We may say of this differentiation, speaking generally, that it is useful. The various functions of life require special influences and organization, and without some class spirit, some speciality in traditions and standards, nothing is well performed. Thus, if our physicians were not, as regards their professional activities, something of a psychological unit, building up knowledge and sentiment by communication, desiring the approval and dreading the censure of their colleagues, it would be worse not only for them but for the rest of us. There are no doubt class divisions that are useless or harmful, but something of this nature there should be, and I have already tried to show that our own society suffers considerably from a lack of adequate group differentiation in its higher mental activities.
Fundamental to all study of classes are the two principles, of inheritance and of competition, according to which their membership is determined. The rule of descent, as in the hereditary nobility of England or Germany, gives a fixed system, the alternative to which is some kind of selection—by election or appointment as in our politics; by purchase, as formerly in the British army and navy; or by the informal action of preference, opportunity and endeavor, as in the case of most trades and professions at the present day.
Evidently these two principles are very much intermingled in their working. The hereditary distinctions must have a beginning in some sort of selective struggle, such as the military and commercial competition from which privileged families have emerged in the past, and never become so rigid as not to be modified by similar processes. On the other hand, inherited advantages, even in the freest society, enter powerfully into every kind of competition.
Another consideration of much interest is that the strict rule of descent is a biological principle, making the social organization subordinate to physical continuity of life, while selection or competition brings in psychical elements, of the most various qualities to be sure, but capable at the best of forming society on a truly rational method.
Finally it is well to recognize that there is a vast sum of influences governed by no ascertainable principle at all, which go to assign the individual his place in the class system. After allowing for inheritance and for everything which can fairly be called selection (that is, for all definite and orderly interaction between the man and the system), there remains a large part which can be assigned only to chance. This is particularly true in the somewhat tumultuous changes of modern life.
When a class is somewhat strictly hereditary, we may call it a caste—a name originally applied to the hereditary classes of India, but to which it is common, and certainly convenient, to give a wider meaning.
Perhaps the best way to understand caste is to open our eyes and note those forces at work among ourselves which might conceivably give rise to it.
On every side we may see that differences arise, and that these tend to be perpetuated through inherited associations, opportunities and culture. The endeavor to secure for one’s children whatever desirable thing one has gained for oneself is a perennial source of caste, and this endeavor flows from human nature and the moral unity of the family. If a man has been able to save money, he anxiously invests it to yield an income after his death; if he has built up a business, it is his hope that his children may succeed him in it; if he has a good handicraft, he wishes his boys to learn it. And so with less tangible goods—education, culture, religious and moral ideas—there is no good parent but desires his children to have more than the common inheritance of what is best in these things. It is, perhaps, safe to say that if the good of his children could be set on one side and the good of all the rest of the world over against it on the other, the average parent would desire that evil might befall the latter rather than the former. And much of the wider social spirit of recent times comes from the belief that we cannot make this separation, and that to secure the real good of our children we must work for the common advancement.
That this endeavor to secure a succession in desirable function is not confined to the rich we may see, for instance, in the fact that labor unions often have regulations tending to secure to the children of members a complete or partial monopoly of the opportunities of apprenticeship. In Chicago, not long since, only the son of a plumber could learn the plumber’s trade.
As being the actual possessor of the advantages in question, the parent is usually in a position either to hand them over directly to his children, or to make their acquisition comparatively easy. Wealth, the most obvious and tangible source of caste, is transmissible, even in the freest societies, under the sanction and protection of law. And wealth is convertible not only into material goods but, if the holder has a little tact and sense, into other and finer advantages—educational opportunities, business and professional openings, travel and intercourse with people of refinement and culture. Against this we must, of course, offset the diminished motive to exertion, the lack of rough-and-tumble experience, and other disadvantages which inherited wealth, especially if large, is apt to bring with it; but that it does, as a rule, perpetuate the more conventional sorts of superiority is undeniable.