--Nothing is better known than the distinction of social ranks which
exists in every community, and nothing is harder to define. The great
gentlemen and ladies of a place are its real lords and masters and
mistresses; they are the quality, whether in a monarchy or a republic;
mayors and governors and generals and senators and ex-presidents are
nothing to them. How well we know this, and how seldom it finds a
distinct expression! Now I tell you truly, I believe in man as man, and
I disbelieve in all distinctions except such as follow the natural lines
of cleavage in a society which has crystallized according to its own true
laws. But the essence of equality is to be able to say the truth; and
there is nothing more curious than these truths relating to the
stratification of society.
Of all the facts in this world that do not take hold of immortality,
there is not one so intensely real, permanent, and engrossing as this of
social position,--as you see by the circumstances that the core of all
the great social orders the world has seen has been, and is still, for
the most part, a privileged class of gentlemen and ladies arranged in a
regular scale of precedence among themselves, but superior as a body to
all else.
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