PREFACE 



THE word aristocracy as used in the title of this 

 volume has no exclusive, and indeed no special 

 reference to a class distinguished by hereditary 

 political privileges, by titles, or by heraldic pedigree. 

 It here means the exceptionally gifted and efficient 

 minority, no matter what the position in which its 

 members may have been born, or what the sphere 

 of social progress in which their exceptional effi- 

 ciency shows itself. I have chosen the word 

 aristocracy in preference to the word oligarchy 

 because it means not only the rule of the few, 

 but of the best or the most efficient of the few. 



Of the various questions involved in the general 

 argument of the work, many would, if they were 

 to be examined exhaustively, demand entire treatises 

 to themselves rather than chapters. This is 

 specially true of such questions as the nature of 

 men's congenital inequalities, the effects of different 

 classes of motive in producing different classes of 

 action, and the effects of equal education on un- 

 equal talents and temperaments. But the practical 



