HEREDITY AND POLITICS 141 



to be of an indolent, unintelligent character, a large 

 employer of labour declared that it was possible to get 

 workmen of energy and capacity far above the average 

 of the Lisbon district by drawing supplies of labour 

 from the villages around the lines of Torres Vedras, 

 where, more than a hundred years ago, the English 

 soldiers left behind them a large number of illegiti- 

 mate offspring. Here then we have an entirely over- 

 looked effect of our Peninsular campaign. 



We have seen reason to believe that the evolutionary 

 meaning of the class divisions, which appear among all 

 civilized and semi-civilized nations, is to be sought in 

 the greater efficiency those divisions give in the per- 

 formance of the many and varied functions of a civilized 

 state. In a blind, rudimentary and imperfect way, 

 successful nations have bred different qualities into 

 different sections of their people, just as they have, 

 to a clearer extent, into the different species of their 

 domestic animals ; and, since children tend inevitably on 

 the average to inherit their parents' aptitudes, since sons 

 frequently follow their fathers' professions and avail 

 themselves of the advantages of the family environment, 

 this segregation of qualities makes for efficiency, by 

 adjusting the inborn characters of each man to the work 

 which will lie ready to his hand. Once the process has 

 started either in man or beast, we are in a fair way 

 to build up the class distinctions which seem to some 

 people, where man is concerned, the height of stupidity, 

 prejudice and injustice, and, in the animal world, a 

 triumph of foresight and human intelligence. 



Thus the labouring classes gradually appropriate a 



