Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/144

130 and the more favorable station of the aristocrat on the battle field of life is one of them. We must bear it with the rest. We can make the attempt to force our way to the front ranks, and if our shoulders and elbows are strong enough we can succeed. If we have not these natural advantages then our complaints of the privileges of the higher classes are about equal to the kid's complaint of the rudeness of the lion who is about to devour her.

If we view the world from the standpoint of natural science, and admit that the universal laws regulating the organic world are also the fundamental and governing principles of human social life, then we can not hesitate to acknowledge that the institution of an hereditary aristocracy is not only natural, but in some respects even useful in a nation. Whatever philosophical speculation which does not take account of actual facts, may have to say against the existence of a privileged class, it is absolutely certain that such a class is sure to arise wherever more than two human beings combine into a permanent union of interests. The example of all communities founded originally upon the basis of absolute equality, is before us to convince us of this fact. The great republic of North America is theoretically a perfect democracy. But practicably, the slave-owners of the southern states formed an hereditary aristocracy with all its specific instincts and attributes, in the eastern states the descendants of the first Puritan pilgrims and of the early colonists from Holland lay claim to an exclusiveness and social privileges, which they deny to the thousands who came over later and their descendants, and the great financial pirates, who have amassed their wealth by making use of the most objectionable stratagems and influence, have established regular hereditary dynasties, whose members are not only in social life the models for the imitation of the crowd,