Some men must be noble, or life is an ash-heap. There is natural nobility, given by God or the Unknown, and far beyond common sense. And towards this natural nobility we must live.
The simple man, whose best self, his noble self, is nearly all the time puzzled, dumb and helpless, has still the power to recognise the man in whom the noble self is powerful and articulate. To this man he must pledge himself. That is the only way. To act according to the spark of nobility we have in us, not according to our greediness and our cowardice, our hard selves.
The hereditary aristocratic class has fallen into disuse. And democracy means the electing of tools to serve the fears and the material desires of the masses. Noblesse n’oblige plus.
This is really the worst that can happen to mankind, when Noblesse n’oblige plus. Goodness and badness there is bound to be. But a spark of nobility redeems everything.
. . .
This is our job, then, our uncommon sense: to recognise the spark of nobleness inside us, and let it make us. To recognise the spark of noblesse in one another, and add our sparks together, to a flame. And to recognise the men who have stars, not mere specks of nobility in their souls, and to choose these for leaders. We can choose for noblesse and we can choose for basesse. . . . Nations are slowly strangling one another in ‘competition’. The cancer of finance spreads throught the body of mankind. Individuals are diseased with the same disease. To get money, and to spend money, nothing else remains. And with it goes all the strangling, and the bullying, and the degradation, the sense of humiliation and worthlessness of life, which is bitterest of all.
There is nothing to be done, en masse. But every youth, every girl can make the great historical change inside himself and herself, to care supremely for nothing but the spark of noblesse that is in him and in her, and to follow only the leader who is a star of the new, natural Noblesse.
D.H. Lawrence – Movements in European History