Social Consequences of Heredity. 379 



Without discussing these opinions, we may say that in fact 

 heredity, considered as a political institution, is tending to dis- 

 appear. The idea of a right of sovereignty transmitted by birth 

 finds but few adherents now, and it is commonly maintained only 

 on the ground of utility. The same is to be said of that conserva- 

 tive body found in nearly every state under various names such 

 as House of Lords, of Seigneurs, or of Peers, Senate, etc. Inherit- 

 ance, which was its original groundwork, has been abolished nearly 

 everywhere. The English House of Lords, which is justly held 

 to be utterly at variance in this respect with modern tendencies, 

 does nevertheless admit elective members. Thus Scotland is 

 represented by sixteen elective peers, and Ireland by twenty-eight. 

 In proportion, then, as we recede from primitive times, the politi- 

 cal importance of heredity grows less. And if we hold, with the 

 majority of thinkers, that the ideal towards which society must 

 tend is the establishment of a political rule wherein the individual 

 shall possess the largest possible liberty, and the government the 

 least possible measure of power; where the liberty of each shall be 

 limited only by a like measure accorded to all the only duty of 

 government being to enforce respect for this limitation in such a 

 government the heredity of power would have no meaning, the 

 sovereignty being reduced to police duty. Here again we en- 

 counter the same antinomy the maximum of free-will coinciding 

 with the maximum of heredity. 



We will close with a few remarks on the whole question of the 

 consequences of heredity. 



All progress, or, to speak more precisely, all development, pre- 

 supposes evolution and heredity. Without the former there is no 

 change; without the latter there is no fixity. But the action of 

 heredity has its limits. As we have seen in the physiological 

 introduction, deviations tend to disappear, and after a few genera- 

 tions the reversion to the primitive type is complete. In the moral 

 order there are facts of the same nature as, reversion to the savage 

 life and to nomadic instincts, and the descent of certain highly, 

 gifted families to the average level. 



The opposition between these two kinds of facts, and the con- 

 tradiction in saying on the one hand that heredity produces 

 departure from the original type, and oft the other hand it leads 



