THE THRESHOLD OF EVOLUTION 



hereditary tendencies of a family or race for the period of the 

 said lifetime. It is these causes that give rise to phenomenal 

 contortions of physical shape, such as deformities ; and of 

 mental developments such as lunatics and geniuses. So we 

 find that extremes of good and evil, such as genius and mad- 

 ness, like a Caesar or a Nero, a Napoleon or a Kaiser, may 

 arise in any family, totally independent of its hereditary 

 qualifications, and are just as likely to occur amongst one 

 species as another, or amongst one class as another, so should 

 not be used as an argument of condemnation or fitness for 

 reward as regards a family or class, only in the case of the 

 individual. 



I have mentioned these facts in this chapter because in all 

 the important characteristics of a Nation it is necessary to go 

 back to prehistoric ages for its birth and origin ; and we must 

 not forget that history is, and is likely to be, of little use for 

 the next twenty or thirty thousand years as a means of 

 directing its lessons to a practical use, or to do more than 

 mould local habits and customs so as to prevent present evils 

 and modify customs, but will not help us to remove permanent 

 evils or produce lasting good till we have a more enlarged 

 record of the past. To do this we will have to turn more 

 attention in the future than we have done in the past to pro- 

 moting the breeding of the fittest by ensuring the highest 

 rewards to success on the one hand and by condemning the 

 unfit or mental monstrosities we call criminals to enforced 

 slavery in state-owned factories at derogatory work and oc- 

 cupations, and prohibiting them the right to breed future 

 criminal classes. This will also ultimately remove the 

 clamour for state ownership, which in the majority of cases 

 does not encourage superlative enterprise and energy. 



These, if conducted as criminal or pauper institutions, will 

 prevent state control being carried to an extreme, which 

 abuse was the undercurrent which destroyed even that 

 most perfect conception of human government ever yet 

 achieved, the Roman Empire, by creating an aristocracy of 

 government officials, who sucked the blood of the nation by 

 ever-increasing to an abnormal degree the investment of its 

 time, labour and energy in unproductive enterprise, and so 

 creating a demand for ease and luxury far in excess of the 

 possibilities of supply. For it is possible to have too many 



