DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 41 



sovereign power by the name of a person or 

 dynasty, but proclaims it before all the world 

 " the commonwealth." " Noblesse oblige : " and 

 a republic sets up a higher standard of political 

 morality and thus deserves to be more harshly 

 judged, if it falls short even of a monarchy and 

 imitates in any way the follies and vices that are 

 hardly avoidable where there is a royal court. 



Another reason why ideas should be em- 

 bodied in institutions, is that institutions exert 

 so great an influence upon human character 

 an influence sometimes ignored on professedly 

 scientific grounds. Perhaps the most popularly 

 accepted part of the evolution theory is the 

 doctrine of heredity ; but it may be questioned 

 how far the popular view, nay, even the view of 

 many who have been trained in science, is not 

 in reality the survival of a very ancient super- 

 stition, 1 the belief in an inherited family destiny, 

 a belief which was the natural product of a time 

 when the family or tribe was the social and 



1 In a notice of this essay in Mind, vol. xiv. p. 291, it is 

 actually alleged that I say that " the doctrine of heredity 

 may be nothing more than the survival of a very ancient 

 superstition ! " I say nothing of the kind. I suggest that 

 the popular view of heredity may be a mixture of science 

 and superstition. 



