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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: their own social and political advantages, and play (for it will
never be really more than playing) at democracy. Let them, too,
beware. The penknife and the axe should respect each other; for
they were wrought from the same steel: but the penknife will not be
wise in trying to fell trees. Let them accept their own position,
not in conceit and arrogance, but in fear and trembling; and see if
they cannot play the man therein, and save their own class; and with
it, much which it has needed many centuries to accumulate and to
organise, and without which no nation has yet existed for a single
century. They are no more like the old French noblesse, than are
the commercial class like the old French bourgeoisie, or the
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