Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/156

by unfavorable inbreeding in a narrow circle of equally poorly qualified families, or else by contracting misalliances with undeveloped or abnormally developed exceptional types of womankind. These sociological and anthropological facts are open to the eyes of all and are known to all cultivated people. And yet — and here we see another monument of human cowardice, stupidity and hypocrisy—and yet the nobility enjoys a supreme social consideration, accorded by most men voluntarily and even with a certain inward satisfaction. Snobbishness, which so "dearly loves a lord," is at home in all countries, even the most democratic. The Frenchman, who boasts of having discovered equality, is as proud of the acquaintance of a duke or marquis, and as interested in the daily life of his national aristocracy, as any English flunky. The American, who is supposed to adore the Almighty Dollar alone, and pretends to ridicule the differences of social station in the old world, is after all, inwardly enraptured when he can adorn his drawing-room with a live lord. He who wishes to know the exact price of a title, that is in certain countries, can easily obtain the information. The cost of a princely, or baronial coronet is well-known. We are aware that this ornament is the equivalent of a certain sum of money, and yet we pay a reverence to it which we would never think of awarding to the latter. The following little trait shows the propensity to lying of our civilization better than could be proved by volumes of argumentation. A representative laid before the French legislature a proposition to give to any one who so desired it, a title of nobility upon the payment of a certain fixed sum into the treasury; for $12,000 he could become a duke, for $10.000 a marquis, and so on in proportion, until for $3.000 he could assume the simple title of monsieur de. If this proposition were to