Page 270 - lady-chatterlys-lover

the masses, and they’ll be little plebeians, mass products. It
is the overwhelming pressure of environment.’
’Then the common people aren’t a race, and the aristo-
crats aren’t blood,’ she said.
’No, my child! All that is romantic illusion. Aristocracy
is a function, a part of fate. And the masses are a function-
ing of another part of fate. The individual hardly matters. It
is a question of which function you are brought up to and
adapted to. It is not the individuals that make an aristoc-
racy: it is the functioning of the aristocratic whole. And it is
the functioning of the whole mass that makes the common
man what he is.’
’Then there is no common humanity between us all!’
’Just as you like. We all need to fill our bellies. But when
it comes to expressive or executive functioning, I believe
there is a gulf and an absolute one, between the ruling and
the serving classes. The two functions are opposed. And the
function determines the individual.’
Connie looked at him with dazed eyes.
’Won’t you come on?’ she said.
And he started his chair. He had said his say. Now he
lapsed into his peculiar and rather vacant apathy, that
Connie found so trying. In the wood, anyhow, she was de-
termined not to argue.
In front of them ran the open cleft of the riding, between
the hazel walls and the gay grey trees. The chair puffed
slowly on, slowly surging into the forget-me-nots that rose
up in the drive like milk froth, beyond the hazel shadows.
Clifford steered the middle course, where feet passing had