BLUE BLOOD 146 



adopted, as Herbert Spencer supposes, because of the 

 greater cohesion and discipline it ensures in ruling 

 families by means of the personal authority of their 

 chiefs, and also because it favours ancestor- worship. 

 But clearly an aristocracy which asks no questions 

 as to the origin, the capacity, or the disposition of its 

 female recruits cannot pretend to be made of much 

 finer clay than the rest of humanity. That this fact 

 is advantageous to the class is our contention. 

 Logically, however, it destroys the basis of all class 

 privilege whatever. What is the usual origin of a 

 noble family ? A man distinguishes himself in the 

 field or in the council chamber, and is rewarded for 

 his services with a title. His wife is a woman, we 

 may suppose, of an inferior type. Do the offspring 

 of this ennobled couple inherit exclusively their 

 father's qualities ? By no means ; we have shown in 

 a preceding chapter that heredity is practically as 

 powerful on the female as on the male side, and it 

 follows therefore that the transmission from father to 

 son of title and prerogative implies no corresponding 

 transmission of physical or moral qualities. As a 

 matter of fact, hereditary nobility, especially when 

 carried beyond the second generation, is an affair of 

 names and titles merely. 



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