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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: days of old; in our days he is required to have a capacious
brain-pan. Skill and knowledge and capital--these three points
mark out a social triangle on which the scutcheon of power is
blazoned; our modern aristocracy must take its stand on these.
A fine theorem is as good as a great name. The Rothschilds, the
Fuggers of the nineteenth century, are princes de facto. A great
artist is in reality an oligarch; he represents a whole century,
and almost always he is a law to others. And the art of words,
the high pressure machinery of the writer, the poet's genius, the
merchant's steady endurance, the strong will of the statesman who
concentrates a thousand dazzling qualities in himself, the
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