222 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 



position. When once more the importance of good 

 birth comes to be recognised in a new sense, when the 

 innate physical and mental qualities of different families 

 are recorded in a central sociological department or 

 scientifically reformed College of Arms, the pedigrees 

 of all will be known to be of supreme interest. It 

 will be understood to be more important to marry into 

 a family with a good hereditary record of physical, 

 mental, and moral qualities than it ever has been con- 

 sidered to be allied to one with sixteen quarterings. 



In many directions during the nineteenth century 

 in England the prevailing habit of mind thought little 

 of old traditions, the true meaning of which our 

 imperfect knowledge did not then suffice to explain. 

 Often the tradition embalmed the accumulated ex- 

 perience of the ages, and involved truer wisdom than 

 could be deduced by a priori reasoning from faulty 

 or insufficient premises. This shallow intellectualism 

 is characteristic of the period in all realms of thought. 

 It overshadowed for a time, or in some cases perhaps 

 destroyed for ever, survivals of scientific and practical 

 value in politics, sociology, philosophy, and religion. 

 In no department of knowledge was the self-satisfied 

 individualism of 1850 more positive or more at fault 

 than in matters of genealogy and heredity. The 

 aristocratic theory of the family, which even those who 

 believed in and acted on hardly then ventured to 

 support openly, contains the root of the matter, and 

 only wants restating in modern terms to take its place 

 as a great scientific truth. Families in which good and 

 noble qualities of mind and body have become hereditary 

 form a natural aristocracy, and, if such families take pride 



