THE TREND OF EVOLUTION 171 



general all-round excellence of the race, rather than to attempt 

 to develop an intellectual or social aristocracy. 



Decreasing Birth-rate of Intellectual Classes. There is no 

 doubt that intellectual ability is an inherited trait, in spite of 

 the fact that great men have sometimes come from unknown 

 ancestors and unknown men from great ancestors. Mental 

 capacity probably depends upon a number of inheritance 

 factors, and occasionally each of two mediocre parents may 

 supply factors which the other lacks, thus giving rise to an 

 excellent combination which is the initial step in the production 

 of a great man; on the other hand, even superior parents may 

 sometimes furnish a bad combination of inheritance factors, 

 and the resulting child may be mediocre or inferior. But 

 Galton has shown that in an equal number of distinguished 

 and undistinguished families there are about five hundred times 

 as many chances that a distinguished man will come from the 

 former as from the latter. No doubt environment is an im- 

 portant factor in the development of intellect but the possi- 

 bilities of such development are marked out in the germ-plasm. 

 Superior intellectual ability is inherited no less than inferior 

 ability, genius no less than feeble-mindedness. 



It is therefore most important for the intellectual progress 

 of the race that the more intelligent classes should increase 

 and multiply and that the less intelligent should be relatively 

 less fertile, and yet the reverse of this is true. In spite of 

 individual exceptions, the graduates of our colleges and uni- 

 versities probably represent on the whole the most intelligent 

 portion of our population; they have been sifted out from their 

 less gifted fellows by the grammar schools, high schools, and 

 colleges, until, on the average, they are a very highly selected 

 group. But this group is not perpetuating itself. The aver- 

 age number of children per graduate of Harvard and Yale 

 for the years 1881-1890 was about 1.5. Up to the year 1901 

 the average per graduate of Vassar and Bryn Mawr was about 



