"Aristocracy" by T.S. Eliot

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES Sir.—The traditional use of the word [aristocracy] implies, I believe, an emphasis upon inheritance: not merely the inheritance of property, however important that may seem to some, but the inheritance, partly through biological trans­mission and partly through environment, of, other less tangible values. In other words, the unit of aristocracy, in the sense in which the word has been used in the past, is not the individual but the family. In the new sense of the word (and the phrase “the new aristo­cracy” is acquiring currency) inheritance is ignored, and the family implicitly depreciated. We are to have an aristocracy, not of families, but of individuals; and those individuals will have been turned into aristocrats, not by their parents, but by their schoolmasters, employing some system of selection to be elaborated. I suggest that this may be a more violent mutation of meaning than any word ought to be required to undergo. It will not do to appeal, behind the back of tradition, to the etymological sense of the word: for govern­ment by the best men is surely the aspiration of every society, whatever its social organiza­tion. I am, Sir, your obedient servant.

--T. S. Eliot, Shamley Green, Surrey, April 14.

[Source: T.S. Eliot, “Aristocracy,” London Times (April 17, 1944), pg. 5.]