Page:Decline of the West (Volume 2).djvu/354

338 — but every priesthood, and consequently also all philosophy (in the sense of the schools), contain it implicitly. If a priest has race, he leads an outward existence like peasant, knight, or prince. The Pope and cardinals of the Gothic period were feudal princes, leaders of armies, fond of the chase, connoisseurs and adepts in family politics. Among the Brahmins of the pre-Buddha "Baroque" were great landowners, well-groomed abbés, courtiers, spendthrifts, gourmets. But it was the early period that had learned to distinguish the idea from the person — a notion diametrically opposed to the essence of nobility — and not until the Age of Enlightenment did the priest come to be judged, as priest, by his private life, and then not because that age had acquired sharper eyes, but because it had lost the idea.

The noble is the man as history, the priest is the man as nature. History of the high kind is always the expression and effect of the being of a noble society; and the criterion for the relative importance of its different events is always the pulse of this stream of being. That is why the battle of Cannæ matters much and the battles of Late Roman emperors matter not at all. The coming of a Springtime consistently coincides with the birth of a primary nobility, in whose sentiments the prince is merely "primus inter pares" and an object of mistrust. For not only does a strong race not need the big individual, but his existence is a reflection upon its worth; hence vassal-wars are pre-eminently the form in which the history of Early periods fulfils itself, and thenceforth the nobility has the fate of the Culture in hand. With a creative force that is all the more impressive because it is silent, Being is brought into form and "condition." The pulse in the blood is heightened and confirmed, and for good. For what this creative rise to living form is to the Spring — every Spring — the might of tradition is for the Late — every Late — period — namely, the old firm discipline, the life-beat, so sure that it outlives the extinction of all the old families and continually draws under its spell new men and new being-streams out of the deep. Beyond a shadow of doubt, all the history of Late periods, in respect of form and beat and tempo, is inherent (and irrevocably so) in the very earliest generations. Its successes are neither more nor less than the strength of the tradition in the blood. In politics, as in all other great and mature arts, success presupposes a being in high condition, a great stock of pristine experiences unconsciously and unquestioningly stored up as instincts and impulses. There is no other sort of political maestria but this. The big individual is only something better than an incident, only master of the future, in that he is effective (or is made effective), is Destiny (or has Destiny), in and through this form. This is what distinguishes necessary from superfluous art and therefore, also, historically necessary from unnecessary politics. It matters little if many of the big men come up out of the "people" (that is, the aggregate of the traditionless) into the governing stratum, or even if they are the