THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

collective understanding, but in terms of functionaries, legislative

change, and methods of administration…

It wasn't clear at first how we differed. The Baileys were very

anxious to win me to co-operation, and I was quite prepared at first

to identify their distinctive expressions with phrases of my own,

and so we came very readily into an alliance that was to last some

years, and break at last very painfully. Altiora manifestly liked

me, I was soon discussing with her the perplexity I found in placing

myself efficiently in the world, the problem of how to take hold of

things that occupied my thoughts, and she was sketching out careers

for my consideration, very much as an architect on his first visit

sketches houses, considers requirements, and puts before you this

example and that of the more or less similar thing already done…

4

It is easy to see how much in common there was between the Baileys

and me, and how natural it was that I should become a constant

visitor at their house and an ally of theirs in many enterprises.

It is not nearly so easy to define the profound antagonism of spirit

that also held between us. There was a difference in texture, a

difference in quality. How can I express it? The shapes of our

thoughts were the same, but the substance quite different. It was

as if they had made in china or cast iron what I had made in

transparent living matter. (The comparison is manifestly from my

point of view.) Certain things never seemed to show through their

ideas that were visible, refracted perhaps and distorted, but

visible always through mine.

I thought for a time the essential difference lay in our relation to

beauty. With me beauty is quite primary in life; I like truth,

order and goodness, wholly because they are beautiful or lead

straight to beautiful consequences. The Baileys either hadn't got

that or they didn't see it. They seemed at times to prefer things

harsh and ugly. That puzzled me extremely. The esthetic quality of

many of their proposals, the "ma

were at times as dreadful as-well, War Office barrack architecture.

A caricature by its exaggerated statements will sometimes serve to

point a truth by antagonising falsity and falsity. I remember

talking to a prominent museum official in need of more public funds

for the work he had in hand. I mentioned the possibility of

enlisting Bailey's influence.

"Oh, we don't want Philistines like that infernal Bottle-Imp ru

us," he said hastily, and would hear of no concerted action for the

end he had in view. "I'd rather not have the extension.

"You see," he went on to explain, "Bailey's wanting in the

essentials."

"What essentials?" said I.

"Oh! he'd be like a nasty oily efficient little machine for some

merely subordinate necessity among all my delicate stuff. He'd do

all we wanted no doubt in the way of money and powers-and he'd do

it wrong and mess the place for ever. Hands all black, you know.

He's just a means. Just a very aggressive and unmanageable means.

This isn't a plumber's job…"

I stuck to my argument.

"I don't LIKE him," said the official conclusively, and it seemed to

me at the time he was just blind prejudice speaking…

I came nearer the truth of the matter as I came to realise that our

philosophies differed profoundly. That isn't a very curable

difference,-once people have grown up. Theirs was a philosophy

devoid of FINESSE. Temperamentally the Baileys were specialised,

concentrated, accurate, while Iam urged either by some I

or some entirely assimilated influence in my training, always to

round off and shadow my outlines. I hate them hard. I would

sacrifice detail to modelling always, and the Baileys, it seemed to

me, loved a world as flat and metallic as Sidney Cooper's cows. If

they had the universe in hand I know they would take down all the

trees and put up stamped tin green shades and sunlight accumulators.

Altiora thought trees hopelessly irregular and sea cliffs a great

mistake… I got things clearer as time went on. Though it

was an Hegelian mess of which I had partaken at Codger's table by

way of a philosophical training, my sympathies have always been

Pragmatist. I belong almost by nature to that school of Pragmatism

that, following the medieval Nominalists, bases itself upon a denial

of the reality of classes, and of the validity of general laws. The

Baileys classified everything. They were, in the scholastic sense-

which so oddly contradicts the modern use of the word-"Realists."

They believed classes were REAL and independent of their

individuals. This is the common habit of all so-called educated

people who have no metaphysical aptitude and no metaphysical

training. It leads them to a progressive misunderstanding of the

world. It was a favourite trick of Altiora's to speak of everybody

as a "type"; she saw men as samples moving; her dining-room became a

chamber of representatives. It gave a tremendously scientific air

to many of their generalisations, using "scientific" in its