in England a curious belief in first rate people, meaning all the people
we do not know; and this consoles us for the undeniable secondrateness
of the people we do know, besides saving the credit of aristocracy as an
institution. The unmet aristocrat is devoutly believed in; but he is
always round the corner, never at hand. That _the_ smart set exists;
that there is above and beyond that smart set a class so blue of blood
and exquisite in nature that it looks down even on the King with haughty
condescension; that scepticism on these points is one of the stigmata of
plebeian baseness: all these imaginings are so common here that they
constitute the real popular sociology of England as much as an unlimited
credulity as to vaccination constitutes the real popular science of
England. It is, of course, a timid superstition. A British peer or
peeress who happens by chance to be genuinely noble is just as isolated
at court as Goethe would have been among all the other grandsons of
publicans, if they had formed a distinct class in Frankfurt or Weimar.
This I knew very well when I wrote my novels; and if, as I suspect, I
failed to create a convincingly verisimilar atmosphere of aristocracy,
it was not because I had any illusions or ignorances as to the common
humanity of the peerage, and not because I gave literary style to its
conversation, but because, as I had never had any money, I was foolishly
indifferent to it, and so, having blinded myself to its enormous
importance, necessarily missed the point of view, and with it the whole
moral basis, of the class which rightly values money, and plenty of it,
as the first condition of a bearable life.

Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and
successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its
basis. Every teacher or twaddler who denies it or suppresses it, is an
enemy of life. Money controls morality; and what makes the United States
of America look so foolish even in foolish Europe is that they are