3 74 Heredity. 



less than half (two hundred and seven) remained at the end of a 

 century, and in 1783 there remained only one hundred and sixty- 

 eight, or one-third. Of the hundred and twelve families con- 

 stituting the federal council of the canton of Berne in 1653, there 

 remained, in the year 1796, only fifty-eight 1 



* The degeneration of the race in noble families,' says Moreau 

 of Tours, ' has been noted by sundry writers. Pope remarked that 

 the noble air which the English aristocracy ought to have worn 

 was the one thing they did not at all possess ; that it was a 

 saying in Spain that when a grandee was announced in a drawing- 

 room you must expect to see a sort of abortion; finally, in France, 

 any one who saw the men that constituted the higher ranks might 

 suppose that he was in presence of a company of invalids. The 

 Marquis de Mirabeau himself, in his Ami des Homines, speaks of 

 them as pygmies, or withered and starved plants.' We have 

 already endeavoured to determine the causes of this physical 

 and mental degeneration, by showing that heredity is a force ever 

 contending against opposite forces, that it has its own struggle for 

 life, and that in each generation, even when victorious, it comes 

 out of the contest much weakened by its losses. 



We have now seen the difficulties which criticism based on ex- 

 perience might bring against nobility considered as a natural fact. 

 We need not here inquire into its value as an institution. It is 

 certain that its influence has not been always evil, and that it has 

 indeed * called forth certain kinds of merit.' But such is the 

 condition of human affairs that we must overlook much evil where 

 a little good is done. Man is so small, that in order to become 

 great he must cease to be himself he must be blotted out, sacri- 

 ficed in the interest of an idea, a caste, a corporation, a country, a 

 lineage which he shall represent. Thrown into the infinity of 

 time, like a waif on the boundless ocean, he seeks some stay for a 

 longer, less ephemeral, and yet perishable life. This is presented 

 to him by nobility. Who can tell how many vulgar souls have 

 been upheld and uplifted by the thought of their ancestry ! Many 

 a man, as he has contemplated in some vast and silent hall 

 the portraits of his forefathers, unimpassioned witnesses of his 



1 Memoirs de V Academic des Sciences Morales, vol. v. 



