THE BLOOD OF THE NATION. 95 



primitive, aboriginal. His lineage has always been that of the clown 

 and swineherd. The heavy jaw and slanting forehead can be found in 

 the oldest mounds and tombs of France. Tlie skulls of Engis and Ne- 

 anderthal were typical men of the hoe, and through the days of the 

 Gauls and Bomans the race was not extinct. The 'lords and masters 

 of the earth' can prove an alibi when accused of the fashioning of the 

 ten-ible shape of this primitive man. And men of this shape persist 

 to-day in regions never invaded by our social or political tyranny, aiid 

 their kind is older than any existing social order. 



That he is 'chained to the wheel of labor' is the result, not the 

 cause, of his impotence. In dealing with him, therefore, Ave are far 

 from the 'labor problem' of to-day, far from the workman brutalized by 

 machinery, and from all the wrongs of the poor set forth in the con- 

 ventional literature of sympathy. 



XIV. In our discussion of decadence we turn to France first sim- 

 ply as a convenient illustration. Her sins have not been greater than 

 those of other lands, nor is the penalty more significant. Her case 

 rises to our hand to illustrate a principle which applies to all human 

 history and to all history of groups of animals and plants as well. Our 

 picture, such as it is, we must paint with a broad brush, for we have no 

 space for exceptions and qualifications, which, at the most, could only 

 prove the rule. To weigh statistics is impossible, for the statistics we 

 need have never been collected. The evil effects of 'military selection" 

 and allied causes have been long recognized by students of social science, 

 but their ideas have not penetrated into the common literature of com- 

 mon life. 



The survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence is the primal 

 cause of race progress and race changes. But in the red field of human 

 history the natural process of selection is often reversed. The survival 

 of the unfittest is the primal cause of the downfall of nations. Let us 

 see in what ways this cause has operated in the history of France. 



XV. First, we may consider the relation of the nobility to the 

 peasantry, the second to the third estate. 



The feudal nobility of each nation was in the beginning made up 

 of the fair, the brave and the strong. By their courage and strength 

 their men became the rulers of the people, and by the same token they 

 chose the beauty of the realm to be their own. 



In the polity of England this superiority was emphasized by the law 

 of primogeniture. On 'inequality before the law' British polity has 

 always rested. Men have tried to take a certain few to feed these on 

 'royal jelly,' as the young queen bee is fed, and thus to raise them to a 

 higher class — distinct from all the workers. To take this leisure class 

 out of the struggle and competition of life, so goes the theory', is to 

 make of the first-born and his kind harmonious and perfect men and 



