Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/514

510 British men of genius 18.5 per cent, came from the nobility and upper classes, 41.3 per cent, from the professions, 31.2 from the manufacturing and commercial classes, 6 per cent, from the yeomen and farmers and 2.5 from the artisan and laboring classes.

The working classes outnumber the nobility a hundredfold, but produce only one quarter as many men of performance. If the working classes have equal ability and if they had been given equal opportunity, instead of a hundred scientific men of the rank of the foreign associates of the Paris Academy there would have been forty thousand. It may be that the peasant and artisan classes in European countries are separated from the upper classes by an inferior heredity; but that is scarcely the case in America. Five or ten generations back most of us have ancestors of nearly the same average physical, intellectual and social condition; any selection for ability within this short period must be slight and transient.

It is evident that what a man can do depends on his congenital equipment. How far what he does do depends on his environment and how far on his congenital equipment, or how far his congenital equipment depends on that of his parents and his family line of descent, we do not know. Most sociological writers and some biologists are confused in their use of the concept of heredity. When there is discussion of the relative influence on performance of heredity and environment, by heredity there is sometimes understood the original constitution of the individual and sometimes his resemblance to parents and other relatives. It is conceivable that the original constitution of son and father might be exactly the same and yet the individual be so plastic to environment that under different conditions there would be but slight similarity between their performances. It is also conceivable that there might be no similarity between the original constitution of son and father, and yet the performance of each be determined by his original constitution almost without influence from environment. Under which of these extreme hypotheses would the current sociologist call heredity strong or weak? The word heredity should be reserved for resemblance due to a common germ plasm and some other word found for the constitution of the fertilized ovum or zygote; perhaps the best that can be done is to use this uncouth word. We can then discriminate between the two distinct questions: What is the resemblance between the zygotes of two brothers? How far does the zygote of an individual determine his performance as an adult?

The distinctions are of vast importance for the organization of society. If men of performance could only come from superior family lines, this would be a conclusive argument for a privileged class and for a hereditary aristocracy. If the congenital equipment of an individual should prescribe completely what he will accomplish in life, equality