98 FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



temerity " a clever and respected writer will formulate 

 phrases and conclusions which are, in face of what 

 Darwin and his successors have demonstrated, absurdly 

 erroneous, in fact, topsy-turvy as compared with the 

 reality. 



The main doctrine which Darwin and his followers 

 have established is that neither castes nor families of 

 higher or lower living things, including man, acquire 

 any new characteristics by exposure to special cir- 

 cumstances or by consuming finer or coarser food, 

 which can or do become innate or fixed in the race. 

 The individual may be improved or depraved, enlarged 

 or enfeebled, by the conditions of his individual life, 

 but he cannot transmit the qualities the improvement, 

 the depravity, the enlargement, or the dwindling 

 which have been thus attained by him to his offspring. 

 The race cannot be changed in this way. All the 

 parents can transmit is the quality which they 

 themselves have inherited of resisting or of collapsing, 

 of becoming enfeebled, or of showing strength and 

 vigour, under certain given conditions. The character- 

 istics of Royalty are not characteristics brought about 

 by the Royal state, any more than the characteristics 

 of English race-horses are brought about by the racing 

 state or by life in a breeder's stable. The characteristics 

 of Royalty are like those of other living things, the 

 characteristics of a certain family or blend of families 

 or strains. Whatever characteristics distinct Royal 

 families have in common with one another are not due 

 to the existence of a natural law in virtue of which 

 the occupations and opportunities of the Royal state 

 produce " faculties " or " characteristics " in the " blood " 

 or "stock." Such similarity of characteristics is due 

 either to the similarity of the demands and conditions 

 of Court life in all parts of Europe, acting as an 

 educating force on the individual, or to the inter- 

 marrying and consequent blending of family character- 



