136 DARWINISM AND RACE PROGRESS. 



and less capable, it is evident that talent will neither 

 increase nor suffer decrease ; it will merely undergo 

 a sifting process, and tend to find its place more and 

 more in the ranks of the aristocracy. If, however, it 

 should be found that the successful ones are less 

 prolific, from one cause or another, then talent will 

 tend to diminish, and the aristocracies will tend to 

 dwindle by the side of the more prolific democracy, 

 and will possibly eventually disappear. In assuming 

 this result, we, of course, conclude that there will be 

 comparatively few marriages between members of 

 widely different classes, and we have reason for con- 

 jecturing that this will be the case from the fact that 

 distinctions of class have ever been a bar to free in- 

 termarriage, even when these class distinctions have 

 been of the most artificial kind. 



If so, we are Breeding from our Incapable*. 

 Now there is good reason to believe that the career 

 necessary to individual success in the life-struggle of 

 modern societies is one which carries with it and 

 necessitates relative sterility ; and if this is so, we 

 have to face the certainty that talent is being bred 

 out of us, as it were, and that the average capacity of 

 the race must therefore assuredly deteriorate. And 

 whereas, in the animal world, those qualities which 

 determine the success of an individual in the battle 

 of life become stamped upon its progeny, our modern 



