90 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 



the vast extension of commerce, industry, literature, 

 and education, and the birth and development of 

 modern scientific discovery. Hence, side by side with 

 families who rise into prominence by the old means of 

 arms and the law-courts, we have coming to the front 

 Rothschilds and Barings, Wedgwoods and Arkwrights, 

 Murrays and Longmans, Arnolds and Butlers, Darwins 

 and Listers, showing long-continued hereditary aptitude 

 for finance, manufacture, education, or science. 



As an illustration of the growth of one of these new 

 kinds of aristocracy, the aristocracy of science, let us 

 take the remarkable family of Darwin. 



Beginning with Erasmus Darwin (i 731-1802), poet, 

 philosopher, and physician, we have two lines of descent, 

 leading on the one side to Sir Francis Galtonj^nd on 

 the other to Dr. Robert Darwin, and his son Charles 

 Darwin, the great naturalist, of whose sons four show 

 scientific abiHty. In five generations, the family of 

 Darwin, and the allied families of Wedgwood and 

 Galton, have produced no less than sixteen men of 

 scientific attainments, of whom nine were Fellows of 

 the Royal Society, and ten were lineal descendants of 

 Erasmus Darwin. Who can estimate the value to the 

 nation and to mankind of such strains of blood, and 

 the importance of sustaining or increasing the number 

 of individuals to whom such qualities may be trans- 

 mitted .'' 



In studying the inheritance of scientific ability, let 

 us emphasize the untold injury done to mankind by 

 the condition of celibacy formerly imposed on the 

 Fellows of the Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, as 

 a relic of their old monastic tradition. Had Erasmus 



