324 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



civilisation, the outlook cannot be described otherwise than as 

 unfavourable for the States of Exirope. 



Let us now consider another aspect of our social life from the 

 point of view of selection. The basis of our modem social system 

 is the institution of private property ; against this institution in 

 itself there is nothing to be said, and much can be urged in its 

 favour. The classical school of economists most certainly neg- 

 lected a great and important side of man's nature when they 

 attributed his whole Streben to greed of gain alone ; but they 

 were incontestably right in affirming that the hope of individual 

 profit is a strong incentive to action and a constant aid to 

 progress. Under our present social system, however, not con- 

 tent with rewarding the individual efforts of the worker who 

 has triumphed by dint of greater intelligence and industry, we 

 confer on his progeny, who may have contributed absolutely 

 nothing to his success, the benefit of the latter. From the bio- 

 logical point of view there can be little doubt that the hereditary 

 nature of private property acts as a factor of social inverse selec- 

 tion ; since it protects in many cases the idle and worthless at 

 the expense of the hard-working and intelligent. 



It is not our present purpose to enter upon an examination 

 of the many aspects imder which the question of social " classes " 

 can be considered.^ Nevertheless, we may take for granted that 

 the average value of the leisured classes, from the bio-social point 

 of view, is greater than the average bio-social value of the whole 

 community. This is indeed an a pnori supposition ; but it is 

 justified by the facts which we may examine a posteriori. It 

 cannot, we think, be seriously questioned that the upper classes 

 — by which we by no means mean solely the aristocracy, but 



' An important work of classification of the different social classes has 

 been undertaken by one of the leading representatives of that Italian 

 school which, founded by Lombroso and developed by Ferri, has made 

 such valuable contributions to anthropology. We refer to Niceforo's 

 work, especially Les Classes Pauvres. Paris, 1904. 



