Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/143

Rh Scott, Macaulay and Tennyson may be raised to the peerage, but their descendants if they happen to have any, will never represent in aristocratic circles the intellectual giants of the people from which they sprang. And even when a nobleman born, like Byron for instance, has the gift of genius, this does not prove that it was the prerogative of his rank.

Thus we see that the finest intelligences of a nation are not to be found in its hereditary aristocracy, which as members of a caste, are only superior to the rest of the nation by their qualities of body and character. In consequence of this fact it is to their interest to rate these qualities higher than those which they do not possess. They set up an ideal before the man and the citizen, which does not depend for its brilliancy upon intellectual endowments, and where their influence preponderates, intelligence can not count upon being accorded the rank to which it considers itself justly entitled. A second disadvantage of an hereditary aristocracy in a nation, is that its existence leads unavoidably to violations of the right of single citizens. It deprives many of them of their just share of air and sunshine. It has one advantage over the plebeian which increases the obstacles in the upward path of the latter, sometimes closing it entirely. All the laws which assert the equality of the citizens without regard to birth, are powerless in the matter: the conditions being equal between two rival candidates, the one of aristocratic birth will obtain the coveted position, and often in spite of the fact that he is known to be inferior in endowments to the other. And it can not be otherwise. Absolute justice is a theoretical conception which can not be materialized. Justice as we realize it, is the diagonal of a parallelogram whose sides are might and the ideal of right. The constitution of society imposes upon us all certain limitations,