else to go upon--they are at first few in number. They come as settlers,
or even as single sages. It is, in all tradition, not the many who
influence the few, but the few who influence the many.

So aristocracies, in the true sense, are formed.

But the higher calling is soon forgotten. The purer light is soon
darkened in pride and selfishness, luxury and lust; as in Genesis, the
sons of God see the daughters of men, that they are fair; and they take
them wives of all that they choose. And so a mixed race springs up and
increases, without detriment at first to the commonwealth. For, by a
well-known law of heredity, the cross between two races, probably far
apart, produces at first a progeny possessing the forces, and, alas!
probably the vices of both. And when the sons of God go in to the
daughters of men, there are giants in the earth in those days, men of
renown. The Roman Empire, remember, was never stronger than when the old
Patrician blood had mingled itself with that of every nation round the
Mediterranean.

But it does not last. Selfishness, luxury, ferocity, spread from above,
as well as from below. The just aristocracy of virtue and wisdom becomes
an unjust one of mere power and privilege; that again, one of mere wealth
corrupting and corrupt; and is destroyed, not by the people from below,
but by the monarch from above. The hereditary bondsmen may know

Who would be free,
Himself must strike the blow.

But they dare not, know not how. The king must do it for them. He must
become the State. "Better one tyrant," as Voltaire said, "than many."