322 THE PRINCIPLES OF HEREDITY 



they have lost place as real leaders of thought and action, 

 becoming leaders of "society" instead. They still retain 

 great wealth and considerable political power, and thus have 

 unique opportunities to achieve distinction ; but a glance at 

 history demonstrates how little the nation owes to its succes- 

 sive governments, and how much to the rough energy of the 

 people. It is, indeed, remarkable how few members or scions 

 of the actual peerage, the class that has been the most exclus- 

 ively and continuously trained by " classical " methods, have 

 achieved greatness during the last few centuries. It has been 

 wittily said that "formerly none of the peers of England 



panions. The school-master's business is to impart useful information 

 and develop the intellectual faculties. If he fails in this his work is 

 the merest pretence. 



Wealthy men existed in former times, for instance amongst the Pagans 

 and in England during the Elizabethan era, but they did not always 

 devote the whole of their wealth and leisure to trivial pursuits. It is 

 true that the Elizabethan patricians had a school training as " classical " 

 or even more classical than the patricians of the present day, but, such 

 as it was, it left them in touch with intellectual problems of the time, 

 for after fifteen hundred years, during which the spark of divinity had 

 been industriously fanned, knowledge had advanced little beyond the 

 Pagan standard. They shared in full the mental activity awakened by 

 the revival of Greek literature, by great contemporary scientific dis- 

 coveries, and by vehement and fruitful controversies. They could still 

 be thinkers and leaders. But the world has progressed since then. The 

 same learning does not in every age produce the same effects. That 

 which placed a man in the forefront four hundred years ago, when Latin 

 was the only avenue to any sort of learning, and Greek the only path 

 to the higher planes of thought, can no longer do so. The school-master 

 who so trains pupils, that should be the future leaders, and will be the 

 actual legislators of the nation, as to make them intellectually capable 

 of little besides mere routine or trivial enjoyments incurs a terrible 

 responsibility. No doubt the system by which the upper classes are 

 educated has improved in recent years ; but it is equally certain that 

 there must be much greater improvement before they can come again 

 to the front in the fashion of their forefathers. With his opportunities 

 the school-master should present us with a patrician class at least as able 

 as that of Greece and Rome, at least as capable of intellectual enjoy- 

 ments and of carrying through to successful conclusions enterprises 

 involving thought and toil. 



Nevertheless, however much we blame the school-master, we must 

 recognize that the whole of the fault does not lie with him. He teaches 

 by a wrong system, but he was taught by it, and the parents of his pupils 

 elect to have their children taught by it. Patrician decay is due to 

 defective training, but the causes of that decay lie in the nature of things. 

 When constant foreign and internecine war vexed the world the patrician 

 was forced on pain of extinction to be thinker and actor at least as 

 capable, or more capable than lesser men. Peace gave him security. He 

 is suffering from cessation of selection a cessation which affects educa- 

 tional systems, not the race, as some writers seem to imply. 



