Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/141

Rh counterbalanced by certain disadvantages it is true; this is unavoidable in human affairs. In the first place it can be said that it exerts a beneficial influence only upon the character, not upon the intellect of the people. Promoting intellectual activity, broadening the views of the masses and elevating the level of average intelligence — these are tasks which ought not to be expected from an hereditary aristocracy. The privileged class can be corporeally more finely developed than the masses, because it has better food and lives under conditions more favorable to health, and this physical superiority gained by these conducive circumstances is increased and perpetuated until it becomes a characteristic of the race, and is indelibly fixed upon the offspring. But in the matter of intellect, it will never take the lead, because mental superiority can not be inherited, and, as regards talent, every one must be literally his own ancestor, the architect of his mental fortune. This is a strange fact which has not been sufficiently dwelt upon as yet. Genius and even rare talents, are entirely distinct from genealogy. They have no lineage. They are and remain individual; they appear suddenly and disappear as suddenly in a family; I am not aware of a single case where they have been inherited by the children according to the laws regarding physical traits, in an increased or even equal measure. More than this: men of unusual talents seldom leave any offspring, and when they have children, they are weakly and less vigorous in every way than the average of mankind. We seem to see in this fact the operation of a mysterious law of nature which evidently wishes to prevent the development of beings of too marked a superiority as regards intellectual endowments, in a single species.

Consider what the consequences would be if genius