Social Consequences of Heredity. 371 



wards through the ages. Hence anxiety about alliances, always an 

 important matter, not only for the German baron, who required 

 in his wife six quarterings of nobility, but also of the Inca, who 

 married his sister in order to perpetuate the race of the Sun. 



* Nobility,' says Dr. Lucas, .' in the primitive vigour of its insti- 

 tution, made it a point of honour not to mingle its blood with the 

 blood of other classes. In its minor alliances it scrutinized as 

 minutely the purity of pedigree as the Arabs in Africa, or the 

 members of jockey clubs in our day, with their eyes on the French 

 or English stud books, scrutinize the pedigree of their horses.' 



To us it appears clear and unquestionable that nobility is every- 

 where founded on the idea of heredity. The first step towards its 

 institution is the hypothesis, distinctly expressed by some, indis- 

 tinctly perceived by others, that all kinds of worth are transmissible ; 

 that a man inherits from his ancestors courage, regard for honour, 

 loyalty, no less than lofty stature, robust health, and strong arms. 

 Bon sang m pent mentir Blood must tell. Our old feudal poems 

 delight to represent cowards and felons as bastards, unworthy 

 scions of a great race that have soiled their blood. The brave 

 spring from the brave, and love to proclaim their genealogy. 1 



Hence an illustrious writer of our day attributes to the belief in 

 heredity a far too unimportant part when he says : * The true idea 

 of nobility is that it originates in merit, and as it is clear that merit 

 is not hereditary, it is easily shown that hereditary nobility is an 

 absurdity. But this is the universal French mistake of a distribu- 

 tive justice, with the state holding the balance. The social reason 

 of nobility, regarded as an institution of public utility, was not to 

 recompense merit, but to call forth, and render possible and even 

 easy, certain kinds of merit.' 2 The author's stand-point is no doubt 

 somewhat different from our own, since he considers more par- 

 ticularly the utility of nobility as an institution, not its legitimacy 

 as a consequence; but we still hold that belief in the heredity of 

 merit is the groundwork of nobility, and that, like every belief that 

 is living and unshakable, it has survived all the attacks, criticisms, 

 and reverses it has sustained from experience. In our view 



1 See Homer's poems, which have so much analogy with our feudal world. 



2 Renan, La Monarchic Constilutionelle en France^ p. 25. 



