I think I realize
that caste does not exist and cannot exist except by common consent of
the masses outside of its limits. I thought caste created itself and
perpetuated itself; but it seems quite true that it only creates itself,
and is perpetuated by the people whom it despises, and who can dissolve
it at any time by assuming its mere sign-names themselves."
"It's what I think. There isn't any power on earth that can prevent
England's thirty millions from electing themselves dukes and duchesses
to-morrow and calling themselves so. And within six months all the
former dukes and duchesses would have retired from the business.
I wish they'd try that. Royalty itself couldn't survive such a process.
A handful of frowners against thirty million laughers in a state of
irruption. Why, it's Herculaneum against Vesuvius; it would take another
eighteen centuries to find that Herculaneum after the cataclysm. What's
a Colonel in our South? He's a nobody; because they're all colonels down
there. No, Tracy" (shudder from Tracy) "nobody in England would call you
a gentleman and you wouldn't call yourself one; and I tell you it's a
state of things that makes a man put himself into most unbecoming
attitudes sometimes--the broad and general recognition and acceptance of
caste as caste does, I mean.
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