ur in which the noteworthy person is not sure
whether he ought to be proud or ashamed of that for which he is
distinguished. When a society gives titles, decorations, and rewards for
acts, it stimulates what it rewards and causes new cases of it. The
operation of selection is direct and rational. The cases in which the
application of distinction is irrational show most clearly its selective
effect. School-teachers are familiar with the fact that children will
imitate a peculiarity of one which marks him out from all the rest, even
if it is a deformity or defect. Why then wonder that barbarian mothers
try to deform their babies towards an adopted type of bodily perfection
which is not rationally preferable? A lady of my acquaintance showed me
one of her dolls which had wire attachments on its legs in imitation of
those worn by children for orthopedic effect. She explained that when
she was a child, another child who had soft bones or weak ankles, and
who wore irons for them, was brought into her group of playmates. They
all admired and envied her, and all wished that they had weak bones so
that they could wear irons. This lady made wire attachments for her doll
that it might reach the highest standard.

+183. Aristocracies.+ All aristocracies are groups of those who are
distinguished, at the time, for the possession of those things which are
admired or approved, and which give superiority in the struggle for
existence or in social power. In the higher civilization, until modern
times, the possession of land was the only social power which would
raise a man above sordid cares and enable him to plan his life as he
chose. By talent an income could be won which would give the same
advantage, but not with the same security of permanence and
independence. The fields for talent were war, civil administration, and
religion, the last including all mental activity. Men of talent had to
win their place by craft and charlatanism (sorcery, astrology,
therapeutics). Their position never was independent, except in church
establishments. They had to win recognition from warriors and
landowners, and they became comrades and allies of the latter. Merchants
and bankers were the aristocracy at Carthage, Venice, Florence, and
Genoa, and in the Hansa. Talented military men were aristocrats under
Napoleon, courtiers were such under Louis XIV, and ecclesiastics at
Rome. Since the fourteenth century capital has become a new and the
greatest and