usic, the dance, science, and philosophy, providing
outlets, occupations and professions that have colored and shaped many
aspects of civilized living.

A fourth collective goal of civilization has been the establishment and
maintenance of social structure, including classes and/or caste lines
based partly upon tradition, partly on function and partly upon
proximity to the honey-pot, the wellspring of wealth, income, prestige
and power.

Since the principle of private property has been implicit in every known
civilization, the ownership of land, capital and consumer goods and
services has been a prerogative of the ruling oligarchies, shared by
them with their associates and dependents and used as their chief means
of establishing and maintaining the "you work, I eat" principal of
economic relationships.

Private property, and its derivative, unearned or property income, has
enabled the ruling oligarchies of civilized communities to receive the
first fruits of every enterprise. They have also enabled the oligarchs
to establish a priority scale of income distribution under which those
who held property and its derivatives could have first choice among
available consumer goods and services. Second choice went to the
associates, retainers and defenders of the oligarchs. Third choice went
to the preferred, professional experts who spoke for and represented the
oligarchy. Fourth choice went to the artisans--skilled designers,
builders, fabricators. What remained went to hewers of wood and drawers
of water, the workers, women and men, who provided the necessaries,
comforts, luxuries upon which physical survival and social status
depended. Generally this proletarian mass, including chattel slaves,
serfs, tenant farmers and war captives, were outside the pale of
respectability. In a caste-divided community they were scavengers and
untouchables, living a life close to that of domestic animals.

Most civilizations have permitted gifted individuals to move vertically,
from the bottom toward the top levels of the social pyramid. Vertical
movement was severely restricted, however. Generally people lived,
served and died on the class or caste level into which they were born.

Members of classes and castes are not free agents. They have privileges
and rights. They also have obligations and duties. Classes and castes
are functioning parts of an interdependent social whole which can
maintain balanced order only so long as each segme