ABSTRACT
In what follows I want to look at Lawrence’s concept of the “natural aristocrat,” and I do so with two purposes in mind. The first purpose, consistent with the general approach of this study, is to discuss what I believe is yet another way in which Lawrence’s social and political thought corresponds to ideas that have been traditionally upheld by philosophical anarchism. Of course, the very idea of “aristocracy” may at first seem inherently antithetical, even antagonistic, to the basic principles of anarchism, but as George Woodcock observes it is in fact central to them. “In reality,” Woodcock writes, “the ideal of anarchism, far from being democracy carried to its logical end, is much nearer to aristocracy universalized and purified. The spiral of history here has turned full circle, and where aristocracy…called for the freedom of noble men, anarchism has always declared the nobility of free men” (1962:34). Lawrence, I believe, held a similar idea about the “nobility of free men,” and his own declaration of it is part of what I want to pursue here.
