17S| HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



medical profession, the son of the lawyer for the Bar, the son of the agri- 

 cultural labourer for the plough. The consequences are obvious ; and it 

 is curious to observe that it is precisely a Socialist writer who, unconsciously, 

 has shown us what these consequences are. M. Hamon, in a well-known 

 book, has written : 



" Dans la nation, il exist* des professions bien caracterisees, telles les 

 professions militaire, de la magistrature, de la police, du clerge, etc. On 

 con9oit aisement que, sous I'influence de I'exercice continu d'une profession, 

 dans les encephales predisposes hereditairement, se determine la produc- 

 tion de caracteres mentaux particuliers a ladite profession. Ces caracteris- 

 tiques psychiques sont sans doute les effets d'une structure cerebrale par- 

 ticuliere ; nous I'ignorons, vu I'etat peu avance de la science. 



" Nous disons que les encephales sont hereditairement predisposes parce 

 que le fait meme d'adopter une profession plutot qu'une autre, indique que 

 I'exercice de cette profession plait k celui qui I'adopte. Sa cerebration est telle 

 qu'il trouve cette profession agr^able ou moins desagreable qu'une autre. 

 C'est I'opinion generate que pour la plupart des professions ceux qui les exer- 

 cent eussent pu, par suite d'autres circonstances, ne point les exercer ; que, en 

 un mot, la plupart des hommes n'ont point de congenitales predispositions 

 a I'adoption d'une carriere plut6t que d'une autre. Nous pensons que 

 c'est la une conception erronee qui a son origine dans 1' absence ou I'insuffi- 

 sance d' analyse des cerebrations humaines." ^ 



Now, if the views expressed by M. Hamon were correct, we must logically 

 arrive at the regime of castes. Nothing could, in this case, be more 

 dangerous than to leave the choice of a profession invariably open to 

 individual taste and judgment, seeing that the continued exercise of any 

 profession must result in the formation of a well-difierentiated cerebration 

 peculiar to that profession — a differentiation which is increased by heredity 

 in every successive generation. So that we obtain, finally, a set of weU- 

 differentiated individuals, possessing a cerebration expressly adapted to 

 the career of the soldier ; another set similarly adapted to the duties of the 

 magistrate ; another to the oflBce of clerk ; another to the work of agricul- 

 tural labourer; and so forth. But what does this mean, if not that the 

 regime of castes is re-established ? The regime of castes is founded 

 precisely on the notion that a Brahman is born a Brahman, and that a 

 tschandala is bom a tschandala. If the dispositions which the agricultural 

 labourer has acquired during his lifetime for the work which he pursues 

 are inherited by the progeny of this agricultural labourer ; if these, in 

 their turn, bequeath their disposition to the third generation, and so 

 forth; then we are justified in saying that the agricultural labourer has 

 no right to endeavour to emancipate himself from the condition to which 



*■ A. Hamon, Psychologic de V AnarcMste-Socialiste, pp. 3, 4. Paris, Stock, 

 1895. 



