Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/529

Rh amount seems as much as the same number of millions to one whose friends all have as much. There are plenty of temptations within the reach of all classes of society and many demoralizing amusements come cheap. Besides, if this view of the evil effects of great wealth were true, royalty, who are among the richest of the world's favored few, should make a poor showing from the general standpoint of morality. Although we may think at first sight that this is the case, I have been able to show in some former articles in this magazine that the bad characters practically always come as close relations of others of the same stamp, and due to heredity with perhaps some influence from environment. They can not at any rate be explained on the ground of riches, as here all are rich. Furthermore, royalty does not make a bad showing when taken as a great group. From the intellectual side they are distinctly above the average and this six hundred contains more great names than probably any other collection of related people that could be gathered together, certainly more than the general run of Europeans. Even the greatest leaders among them were born in all cases to extremely high positions. An idea of their moral standard may best be gained by looking at their mean or (5) and (6) grades. Among the more modern and best known in these grades are the late Humbert, King of Italy, William I., Emperor of Germany, Frederick William IV. of Prussia, Louis Philippe and Francis Prince de Joinville, his son; doubtless men with faults, but at the same time men with certain decidedly praiseworthy traits and in most instances men who led active lives.

Wallace relies much on sexual selection to play an important part in the future, as a causative force in human evolution, and has written some good arguments to this effect. Royal matches, as is well known, are largely determined by reasons of state policy. Nevertheless, even here, in a class of society where any force of sexual selection must be relatively at its lowest, we see the largest number of children on the average belonging to the higher grades. There is also a pretty definite elimination of the worst.

Conclusions.—There is a very distinct correlation in royalty between mental and moral qualities. If this is true among them, there is no reason why it should not be true in every class of mankind. Among society in general it is easy to see how the vicious and depraved are more likely to be eliminated than the domestic and unselfish. Arguments, then, which prove that an improvement is going on in the general morality of any class or race must at the same time prove an increase in the standard of mental faculty. The probability is that forces of natural selection are at work, the value of which we know little of as yet, such that setting aside all influences of environment, whether we will or not, the natural quality of humanity must progress.