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 reason 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 philosophy 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.