470 TEADITION AND HEREDITY 



a small section, and we need not further consider it here. A large 

 proportion of the so-called upper classes have attained their 

 position under the conditions which now exist, or their forefathers 

 have attained it under conditions which did not greatly differ 

 from them. What characteristics are they, which, when manifested 

 under these conditions, lead to success ? 



It has often been assumed that intellect is the chief factor in 

 success. This assumption is not only made in ordinary con- 

 versation when a reference to the career of a successful man in 

 any line is almost certain to be followed by the comment that 

 ' he must be a very clever fellow ' but in serious contributions 

 to the problem. This assumption is certainly wrong. There are 

 many elements in character which contribute more largely to 

 success than the intellectual, such as capacity for work, energy, 

 ambition, desire to dominate, tact, and so on. Furthermore, 

 success in a profession is, to an almost as great an extent as success 

 in business, attributable to such characteristics. Few more 

 remarkable things — remarkable in being in conflict with ideas 

 as commonly preconceived — are learnt from observation and 

 experience than the length to which such characteristics in favour- 

 able association can carry a man even in the strictly learned 

 professions where it might be supposed that intellect alone 

 would carry off the prizes. There can be no doubt that those 

 elements in character which are most important as regards success 

 are such as we must attribute to differences in disposition and 

 temperament rather than in intellect so far as we can attribute 

 them at all to innate differences. 



This is essentially what we want to know— what innate differ- 

 ences do exist. We have, when trying in the first place to fix 

 upon the outwardly existing characteristics, to remember that 

 tradition may give powerful twists and turns — sometimes of 

 a desirable and sometimes of an undesirable nature — to the 

 simpler characteristics mentioned above, such as ambition. In 

 the business world, for example, the successful man is from many 

 points of view the man who gets his head above the heads of 

 other people, who gets more out of other people than they get out 

 of him. But are we to imagine that there is something in him 

 which impels him so to act with regard to his fellow men, or are 

 we to imagine that the simpler characteristics of ambition and 

 love of power lead to such conduct under the guidance of a par- 



