Social Consequences of Heredity. 367 



stitute the mitigated form of caste. The class is not as exclusive 

 as the caste. Though birth and heredity are its groundwork, and 

 though it is natural to a privileged order that it should close its ranks 

 against the new-comer, entrance is still possible ; merit, energy, 

 sometimes even chance, are strong enough to break down the 

 barriers. History, moreover shows that class assumes every pos- 

 sible form, being sometimes inviolable, like caste, anon reduced to 

 very slight differences for the sake of distinction. 



The political institution of classes is found among the Greeks, 

 the Romans, and Germanic nations. Perhaps even we may dis- 

 cover in the beginnings of their history some vestiges of caste. In 

 Rome, at least, the distinction between patrician and plebeian was 

 very sharply drawn at first, and among the Germans between the 

 freeman and the slave. Indeed the institution of slavery, which 

 was universal in ancient times, formed among all peoples at least 

 two classes, based on heredity, and brought about the fact that all 

 ancient communities, even the so-called democracies, were in 

 reality aristocracies. 



We may compare with castes and classes hereditary professions, 

 which are but the same thing under another form. It is even 

 probable, as Lucas says, ' that the heredity of professions is the 

 primitive type, the elementary form of all institutions based on the 

 heredity of the moral nature. Capacities are at first distributed 

 naturally ; man follows his instincts, no less than the animal, the 

 family no less than the species. Practice produces habit, habit 

 produces art, and acquaintance with an art gives an interest in 

 it : nature and education concentrate more and more a given art in 

 a certain family, the common belief regards the art as belonging to 

 that family; in course of time come institutions, religions, conquests, 

 which, in the place of a fact, traditional but free, substitute an 

 obligation, and in place of the spontaneous will of the father, or 

 the instinctive dispositions of the child, set up the will of the law, 

 the conqueror, or the priest.' 



Here no doubt we must assign a large measure of influence to 

 education, to external agencies heredity is not all, yet it is much. 

 If any one doubt this, let him remark how in ancient times certain 

 professions of a purely moral nature, which necessarily presuppose 

 definite psychological conditions, were hereditary, and he will see 



