It is unnecessary even to recapitulate these universal controversies
of our time. The lunch-table and the dinner-table and the general
talk of the house drifted more and more definitely at its own level
in the same direction as the private talk of Prothero and Benham,
towards the antagonism of the privileged few and the many, of the
trained and traditioned against the natural and undisciplined, of
aristocracy against democracy. At the week-end Sir Godfrey returned
to bring fresh elements. He said that democracy was unscientific.
"To deny aristocracy is to deny the existence of the fittest. It is
on the existence of the fittest that progress depends."

"But do our social conditions exalt the fittest?" asked Prothero.

"That is another question," said Benham.

"Exactly," said Sir Godfrey. "That is another question. But
speaking with some special knowledge, I should say that on the whole
the people who are on the top of things OUGHT to be on the top of
things. I agree with Aristotle that there is such a thing as a
natural inferior."

"So far as I can understand Mr. Prothero," said Lady Marayne, "he
thinks that all the inferiors are the superiors and all the
superiors inferior. It's quite simple. . . ."

It made Prothero none the less indignant with this, that there was
indeed a grain of truth in it. He hated superiors, he felt for
inferiors.