Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/146

132 spring, yet he can usually manage to invest him with part of his authority. Nepotism is the very last root of hereditary privileges, which still remains alive, when the democratic hoe has chopped out all the others. It is human nature to favor one's own son or the son of one's friend, instead of strangers, no matter what the merits of the latter may be! The son-in-law of the professor gets the grand scientific title instead of his rival who did not choose a wife with his foresight, the diplomatic career is easily attainable by the son of the Cabinet minister, and all the youthful scions who played about the drawing-rooms and halls of their distinguished fathers' residences, form a ring, a closed phalanx, which the outsider has great difficulty in breaking through, and he who stands nearest to the dish dips his spoon into it first and oftenest.

I have conceded that an aristocracy is a natural and therefore unavoidable and necessarily permanent institution of humanity and do not oppose the hereditary honors and privileges which are accorded to it; but only upon one condition: that the aristocracy really consist of the best and most highly qualified human material in the nation. If a caste of nobility can show an anthropological foundation for its pretensions, then its existence is justified. It must have been formed originally out of a group of selected human beings, whose natural advantages were perpetuated and increased by sexual selection. This is the historical evolution of all aristocracy. In a people originally all equal, the strongest and finest-looking men, the bravest and most sagacious, rose early to positions of power and influence among their fellows, and their children derived their pride in the family name from these natural