io8 THE PORTAL OF EVOLUTION 



meaning fitness for a certain class of duty in life or work, for 

 the employer and employee belong to the same class, for what 

 benefits the trade of the employer makes the means of employ- 

 ment of the employees so that their interests are one, if they 

 would only realise it, and the employee could only understand 

 that in freedom of contract lies his one means of preventing 

 the combination of the employers to raise the price of commodi- 

 ties, and so reduce the purchasing power of high wages until 

 he is poorer with the high wage than he was with the low one. 

 But this is digressing from my subject. 



Now those who succeed and are able to direct, form the 

 highest class of society, and statistics show that the percentage 

 who are able to excel above others is about seven per cent. ; 

 and we find that in the succeeding generation this seven per 

 cent, contributes from four and a half to five per cent, to the 

 management and direction of the community, whereas the 

 remaining ninety-three only contribute two per cent, towards 

 the seven per cent, who make up the managing portion of the 

 succeeding generation. This difference is too great to be a 

 mere chance, and can only result from hereditary fitness and 

 unfitness, and the possession of hereditary capabilities for 

 certain occupations for which they are indebted to the experi- 

 ences of their ancestors, though I do not mean to say that 

 they will succeed if they are placed in some other status of 

 life. Thus the man who can best manage a large undertaking 

 is least likely to make a success of a small one. And the 

 fact that the genius or markedly successful man is often one 

 of the two or three per cent, who rise from the ranks is most 

 probably due to one of the following two factors either his 

 having had a large number of ancestors whose experiences 

 particularly coincided with the circumstances which are 

 again being re-enacted, for it must be borne in mind that the 

 power of the mind is the outcome of physical superiority in 

 energy, without which mental superiority is not attainable. 



It is a throwback to a remote ancestor who was at some 

 past date in evolution vastly superior in mental development, 

 but whose family became degenerate or was deficient in some 

 qualities which required the altered environment of greater 

 poverty to develop them; whose family failed in the past be- 

 cause they could not keep pace with their competitors in a 

 higher class, either from physical defects, the result of the 



