Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/149

Rh not a single one of the conditions of a natural aristocracy. The demi-god nobility in those nations which have not been subjected to foreign conquest, and the victor nobility in those nations which were subjugated,—the original noble stock in all has either died out or decayed. Died out or decayed, and that too, by its own fault, because it resisted the operation of those laws of nature to which it owed its own existence, because it became exclusive, and did not understand how to renew its youth. On account of this many families wore out their fruitfulness, so that the day arrived when no heir was forthcoming; in others the descendants of distinguished ancestors became gradually stupid, cowardly and weakly; they were not able to defend either their estates or their positions from the covetousness of those beneath them, more powerful and vigorous than they, and so they have gradually sunk lower and lower into poverty and obscurity, until their blood now flows perhaps, in the veins of some day-laborer or peasant. Their positions left vacant by death or decay, are filled by a miscellaneous set of people who do not owe their elevation to higher organizations, not to nature, but to the favor of monarchs or other distinguished persons. All the aristocracy of the present day—I do not believe there are any authentic exceptions to this rule—is patent aristocracy, and in by far the largest majority of cases, of very recent date. An individual will, not an anthropological law, was the creator of their titles. But how since the Middle Ages, beyond which not a single genealogical tree in Europe spreads its branches, hew did the fortunate man gain the favor of the prince which found expression in the letters patent of nobility? By ideal human qualities, by endowments, talents, which made it desirable to use their possessor as new and fine stock for the elevation of the race? The history of all the noble houses of Europe