appeared in public without a cortège resembling an army. But even to-day at the older English universities American Rhodes scholars are looked at askance for doing for themselves things which the British student has done for him by his "scout." Incapacity to exist without the services of menials is looked upon as a requisite of gentility. In South America to-day no first-class passenger carries his bag between cab and railway coach. In hotel or club the guest is respected by the servants to the degree that he will be waited on. If he does things for himself, he is despised and insulted. The Peruvian lady goes to church attended at a respectful distance by a small servant carrying her prayer book and umbrella. The Argentine astronomer shrinks from looking after and covering his instrument. The American rector of a Peruvian university had to set an example of self-help in order to rid his students of the idea that in their archaeological excursions they must take along servants to care for the horses and prepare the meals. Since being served is a mark of gentility, it will be long before South Americans take kindly to the "self-serve" cafeterias so popular among us. Ceremonial cleanness. As means of giving servants enough to do there grow up among the wealthy standards of cleanness which are quite mystical compared with that hatred of dirt which shows itself in the Dutch, Yankee, or Japanese housewife. Thus, in order that his hands may be immaculately clean, the man who tends door in a fine family is kept from the heavier labors of the household. Then he is supplied with a tray to receive the visiting card in order that even his clean hands may not touch it, and finally, the hands which hold the tray are covered with white gloves! CHAP. XXVIII Pursuits Abstention from all useful employment. Not to have to do Gainful anything for a living is signal proof of a fortune exempting one Are from the common lot. The gentleman may be very busy, but he Humilific will be busy with his pleasures, his sports, his hobbies, his philanthropies, his public services; not with gainful pursuits. If he does anything remunerative, it will be work of the desk, not of the tool. The distinction roots, no doubt, in the contrast of intellectual with manual, of plan with performance, of giving orders with taking them. But it is possible that the age-old scorn of manual labor has sprung in part from its repulsive associations, CHAP. XXVIII Import ance of Manners e.g., sweat, grime, bad odors, ill-kept teeth, uncared-for fingernails, and neglect of the body. If so, it may gain dignity with the appearance of educated, well-paid men who, nevertheless, work with tools. In the well-groomed electrician or engineer who still gets his hands oily, manual labor loses its old offensive associations. If handwork generally were performed by well-read, self-respecting, cleanly people, no doubt the stigma on it could not be sustained. From this point of view, the cheapening and diffusion of the bathtub, the shower-bath, underclothing, the toothbrush, the nail scissors, the safety razor, and the leather shoe are democratizing society by sapping the very basis of class distinctions. Good breeding. A leisure class always gives great attention to the arts of social intercourse and cultivates the impulses appropriate to pleasure association. Those "to the manner born" despise parvenus as lacking the gracious self-effacing ways of gentle" folk, and insist that nothing but breeding can form the soul of the gentleman or lady. When wealth shifts to new families, dignity, quietness, and refinement are the emphasized assets of the old element. For instance, an English traveler visiting Frankfort in 1803 observes that the nobility there lose no opportunity to point out the distinctions that ought to be made between their families and those of the bourgeois, who, though they have by commerce or some profession equally ignoble attained great wealth, which enables them to live in a style of magnificence unbecoming their rank; yet their noble neighbors insinuate that they always retain a vulgarity of sentiment and manners, unknown to those whose blood has flowed pure through several generations, unmixed with that puddle which stagnates in the veins of plebeians." A hundred years later a visitor in Charleston, South Carolina, remarks: The highest society of Charleston displays contempt toward the plutocrat. Although at its most exclusive functions may be seen a seamstress or a street-car conductor whose family, impoverished by the "war between the States," has in no way lost its social status, the merely rich are inexorably excluded. No newspaper there would Moore, quoted by Giddings, "Descriptive and Historical Sociology," p. 265. venture or care to print an account of these exclusive assemblies. The social set that provides the standard of social taste and tone for the city would not tolerate the sycophancy of the "yellow journals" that devote whole columns to what rich women wear at the New York Horse Show.8 СНАР. XXVIII an Orna Culture Protects the High Possession of an ornamental culture. Another test by which Esteem for the born members of the leisure class fend off the pushful bour- mental geois is the possession of lore and skill which the self-made have had no time to acquire. Such lore will be as remote as possible from the knowledge underlying the useful arts and professions. It will have to do with means of self-expression and sources of enjoyment rather than with the utilitarian branches. Thus Dill observes of the aristocracy in later Roman society: 9 This class, separated from the masses by pride of birth and privilege and riches, was even more cut off from them by its monopoly of culture. An aristocrat, however long his pedigree, however broad his acres, would have hardly found himself at home in the circle of Sidonius if he could not turn off pretty vers de société or letters fashioned in that euphuistic style which centuries of rhetorical discipline had elaborated. The members of that class were bound to one another by the tradition of ancestral friendships, by common interests and pursuits, but not least by academic companionship and the pursuit of that ideal of culture which more and more came to be regarded as the truest title to the name of Roman, the real stamp of rank. Learning, however, may serve as a quite independent basis of distinction. Among the ancient Irish it appears to have possessed a great social value. High honors and rewards were conferred upon the poet, teacher, or historiographer. In bodyfine and social rank the several grades of learned and professional men were on a level with the chieftain grades. Kings promoted their tutors to high positions and during an interregnum the regent was a cleric and poet. In the later Roman Empire, also, learning appears to have shone with its own light: The senatorial class prided themselves, as we have seen, on their culture quite as much as on their birth and opulence. And they held in corresponding estimation the class whose business it was to maintain the literary tradition. Symmachus, at the beginning of the cen 8 E. H. Abbott, "Religious Life in America," p. 119. Dill, "Roman Society," p. 161. Born from the Compe tition of the Rising But Learn ing May Be Valued for Its Own Sake CHAP. XXVIII tury, and Sidonius, towards its close, were aristocrats to their finger tips, valuing even to excess hereditary rank. Yet both Symmachus and Sidonius admitted freely to their inner circle men who owed their position solely to literary skill and dexterity of the kind then. admired. They lived on terms of fraternal intimacy with men whose days were spent in the drudgery of the classroom.10 In China public monuments are erected to eminent teachers and commemorative arches record the pride of a town in a son who has won honors in a state examination. In Germany productive scholarship enjoys such prestige that a stream of firstclass ability continually pours into university careers, while in the United States it is so little appreciated that the college faculties fail to get their share of the men of talent. Hereditary PERSONAL RATING VERSUS SOCIAL CLASS What, it may be asked, is the relation of the social gradation I have been describing to the ratings men continually make of their fellows on the basis of ability, success, and character? The answer is that while such differences greatly influence men in their treatment and trust of one another, they do not of themselves create social grades. Sometimes the social hierarchy pays no heed whatever to such values. At best it takes account of them, but not as if they were the natural foundation of social grades. We consider a society as remarkably healthy in tone when the man of unusual achievement, the poet, artist, thinker, or explorer, has entrée to the highest social class. But one never finds such a class composed entirely of achievers, irrespective of their pecuniary means and style of living. Character, too, may be given no little weight in placing one in the social scale. The hero or saint, the founder of a religious order or a new philanthropy, is likely to be a privileged person, above all conventional distinctions. On the other hand, the rich or well-born who shows himself mean or craven, makes himself ridiculous, or flouts the current moral standard may be cast out from his social class. Nevertheless, such concessions of class to common-sense personal ratings should not blind us to the fact that definite and inheritable social gradings never rest on practical worth-differences among individuals, but always on impersonal 10 Dill, "Roman Society," p. 337. differences in respect to employment, function, wealth, and the conventional signs of wealth. RESULTS OF GRADATION The recognition of impersonal differences affects the classes in various ways: 1. The inferior is required to repress all signs of emotion in the presence of the superior. Thus in Japan under the old régime the code of a military camp governed the contacts between classes. Talking in the presence of the superior, or laughter, or curious questions, or expressions of surprise — anything revealing the slightest emotion on the part of the humbler was considered discourtesy and punished with great rigor. 2. Personality is very unequally developed in superior and inferior. Says Gulick of Old Japan: CHAP. XXVIII ality Social There was no redress for the peasant in case of harshness. It Personwas always the wise policy, therefore, for him to accept whatever Dwarfed was given without even the appearance of dissatisfaction. This in the spirit was connected with the dominance of the military class. Sim- Inferior ple trustfulness was, therefore, chiefly the spirit of the non-military classes. While, therefore, it is beyond dispute that the old social order was communal in type, and so did not give freedom to the individual nor tend to develop strong personality among the masses, it is also true that it did develop men of commanding personality among the rulers. Those who from youth were in the hereditary line of rule, sons of Shōguns, daimyos, and samurai, were forced by the very communalism of the social order to an exceptional personal development. They shot far ahead of the common man. Feudalism is favorable to the development of personality in the favored few, while it represses that of the masses. Individualism, on the contrary, giving liberty of thought and act, with all that these imply, is favorable to the development of the personality of all.11 3. Status, not bargain, regulates dealings between superior and inferior. Says Gulick: The idea of making a bargain when two persons entered upon some particular piece of work, the one as employer, the other as employed, was entirely repugnant to the older generation, since it was assumed that their relations as inferior and su 11 “Social Evolution of the Japanese,” pp. 121, 375. |