Where classes do not mean separate currents of thought, as in the case of caste, but are merely differentiations in a common mental whole, there are likely to be several kinds of classes overlapping one another, so that men who fall in the same class from one point of view are separated in another. The groups are like circles which, instead of standing apart, interlace with one another so that several of them may pass through the same individual. Classes become numerous and, so to speak, impersonal; that is, each one absorbs only a part of the life of the individual and does not sufficiently dominate him to mould him to a special type. This is one of the things that distinguish our American order from that, say, of Germany, where caste is still so dominant as to carry many other differences with it and create unmistakable types of men. As a newspaper writer puts it, “The one thing we may be sure of every day is that not a man whom we shall meet in it will belong to his type. The purse-proud aristocrat turns out to be a humble-minded young fellow anxiously envious of our knowledge of golf; the comic actor in private life is dull and shy, and reddens to the tips of his ears when he speaks; the murderer taken out of the dock in a quiet hob-and-nob turns out to be a likable young chap who reminds you of your cousin Bob.” And this independence of particular classes should give one the more opportunity to achieve a truly personal individuality by combining a variety of class affiliations, each one suited to a particular phase of his character. It is, then, easy to see why different classifiers discover different class divisions in our society, according to their points of view; namely, because there are in fact an indefinite number of possible collocations. This would not have been the case anywhere in the Middle Ages, nor is it nearly as much the case in England at the present time as in the United States. We might, to take three of the most conspicuous lines of division, classify the people about us according to trade or profession, according to income, and according to culture. The first gives us lawyers, grocers, plumbers, bankers and the like, and also, more generally, the hand-laboring class, skilled and unskilled, the mercantile class, the professional class and the farming class. The division by income is, of course, related to this, though by no means identical. We might reckon paupers, the poor, the comfortable, the well-to-do and the rich. Culture and refinement have with us no very close or essential connection with occupation or wealth, and a classification based upon the former would show a very general rearrangement. There are many scholars and philosophers among us who, like Thoreau, follow humble trades and live upon the income of day labor.