In America at least this sentiment is not that of a struggling lower class but of, practically, the whole community. With reference to so vital a part of our traditional ideal there are no classes; all the people feel substantially alike; and there is no public purpose for which wealth is so freely spent as in the support of institutions whose purpose is to keep open the path of opportunity from any condition of life to any other. There is also, back of this sentiment, a belief that equal opportunity makes for the general good, since that system of society =will= be most efficient, other things equal, in which each individual is required to prove that he has more fitness than others for his special function. Every one can see, at times, the deteriorating effect of family influence—as upon business establishments when a less competent son succeeds his father, or upon military service, as in the British army at the outbreak of the Boer war. On the other hand, the results of a confused competition may be worse than those of order, even if the latter rests upon an artificial principle. Thus it is said with some truth—and this is perhaps the most considerable argument for caste in modern life—that a class having hereditary wealth and position, like the English aristocracy, makes a permanent channel for high traditions of culture and public service, and that it is well to preserve such traditions even at the cost of a somewhat exclusive order to contain and cherish them. De Tocqueville, himself imbued with the best traditions of the old French aristocracy, held this view, and ascribed the lack of intellectual distinction in the America of his day largely to the fact that there was no class “in which the taste for intellectual pleasures is transmitted with hereditary fortune and leisure, and by which the labors of the intellect are held in honor.”[112] The answer, of course, is that there are other means than caste for securing the continuity of special traditions, and, more particularly, that voluntary associations are capable of supplanting inherited wealth as channels of culture. In the various branches of science, for example, we have vigorous and continuing groups, with plenty of _esprit de corps_, by which the labors of the intellect are held in honor. If libraries, associations and educational institutions can do this for one phase of culture, why not for others?