Table Of Content<z>
John
in
oo
CM
Fowles
o
author of
2LU The
French
O
CO .
Woman
Lieutenant's
The
Collector
and The Magus
Tlus edition revised by theauthor
JOHN FOWLES
IS
"A MASTER"
—
Washington Star
"ONE OF THE LIVELIEST
INTELLECTS WRITING TODAY"
—
Denver Post
"A MAJOR WRITER OF HIS
GENERATION"
—
Wall Street Journal
"A WRITER OF BRILLIANT
VERSATILITY"
—
Atlanta Journal
"A REMARKABLE TALENT"
—
New York Times
MENTOR Books of Related Interest
HUMAN SOCIETY IN ETHICS AND IN POLITICS
by Bertrand Russell. England's most controversial
philosopher challenges the accepted standards of
morality, religion, politics, and urges a new evalua-
tion of their function in today's chaotic world.
(#MP429—
600)
MAN IN THE MODERN WORLD by Julian Huxley.
Stimulating essays on vital issues from Huxley's
"Man Stands Alone" and "On Living in a Revolu-
(#MQ856-950)
tion."
THE AGE OF COMPLEXITY by Herbert Kohl. An in-
triguing study of the divergent schools of modern
philosophy—pragmatism, linguistic analysis, logi-
cal positivism, existentialism—that demonstrates
their common aim. (MT606—750)
THE TWO CULTURES AND A SECOND LOOK by
C. P. Snow. The explosive essay on the dangerous
split in Western society between the scientific
and the intellectual communities, plus a new essay
in which Sir Charles examines the controversy
aroused by his ideas and reaffirms his beliefs.
(#MT916—
750)
THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY, INC., P.O. Box 2310, Grand
Central Station, New York, New York 10017
Please send me the MENTOR BOOKS have checked above.
I
am enclosing $ (check or money order-
I
no currency or CO.D.'s). Please include the list price plus
10< a copy to cover mailing costs. (New York City residents
add 6% Sales Tax. Other New York State residents add 3%
plus any local sales or use taxes).
Name.
Address.
City .State Zip Code.
Allow at least 3 weeks for delivery
The Aristos
by JOHN FOWLES
This Edition Revised by the Author
©
A SIGNET BOOK from
AMERICAN LIBRARY
INJEW
TIMES MIRROR
©
John Fowles, 1964, 1968, 1970
Brown
All rights reserved. For information address Little,
and Company, 34 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts
02106.
Published by arrangement with Little, Brown and Company.
SIGNET TRADEMARK REG.—U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
REGISTERED TRADEMARK MARCA REGISTRADA
<Z>
HECHO EN CHICAGO, U.S.A.
Signet, Signet Classics, Mentor and Plume Books are
published by
The New American Library, Inc., mM**
1301 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10019
First Printing, May, 1970
printed in the united states of america
CONTENTS
Preface to a New Edition 7
Introduction 13
1 The Universal Situation 14
2 Human Dissatisfactions 29
3 TheNemo 47
4 Relativity of Recompense 59
5 Doing the Good 67
6 The Tensional Nature of Human Reality 83
7 Other Philosophies 102
8 The Obsession with Money 124
9 A New Education 141
10 The Importance of Art 184
212
11 The Aristos in the Individual
-~
Appendix: Heraclitus 215
Notes 219
PREFACE TO A NEW
EDITION
Tffls book was first published against the advice of almost
everyone who read it. I was told that it would do my
'image' no good; and I am sure that my belief that a favour-
—
able 'i—mage' is conceivably not of any great human or
literary significance would have counted for very
little if
I had not had a best-selling novel behind me. I used that
'success' to issue this 'failure', and so I face a charge of
unscrupulous obstinacy. To the obstinacy I must plead
guilty, but not to lack of scruple; for I was acting only in
accordance with what I had written.
My
chief concern, in The Aristos* is to preserve the
freedom of the individual against all those pressures-to-
conform that threaten our century; one of those pressures,
put upon all of us, but particularly on anyone who comes
into public notice, is that of labelling a person by what he
gets money and fame for—by what other people most want
to use him as. To call a man a plumber is to describe one
aspect of him, but it is also to obscure a number of others.
am
I a writer; I want no more specific prison than that I
express myself in printed words. So a prime personal rea-
son for this book was to announce that I did not intend
to walk into the cage labelled 'novelist'.
However, it was not just the ma—tter of the book that
offended. It was the manner as well the dogmatic way in
which I set out my views on life. But that too sprang from
a desire to nourish individuality. By stating baldly what /
believe I hope to force you tc state baldly to yourself what
you believe. I do not expect agreement. If I wanted that
I should have written in a very different form and
style,
* aristos is taken from the ancient Greek. It is singular and means
roughly 'the best for a given situation'. It is stressed on the first
syllable.
7
—
NEW
PREFACE TO A EDITION
8
my am
and wrapped pills in the usual sugar coating. I
not, in short, pleading a case.
There is a very current view in our world that philos-
ophy should be left to the philosophers, sociology to the
sociologists, and d—eath to the dead.—I believe this is one of
the great heresies and tyrannies of our time. I reject
totally the view that in matters of general concern (such
as the meaning of life, the nature of the good society, the
limitations of the human condition) only the specialist has
—
own
the right to have opinions and then only in his sub-
ject. Trespassers will be prosecuted signs have, thank good-
ness, become increasingly rare in our countryside; but they
still spring like mushrooms round the high-walled estates
of our literary and intellectual life. In spite of all our
achievements in technology we are, outside our narrow
professional fields, mentally one of the laziest and most
sheep-like ages that has ever existed. Yet another purpose
of this book is to suggest that the main reason dissatisfac-
tion haunts our century, as optimism haunted the eight-
eenth and complacency the nineteenth, is precisely because
human
we are losing sight of our most fundamental birth-
right: to have a self-made opinion on all that concerns us.
By using the same method as Nelson for not reading un-
book
wanted signals, some critics have further seen in this —
and in my two novels The Collector and The Magus
evidence that I am a crypto-fascist. All my adult life I have
believed that the only rational political doctrine one can
hold democratic socialism. But what I have never be-
is
lieved in is quasi-emotional liberalism of the kind that has
become popular these last twenty years; the kind of view
that goes more with avant-garde social milieu and fashion-
able newspapers than with any deep-held conviction or
reasoned attempt to destroy reaction. Nor similarly have
I much time for the theory that socialism is the sole prop-
erty of the proletariat and that the chief voice in socialist
We may
policy must always be that of organized labour.
