104 DARWINISM AND RACE PROGRESS. 



no means uniformly so, and thus it happens that 

 the amount of money in a man's pocket is no certain 

 criterion of even his capacity to make it. Especially 

 in a community such as ours, where men pass in a 

 lifetime from poverty to riches or the reverse, and 

 often as a result of surrounding conditions over 

 which they have no control, we may have stupidity 

 and vice reposing sumptuously on inlaid Floren- 

 tine, while intelligence and virtue are seated on rush- 

 bottom. As I hope to bring out shortly, there is 

 too little selective influence in a civilised state. 

 Some of our old aristocratic families were headed no 

 doubt by men of great capacity at their commence- 

 ment, but it was the organisation of Romish civilisa- 

 tion that gave them the conquest over their worse 

 organised fellow-kinsmen settled in England. Blood 

 for blood, innate quality for innate quality, there was 

 little to choose between them, yet circumstances 

 made one the villein and the other the lord. Selec- 

 tive influences that might have operated in a savage 

 community have been kept in abeyance to a great 

 measure by inherited property and class distinction ; 

 and though, fortunately, good men are continually 

 rising, and vicious, idle men are falling, yet this is to 

 a great extent kept in check. Thus we find in the 

 lower class many men and women of excellent phys- 

 ique and mental capacity doing in their lives as much 

 as can be expected from anybody. From the bio- 



