Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/814

 798 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

according to the same scheme, and he is highly gratified to find that they correspond. The conclusion is the higher classes are also of higher intelligence. And now he wishes out of pure pity for the lower classes that they should remain at their present level, without offermg to the more capable among them oppor- tunity and help to work themselves up to a higher level. "For," says he, "if the best talents are constantly withdrawn from the lower class and added to the higher, the lower class will repre- sent only the soil from which the most valuable components are drained away" (p. 65).

A consistent Darwinist must arrive at the conclusion that separation of classes is an evil. Since the lower classes are actually on a lower intellectual level to show this the elaborate apparatus which Ammon employs is surely superfluous it is a demand of social interest that there should be a crossing of classes, in order that somehow a better sort of men should result. Ammon, on the other hand, is enamored of class divisions because they prevent intermixture.

Again he finds another justification of class barriers in the superior opportunities thus secured to the higher classes for the nurture and education of their children, a condition of things conducive to the development of highly talented individuals. For the lower classes it has the advantage that it rouses and encourages their emulation. Ammon calculates with mathemat- ical exactness the probability that a man will find a wife who is his intellectual equal. The wider the room for choice the smaller the probability, and therewith the diminished probability, of mentally well-endowed descendants. He comes to this con- clusion : " There is a provision of nature by which it comes about that two individuals who are adapted to each other are oftener united than would occur according to the law of probability. The provision in question is the separation of the higher classes from the great mass of the population' '(p. 89) . I imagine that an experi- enced anthropologist would oppose to this theory the fact that degeneracy in the higher, and especially in the highest, classes is today alarmingly advanced, and is still progressing. He