Oxford refined Moses’s inherited idealism into directed arrogance about prerogative.

Evidence

The marriage of Bernhard Cohen and Rosalie Silverman had been a marriage of brilliant mind with brilliant mind—and of idealism, crystallized in a desire to improve the lives of the lower classes, with an overweening arrogance. The strain of brilliance, idealism and arrogance had surfaced in a daughter, Lady Bountiful, and had been passed on through her—undiluted, strong but somewhat formless—to her son Robert. Oxford, using the brilliance as catalyst, was to refine the other two ingredients in the strain. Two years among her spires and statue-crowned columns, her quadrangles and cloisters, her towers that had whispered to Matthew Arnold “the last enchantments of the Middle Ages,” would boil the fattiness out of the idealism, rendering out of a vague desire to “help people” not only a clear, definable concept of public service but also a specific means of performing that service. Two years among her richly paneled halls, her ancestral tankards and inlaid croziers, among begowned processions led by bedels carrying silver staves and among gardens tended by a thousand gardeners would distill the arrogance, potent though it already was, and make it still more potent by adding to its essence a philosophical base, the British belief, firm indeed in the early twentieth century and epitomized in the trappings and teachings of Oxford, in the duties—and the rights—of those born to wealth and privilege. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 210

Categorization

• XREF: This genealogical transmission of brilliance-idealism-arrogance connects to the reader’s interest in how elite institutions (like the British public schools in earlier reading) manufacture rulers. — connects to: The acquisition of power transformed Moses’ character into overt arrogance — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 1066; Oxford transformed hereditary arrogance into upper-class ideology of noblesse oblige — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 210; Robert Moses’ arrogance and force of will were inherited from his mother and grandmother — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 160 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The acquisition of power transformed Moses’ character into overt arrogance #qualifies (0.80) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 1066
• Robert Moses’ arrogance and force of will were inherited from his mother and grandmother #contradicts (0.80) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 160
• Moses unconsciously imitated his mother’s arrogant mannerisms #contradicts (0.75) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 159
• Oxford transformed hereditary arrogance into upper-class ideology of noblesse oblige #complicates (0.72) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 210