at the first class distinction
was between the group of people who could command and the group who had
to obey. The second group no doubt consisted in most cases of conquered
enemies who were turned into slaves. They were outsiders, the men of a
lower level.

But the master group, if I may so call it, would have its descendants,
who by virtue of family relationships would seek to keep their position.
This, I conclude, is the fountain head of that stream of blue blood
which has played so large a part in class distinction. It is not
difficult to make out a strong case for it from the point of view of
human evolution. The processes of primitive warfare may have led to the
survival of the fittest or the selection of the best. At a time when the
sense of social responsibility was limited in the extreme, it may have
been a good thing that the management of men should have rested mainly
in the hands of those who by natural endowments and force of character
came to the top. It is unnecessary to dwell at length on the immense
influence both in our own country and elsewhere which this blood
distinction of class has exercised. It is writ large in the history of
the word "gentleman," both in the English word and its Latin ancestor.
The Latin word "generosus," always the equivalent of "gentleman" in
English-Latin documents, signifies a person of good family. It was used
no doubt in this sense by the Rev. John Ball, the strike leader, as we
should call him in modern terms, of the 14th century, in the lines which
formed a kind of battlecry of the rebels:

When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?

A writer of a century later, William Harrison, says: "Gentlemen be those
whom their race and blood or at least their virtues do make noble and
known."

But the distinction is older than this. According to Professor Freeman
it goes back well nigh to the Conquest. Not indeed the distinction of
blood, for that is much older, but the formation of a separate class of
gentlemen. It has been maintained however by some writers that this is
rather antedating the process, and that the real distinction in English
life up to the 14th century was between the nobiles, the tenants in
chivalry, a very large class which included all between Earls and
Franklins; and the ignobiles, i.e. the villeins, the ordinary citizens
and burgesses. The widely prevalent notion that a gentleman was a person
who had a right to wear coat ar