CASTE AND CLASS
In its broadest statement, the psychology of tipping presents the two antipodal qualities of pride and pusillanimity. The caste system is not based upon the superiority of one class over another, but upon the pride that one stage of human development feels over another stage of human development.
A democracy cannot do away with different stages of development in the human mind. But it does do away with the belief of one stage of development that it is worthy of homage from another stage of development. Democracy does not concede that one man working with his brain is superior to another man working with his brawn. Democracy looks beyond the accident of occupation, or the stage of human development, and sees every man as originating in the same divine source. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
In a monarchy, the craving of the human mind for approbation—the quality of pride—is cultivated into the class or caste system. Those citizens who have attained a larger measure of culture than their fellow-men allow the false sense of pride in that culture to creep into their ideals and actions. They seek for some method of visualizing this assumed superiority, of obtaining the acknowledgment of it from their fellow-men. With an unerring instinct of human nature they play upon the cupidity of those whom they desire to place in a servile relation. A gift of money wins the social distinction they covet.
Thus the tipping custom has its origin in pride, and it necessarily involves humility as a correlative condition. If all men are created equal, as we aver in our basic political creed, they cannot become unequal except artificially, except by an agreement of one set of citizens to play the rôle of servitors for a consideration from another set of citizens. One set of citizens will become abased—that is, they will surrender their birthright of equality—in order that another set may strut around in a belief of superiority and indulge a sense of pride.