist, and that so-and-so in the second is not, so long as this reader is obliged to admit that as a whole each of these groups does manifest the characteristic I have indicated. And also, when I speak of a single ‘clerk’, I am thinking of his work in its chief characteristic, i.e. in that part of his teaching which dominates all the rest, even if the remainder sometimes contradicts this dominant teaching. This means that I do not consider that I ought to refrain from looking upon Malebranche as a master of liberal thought because a few lines of his ‘Morale’ seem to be a justification of slavery, or upon Nietzsche as a moralist of war because the end of ‘Zarathustra’ is a manifesto of fraternity which outdoes the Gospels. And I see the less reason for doing so, since Malebranche as a defender of slavery and Nietzsche as a humanitarian have had no influence at all, and my subject is the influence which the ‘clerks’ have had in the world, and not what they were in themselves.