ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes to consider elites, not as constituting social classes, but rather as groups which emerge to positions of leadership and influence at every social level—that is to say, as leaders of classes or of other important elements in the social structure. The social theorist cannot rest content with merely cataloguing these numerous elites. The English ‘public school’ came to occupy the key position in the selection of those who were to fill the positions of influence over a very wide field. In relation to higher education generally the course of development in Scotland differed substantially from that in England. In England, the distinction between ‘Church’ and ‘Chapel’ has always, since the rise of Dissent, been a social as well as a religious distinction, both cutting across class differences and powerfully influencing estimations of class.
