HEREDITY AND POLITICS 143 



This irrationality and childishness of modern society 

 is extremely striking, and suggests nothing so much as 

 the attitude of a community which is being pushed 

 aimlessly from below, not led intelligently from above. 

 The probable result of a determined and successful 

 effort to keep down class distinctions would be a 

 return to the condition of an undifferentiated chaos of 

 humanity. The only logical result of a real belief 

 in human equality would be to bestow the suffrage 

 equally on the feeble-minded and the inhabitants of 

 prisons and lunatic asylums. An attempt to destroy 

 the governing classes is as little rational as an attempt 

 to abolish the labouring classes. Both are highly 

 skilled, highly specialized varieties of humanity ; both 

 are absolutely essential in the modern state. Even 

 the advocate of universal suffrage sees it necessary to 

 limit the distribution of power somewhere. To de- 

 nounce class distinctions and to preach human equality 

 is to misunderstand the conditions under which civiliza- 

 tion has emerged from chaos. 



Now as regards the governing classes there is a very 

 interesting tendency at work. In response to the 

 popular mandate, fortified by a belief in human equality, 

 both in national and local affairs power has been taken 

 from what we may term the old hereditary governing 

 class, built up by a thousand years of social evolution. 

 It has been placed apparently in the hands of those 

 who win the suffrages of the mass of the people, 

 and in reality has passed largely into the grip of such 

 persons as can frustrate certain intellectual obstacles 

 placed in their way by the examination of the Civil 



