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 of government, he recognized, is in the constitution of man: "Every human society wants to be officered by the best class, who shall be masters instructed in all the great arts of life; shall be wise, temperate, brave, public men, adorned with dignity and accomplishments." He perceived that it is no true function of the philosopher to bring into contempt even imperfect instruments of order and liberty till better instruments are at hand.

Like most Americans, however, he had pretty much lost respect for government by an hereditary aristocracy. He acknowledges the virtues of the hereditary principle but with a touch of disdain: it has "secured permanence of families, firmness of customs, a certain external culture and good taste; gratified the ear with historic names." Its defect was its failure to make the laws of nature serve it. Nature did not co-operate with the system: "the heroic father did not surely have heroic sons, and still less heroic grandsons; wealth and ease corrupted the race."

He goes a long way towards accepting the principles of the French Revolution. His respect for efficient power makes him betray, in Representative Men, a great admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte, qualified by grave reservations. He desires, with Carlyle, to bring forward a natural aristocracy, an aristocracy of talent. He would like to believe that democracy is the means for recruiting that talent, for organizing the superior class by which