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endowments of the parents. The son had the feeling that his father did not owe his exaltation to any capricious human favor, but to Mother Nature herself, and he expressed this idea in terms corresponding to his primitive conceptions, so that he boasted of being descended from the gods of his people, or, otherwise expressed, from its ideal types. The ancient Germanic races, the modern Hindoos, and certain primitive tribes such as the North American Indians, have this demi-god nobility. But where on the contrary, a nation has been formed from a mixture of different ethnological elements, where a stronger has conquered a weaker race, the descendants of the conquerors, that is, of the more vigorous and energetic stock, better developed at least physically, form the aristocracy. This was the origin of the nobility in all the European countries, which during the Dark Ages, were obliged to submit to the irruptions of alien, mostly Germanic races. The original aristocratic stock of France was mixed Frankish, Burgundian and Saxon-Norman, of Spain, west Gothic, of Italy, Vandalian, Gothic and Lombard, partly also Suabian, French and Spanish, in Russia, Scandinavian, in England, Norman, in Hungary, Magyar, and in China, Mantchoorian. Everything that I have said in regard to the justification of the existence of a superior social class, can be applied to an aristocracy that was originally composed of the most perfect individuals of the race, or of the conquering nation. Such a noblesse will be fully justified in assuming the places of honor and responsibility, because they will have the strength to seize them and retain them. From the start, better organized and higher-minded than the masses of the plebeians, they will be obliged to practise and increase their strength and valor continually, as otherwise they could not resist the encroachments of the people. By this means their suprem-