Ireland: Democracy and Heredity 



363 



tribution of stupidity and corruption; 

 should agree that mental and moral 

 qualities, such as stupidity and corrupt- 

 ness, are chiefly derived from heredity ; 

 should agree that acquired characteris- 

 tics, such as may result from secular 

 education and religious training, can- 

 not be transmitted through heredity ; 

 and should also agree that there is no 

 essential connection between biological 

 law and the amount of stupidity and 

 corruption in democratic government. 



What is not less curious is that none 

 of the dissentients from my hypothesis, 

 that in a democracy like ours the char- 

 acter of the government depends chiefly 

 on the character of the people, and that 

 the character of the people is deter- 

 mined chiefly through the operation of 

 biological law, states, in his reply to 

 me, by what other causes, in his opin- 

 ion, the quality of government is in 

 fact determined. Indeed, so far as 

 these gentlemen do assign causes for 

 bad government — and they say very lit- 

 tle on this point — they assign causes 

 which are of a biological natiire. 



For instance, Professor Conklin 

 says : "Many faults of democracies 

 are not so much results of the form 

 of government as of the condition and 

 character of the people." But surely 

 character is a biological factor. Again : 

 "A democracy no less than an autoc- 

 racy is a government by leaders, but 

 in the former case these leaders are 

 chosen by the people and are responsi- 

 ble to them and in the latter they are 

 not. . . ." But surely, whether the 

 leader be good or bad, whether he be 

 elected by the people or appointed by 

 a king, the qualities of his leadership 

 are not conferred upon him by his ap- 

 pointment or election, but are derived 

 from his mental and moral characteris- 

 tics ; and these, as most biologists, in- 

 cluding Professor Conklin, agree, are 

 derived chiefly from the operation of 

 heredity ; which brings us back again 

 to biological causation. 



Professor Cook and Mr. Robert Car- 

 ter Cook complain that we do not give 

 special ability and usefulness a selective 

 value and that our tendency, is to "re- 

 strict ourselves further and further to- 



ward mediocrity and inferiority." But 

 mediocrity and inferiority are ad- 

 mittedly derived chiefly from heredity; 

 and the fact that ability and usefulness 

 are not given a selective value under 

 our democratic system can only be due 

 to the ignorance and stupidity of the 

 mediocre and inferior majority which 

 exercises control by force of its num- 

 bers. 



A logical consideration of these 

 truths should, it seems to me, have led 

 their authors to a conclusion closely 

 similar to that expressed in my first 

 article, namely, that the majority of 

 people being mediocre or inferior, it is 

 unreasonable to expect that majority 

 to provide a government which will not 

 be mediocre or inferior. But so far 

 from reaching any such conclusion, they 

 describe my inferences as "reactionary" 

 and "archaic," compare me with "an- 

 other disillusioned specialist in govern- 

 ment," and, having for the purpose of 

 destroying one part of my argument, 

 stated their conviction that we are 

 breeding toward mediocrity and in- 

 feriority, they reprove me for not "look- 

 ing forward to a world of capable, 

 right-minded people. . . ." 



Now, as a matter of fact, my sincere 

 hope, though hardly my confident ex- 

 pectation, is that we may some day see a 

 world in which capable and right- 

 minded people shall exercise a much 

 greater power in government than they 

 now do. This hope is founded on the 

 opinion that the two extremes of ca- 

 pacity and incapacity, of right-minded- 

 ness and wrong-mindedness, are. 

 through the operation of assortative 

 mating, becoming more distinctly sepa- 

 rated from each other in the social 

 scale, and that the more clearly this 

 l)ecomes evident the more likelihood 

 there will be that special ability and 

 usefulness will be given a survival 

 value in our political system. 



This brings me to a discussion of the 

 only purely biological point on which 

 my critics and myself are not in agree- 

 ment — the efifects of assortative mating. 



I was careful to say in my former 

 article that this was a point upon which 

 biologists alone were competent to ex- 



