Excerpt from The Temper of the American People This concept of modern civilization as basely material also gains ground in the minds of the cultured few, who, because of the loneliness of luxury, or the diffidence of an over-delicate sensitiveness, stand too far away from human reality to know what it truly means. In England the aristocrat lives in Mayfair, or in a demesne in the country where he can shut out the peeping and pathetic crowd, and where he can be free of the bourgeoisie. To be free of the struggling and partly educated middle class is more the note of English aristocracy than to be free of the peasantry; for the latter are needed as scene shifters and supporters of the social fabric, while the former are only possible invaders of the holy precincts. The American of the same type goes abroad. He lives in Rome, Paris, Madrid, walking the galleries when they are least troubled with tourists, and stepping into an older society when it is needy or inadvertent. In both cases the real meanings of men are misunderstood, and the social phenomena are as poorly classified as biological particulars would be if these Sybarites should dabble in science. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.