An aristocracy of brains--that is to say, an aristocracy composed of individuals successful and prominent in their several callings--seems to be the logical sequence of our institutions under present social and industrial conditions. The only aristocracy which can exist in a democracy is one of honorable success evidenced by wealth or a handsome income, but the character of such an aristocracy will depend on the ambitions and tastes of the nation. The inevitable economic law of supply and demand governs here as elsewhere, and will govern until such a time as society may be reconstructed on an entirely new basis. Only the leaders in any vocation can hope to grow rich, but in proportion as the demands of the nation for what is best increase will the type and characteristics of these leaders improve. The doing away with inherited orders of nobility and deliberate, patented class distinctions, gives the entire field to wealth. We boast proudly that no artificial barriers confine individual social promotion; but we must remember at the same time that those old barriers meant more than the perpetuation of perfumed ladies and idle gentlemen from century to century. We are too apt to forget that the aristocracies of the old world signified in the first place a process of selection. The kings and the nobles, the lords and the barons, the knights who fought and the ladies for whom they died, were the master-spirits of their days and generations, the strong arms and the strong brains of civilized communities. They stood for force, the force of the individual who was more intelligent, more capable, and mightier in soul and body than his neighbors, and who claimed the prerogatives of superiority on that account. These master-spirits, it is true, used these prerogatives in such a manner as to crystallize society into the classes and the masses, so hopelessly for the latter that the gulf between them still is wide as an ocean, notwithstanding that present nobilities have been shorn of their power so that they may be said to exist chiefly by sufferance. And yet the world is still the same in that there are men more intelligent, more capable, and mightier in soul and body than their fellows. The leaders of the past won their spurs by prowess with the battle-axe and spear, by wise counsel in affairs of state, by the sheer force of their superior manhood. The gentleman and lady stood for the best blood of the world, though they so often belied it by their actions.