The ones who really understood Read s philosophy remained low key. This is why almost nobody can quite recall where he got his first copy. The Masses Understandably, Nock had little use for politics. Politics requires votes. Votes require campaigns.
Votes require mass appeals to the masses.
In his essay, Nock contrasted the Remnant with the masses. As the word masses is commonly used, it suggests agglomerations of poor and underprivileged people, laboring people, proletarians. The mass-man is one who has neither the force of intellect to apprehend the principles issuing in what we know as the humane life, nor the force of character to adhere to those principles steadily and strictly as laws of conduct, and because such people make up the great, the overwhelming majority of mankind, they are called collectively the masses. The line of differentiation between the masses and the Remnant is set invariably by quality, not by circumstance. The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them.