176 CEREMONIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



and dukes. And then by the time that monsieur also had 

 become a general title among the upper classes, sieiir had 

 become a bourgeois title. Since which time, by the same 

 process, the early sire and the later sieur dying out, have 

 been replaced by the universal monsieur. So that there 

 appear to have been three waves of diffusion: sire, sieur, 

 and monsieur have successively spread downwards. Xay, 

 even a fourth may be traced. The duplication of the mon 

 sieur on a letter, doubtless at first used to mark a distinc 

 tion, has ceased to mark a distinction. 



How by this process high titles eventually descend to 

 the very lowest people, we are shown most startingly in 

 Spain; where &quot; even beggars address each other as Senor y 

 Caballero Lord and Knight.&quot; 



407. For form s sake, though scarcely otherwise, it is 

 needful to point out that we are taught here the same lesson 

 as before. The title-giving among savages which follows 

 victory over a foe, brute or human, and which literally or 

 metaphorically distinguishes the individual by his achieve 

 ment, unquestionably originates in militancy. Though the 

 more general names father, king, elder, and their deriva 

 tives, which afterwards arise, are not directly militant in 

 their implications, yet they are indirectly so; for they are 

 the names of rulers evolved by militant activity, who habit 

 ually exercise militant functions: being in early stages al 

 ways the commanders of their subjects in battle. Down to 

 our most familiar titles we have this genesis implied. &quot; Es 

 quire &quot; and &quot; Mister &quot; are derived the one from the name of 

 a knight s attendant and the other from the name magister 

 originally a ruler or chief, who was a military head by 

 origin and a civil head by development. 



As in other cases, comparisons of societies of different 

 types disclose this relation in another way. Remarking that 

 in sanguinary and despotic Dahomey, the personal name 

 &quot; can hardly be said to exist; it changes with every rank of 



