ABSTRACT
The values and ideology of traditional aristocrats must, of course, be understood in the context of their world and of the roles they play and of the functions they serve in it. In general, the aristocrat's honor requires him to behave in accordance with a strict and often elaborate, though unwritten, code, like the bushido of the Japanese samurai and the li of the Chou aristocracy of China. In traditional aristocratic empires, merchants do not play a big role, and aristocrats simply look down on them as they do on all nonaristocrats. The aristocracy's claim to superiority becomes strikingly evident in the legal status it assigns to itself. Just as behavioral, ideological, and cultural differences between aristocrats and nonaristocrats are interpreted by the aristocracy as proof of its superiority and nobility, so are racial differences. The aristocrat's sexual involvement with nonaristocratic women is, in part, a result of the very prohibition which keeps him from marrying such women.
