F.— ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 151 



XI. Inheritance of Ability. 



The principle of the inheritance of wealth is complicated by its biological 

 affiliations. A man has certain qualities which make for distinction and 

 success in himself and for unusual service at the same time to the com- 

 munity. His son may inherit a full or partial measure, and this inheritance 

 is a factor of economic importance, making both for an uneven distribution 

 of the aggregate of wealth, which is obvious, and also, what is less obvious, 

 for a greater economic aggregate for all to share. Now such inherited 

 powers, so far as they exist, are a part of nature, and cannot be gainsaid, 

 nor abrogated nor repealed. But in a developed national science of 

 eugenics, in a socialistic community with a certain type of socialist ideal, 

 in which equality of division of wealth (or wealth-making power) is counted 

 as of greater importance than the greatest accretion to aggregate wealth 

 unevenly divided (by which the individual benefit may be even greater 

 after subtracting the rich man's portion), it would be logical to direct 

 human mating so that inherited tendencies to superior wealth-making 

 powers should be diffused or defeated. If it were found that the mating 

 of types A and B would perpetuate a characteristic particularly forceful 

 in economic afiairs for the individual exercising that characteristic under 

 the hedonic stimulus, and not exercising it under any other, but that the 

 mating of A and C would obliterate it, then the obvious duty of those 

 who put equality of wealth as paramount would be to promote eugenic 

 laws that discouraged A and B and encouraged A and C to matrimony. 

 But I do not wish to pursue this type of eugenic speculation. I am dealing 

 with the inheritance of qualities, only because of the argument that a 

 man's accumulated wealth is an objective extension of his personality, a 

 material result of his qualities, and that if nature passes on the effective 

 element of his personality to his heirs this extension logically and legiti- 

 mately, by social sanction, goes with them. 



In my judgment, while we are apt to regard the cultivation of mental, 

 moral, and physical qualities, and their effect upon future descendants, 

 as biological problems, internal to the human organism, we also tend to 

 regard those extensions of a man's personality which are reflected in his 

 ability to acquire and accumulate belongings around him, as purely 

 economic. No such hard-and-fast line is final. A man may enrich his 

 life by the expenditure of a part of his income in immediate travel and 

 widening of his powers and knowledge, or he may externalise it by the 

 acquisition of works of art, or he may put it into the field of economics 

 by saving that portion of his income so that it will jdeld him an income 

 which will perhaps enable him to travel or to extend his personality in 

 some way or other in years to come, after he has ceased to be an earner. 

 Similarly in his treatment of his children. For one he may spend a large 

 amount of money to make him a professional man, a doctor or solicitor, 

 in which case the bequest or inheritance goes on without any obvious sign 

 of his ' leaving ' wealth. To another son he may leave an equivalent 

 amount to be invested in a business, and if they are men of equal ability 

 it may be assumed that the income from personal effort and invested 

 capital will be similar in the business and in the profession. In the one 

 case the effect of inheritance is clear ; in the other it is masked. Nothing 



