It has been observed with regard to ancient clan organizations that a nobility would very frequently emerge when the head of the gens was always elected from the same lineage. That lineage was thus not preferred from the outset, but rather only came to be preferred once the expectation existed that it would always supply someone qualified for the leadership position. In that the entire family thereupon became a nobility, it discounted the merit and honor which any of its members would probably acquire someday and which, radiating back from the future, as it were, provided the ennobling substance for the whole lineage.

XREF: Relates to theories of institutional path dependence and how repeated practice crystallizes into social hierarchy.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 508