37 2 Heredity. 



nobility is the result of two factors the idea, whether true or false, 

 of a certain merit above the common, and the opinion that this merit 

 is transmissible. Undoubtedly, from the altogether ideal point of 

 view, the institution of nobility may be considered an excellent 

 one. To choose only the best; to keep intact the selections made, 

 and from the cradle to fashion them by tradition, precept, and 

 example; to care for them as we care for a choice and rare hot- 

 house plant embedded in rich mould to do this would be to prac- 

 tise strict selection, with education added. But this is only a 

 dream, as may be easily shown. 



First, as regards its origin ; nobility, while assuming to be a select 

 class, has never been any such thing, save in a very restricted 

 sense that it fostered the warlike virtues. It had everywhere its 

 rise in that period of the youth of nations when the imagination 

 had no other ideal than the hero, no other cult than hero-worship, 

 where the only virtue is honour, the only trade, war. Later, in 

 more advanced ages, it was seen that the pacific virtues have also 

 a nobility of their own that an artist, a man of science, an in- 

 ventor, belong also to the chosen class ; but, apart from the 

 nobility of the law, that aristocracy which it was attempted to 

 establish under the title of 'literary nobility,' or 'spiritual nobility,' 

 was never in any way to be compared with the warrior aristocracy 

 perhaps because it was soon perceived that genius is not so 

 easily transmitted as courage. Hence, the selection which served 

 as a basis for nobility was both very incomplete in principle and 

 often very unsuccessful in fact. The only aristocracy that has 

 practised this selection on a very liberal scale, while it has, in the 

 words of Macaulay, become ' the most democratic aristocracy in 

 the world,' is at the same time the only one in the wprld that has 

 continued to be both powerful and respected. 1 



If selection is open to question, the dogma of hereditary trans- 

 mission is no more stable. We have seen that heredity is a law 

 of animated nature ; that under purely ideal conditions it would 

 lead to the continuous repetition of the same types, the same 

 forms, the same properties, the same faculties ; but in that most 



1 In the House of Lords, of the four hundred and twenty-seven lay peerages 

 only forty-one are of date prior to the seventeenth century. 



