National Deterioration 77 



teristics of this caste have been strengthened 

 and rendered more permanent. Sir James 

 Crich ton- Browne has misunderstood my 

 point when he talks of the potentially intel- 

 lectual class outside the upper social classes 

 being possibly i per cent, of the population. 

 No breeder who was seeking to strengthen 

 certain characters would start from indivi- 

 duals in the population at large ; he would 

 start from the stocks already exhibiting 

 traces of the characters he needed. That 

 an exceptional individual is often born of 

 commonplace parents does not prove the 

 existence of potentially intellectual stocks ; 

 it merely shows the range of variation in a 

 large population, and is no test in defect 

 of ancestry that the variation will be the 

 origin of a new stock. It is the realization 

 of these points, that not all, but the bulk, of 

 the abler and more capable stocks have 

 drifted into the upper middle classes, and 

 that ability is inherited, which makes, in my 

 opinion, the decreasing relative fertility of 

 these classes a matter of the most serious 

 national importance. 



* Sir James Crichton- Browne admits the 

 dearth of ability, but he nevertheless asserts 

 that we have "in the humbler or uneducated 

 class, as it is called, a reserve of intellectuals 

 of undiminished fertility, capable of supply- 

 ing recruits to the intellectual class of the 

 next generation." The only answer I can 

 make to this is, u Statistics upon the table, 



