Aristocrats and Intellectuals
I can’t remember where I’ve seen the attitude of the quote below from Proust’s Times Rediscovered– it’s been a long time since I was at Yale, which is probably where— but I like it. It’s good both that rich people feel themselves a special class, with duties, and that they also respect talent. Indeed, unless an untalented person has pride in something such as birth, it is hard for him to accept that someone else is more talented. If he does have pride of birth, then he is not threatened by intellectuals.
…that mental attitude of the faubourg Saint-Germain with which those who believe themselves the most detached from it are saturated and which simultaneously gives them respect for men of intelligence who are not of noble birth (which only flourishes in the nobility and makes revolution so unjust) and silly self-complacency. It was through this mixture of humility and pride, of acquired curiosity of mind and inborn sense of authority, that M. de Charlus and Saint-Loup by different roads and holding contrary opinions had become to a generation of transition, intellectuals interested in every new idea and talkers whom no interrupter could silence. Thus a rather commonplace individual would, according to his disposition, consider both of them either dazzling or bores.