perfect ideal, as, in ascending some lofty mountain, we take in a wider horizon as we climb. And during this gradual conquest, in which humanity endeavours to strip off all that is low and base, primitive instincts, which are indeed an original stain, reappear every moment-indelible, though weakened-to remind us, not of a fall, but of the low estate from which we have risen.

CHAPTER IV.

SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF HEREDITY.

It would be beside our subject and beyond the measure of our powers to examine here in detail the social consequences of heredity. To trace them through the manners, the legislation, the civil and political institutions, and the modes of government of various peoples, would require a separate work. Heredity presents itself to us under two forms, one natural, the other institutional. We have studied the former only, even so restricting ourselves to only one of its aspects, its psychological side; we have but incidentally touched on the ground of physiology, in order to confirm our positions. It will therefore suffice, in order to conclude this work, to show how the institutional heredity derives from natural heredity, and thus to refer the effects to their cause.

Every nation possesses at least a vague belief in hereditary transmission. Facts compel it: and indeed it may even be maintained that in primitive times this belief is stronger than it is under civilization. From this belief springs institutional heredity. It is certain that social and political considerations, or even prejudices, must have contributed to develop and strengthen it, but it were absurd to suppose that it has been invented. The characters which we have already often recognized in heredity -necessity, conservatism, and stability—are logically found in the institutions which spring from it. This a rapid examination of the subject will show. In exhibiting the part of heredity in the institution of the family, of castes, of nobility, of sovereignty, it

will be our special study to throw 'light upon a point which, in our eyes, is of great philosophical importance-namely, the conflict of heredity and free-will.

I.

The family is a natural fact. Numerous works both in France and abroad show this, and have related the history of the family, described its various forms, and arranged the moral relations which subsist between its members. But with this we have here no concern.

From the stand-point of heredity-too generally overlooked by moralists-it may be said that all forms of the family are reducible to two principal and opposite types, around which oscillate a great number of intermediate forms. The one allows a very large part to heredity, and a very small part to individual free-will. The other allows a very large part to individual free-will, but regards hereditary transmission as the exception, not the law. The former is the rule of strict conservatism; the latter the rule of testamentary liberty.

If we examine the first of these types, we find it under various forms in all primitive civilizations, and it rests on a very firm faith in heredity. The child is regarded as the direct continuation of the parents; and indeed, properly speaking, between father and son, between mother and daughter, there is no distinction of persons-there is only one person under a two-fold appearance. If this idea be applied to the entire series of generations, we find the case to be thus :-in the first place is a family chief, a mysterious and revered being, usually ranked with the gods; then a succession of generations, each represented by the first-born son, who is the visible incarnation of the first father, and whose part is essentially conservative. He collects together the religious beliefs, the traditions and the possessions of the family, and transmits them in turn. He may not alienate anything or destroy anything. He can alter nothing in the invariable order of succession which wraps him round in its fatality. Under such a régime, individual free-will counts for little, while heredity is supreme. This is a pantheistic organization of the family; heredity being the in

variable and indestructible ground whereon the ephemeral shadow of the individuals is thrown, and over which it flits.

In all primitive civilizations, the family came more or less near to this type wherein heredity is everything and free-will nothing.1 Among the Hindus, Greeks, Romans, and Aryan peoples in general, the family was a natural community, having not only the same possessions, the same interests, the same traditions, but the same gods and the same rites. Religion was domestic, and hence Plato defines relationship to be a community of domestic gods.' These gods were of course worshipped by their own family, in their own sanctuary, and on an altar whereon the sacred fire was ever burning. No stranger could offer sacrifice to them without sacrilege.

To this necessary heredity of rites, which it was of obligation to maintain, was added the heredity of property. Originally among the Hindus, property was inalienable. In many Greek cities ancient laws forbad the citizen to sell his plot of land.2 In Greece and in India succession was from male to male in order of primogeniture, and only at a late period in history was any share allowed to the younger sons, or to the daughters. It is probable that primitive Rome in like manner accepted the law of primogeniture.

It is equally instructive to notice that testaments were introduced at a late period, at the time when the state and the family had broken away from the immobility of inheritance, in order to give freer play to individual action. Thus, according to Fustel de Coulanges, ancient Hindu law knew nothing of testaments. The same is to be said of Athenian law prior to Solon. At Sparta testaments do not appear till after the Peloponnesian war; and at Rome they do not seem to have been in use before the law of the Twelve Tables. This allows to them the force of law: Uti egassit (pater familias) super pecunia tutelave suæ rei, ita jus esto.

The rule which subordinates the individual to heredity, by making the conservation of property obligatory, exists in a more or less perfect form in the great families of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Scotland; also over a large portion of Germany,

1 On this subject see Fustel de Coulanges, Le Cité Antique, and Le Play, La Réforme Sociale, ch. ii.

2 Aristotle, Politics, ii. 4.

particularly in Hanover, Brunswick, Mecklenburg, and Bavaria. In Russia, among the nomad tribes of the Ural, the Caspian, the lower Volga, and the Don, with the exception of personal property-limited to clothing-everything is possessed by the community, and the heads of families cannot alienate anything.

At the other extremity we find the opposite type of testamentary liberty, where the individual, instead of being the slave of heredity, is its absolute master, and may at will establish, restrict, suspend, or do away with it. Here the freest play is accorded to free-will, and heredity, in place of being the rule, becomes the exception. Thus it is not surprising that this rule, unknown to primitive peoples, is propagated and extended in proportion as we depart from nature and her fatalistic laws. It is found in its most perfect form in the United States of America, and under a restricted form in England, in various German States, and in Italy. As we have seen, it made its appearance at an early period in ancient Rome.

We need not here inquire whether testamentary discretion has drawbacks. It is certain that if in France legislation is adverse to it, the reason is lest it should be abused; and when we observe the evident tendency of those who demand it to go back to the ancien régime, we can but believe that it would there be attended by disastrous consequences. It is with testamentary as with all other liberty-in order to possess it a man must be worthy, and know how to use it.

It will be observed that the two opposite rules of which we have spoken imply two different views of property; the one in which property exists completely, the other in which it hardly exists at all. Under the rule of testamentary discretion, ownership is absolute and without limit; property forms part of the individual, who disposes of it as of himself.

Under the rule of obligatory conservation, ownership is reduced to usufruct. And since under the first arrangement heredity has no place in right, since it emanates wholly from free-will, and as under the second it always exists in right and in fact, being the law, we are again face to face with the same antinomy; and we may conclude that in the organization of the family there has ever existed an inverse proportion between the power of heredity and that of free-will.

II.

The family is the molecule of the social world. So soon as it is constituted society may take its rise. Families unite, associate together, amalgamate, and are perpetuated by thus commingling: the body social is the result of this fusion. After it has passed out of its embryonic phase-the hunter and the nomad states— and when the first forms of civilized life are beginning to be produced, then heredity appears as a social and political element in the institution of caste.

Caste is the result of various causes-difference of race, conquest, religious creeds-but everywhere its groundwork is the belief in heredity. Caste is exclusive: there is no entrance into it except by birth; no art, no merit, no violence avail to burst open the doors of caste; it reigns supreme over the destinies of the individual. Here we find heredity invested with its constant · characteristics, viz., conservatism and stability. Nothing is more stagnant than nations that have accepted caste.

In India we find the ideal of this arrangement, for nowhere else is it more firmly grounded, more compactly constituted, or more minutely regulated. Moral heredity, its natural basis, is explicitly recognized in the sacred laws of Manu.

'A woman always brings into the world a son gifted with the same qualities as he who begat him.'

'We may know by his acts the man that belongs to a low class, or who is born of a disreputable mother.'

'A man of low birth has the evil dispositions of his father, or of his mother, or of both—he never can hide his descent.' 1

Hindu law, as all are aware, admits four original castes: the Brahman, born from the mouth of Brahma; the Kshatriya, sprung from his arm; the Vaishya, from his thigh, and Sudr from his feet. The priestly, the military, and the commercial castes are all regenerate; the fourth, or servile caste, has only one birth.2 There is no fifth caste.'

1 Manava Darma Shastra, book x.

2 Ibid. book x. ch. iv. According to the Hindu creed, to attain to supreme felicity (Nirvana), one must be born again successively into the noble castes, including that of the Brahmans. The latter complacently tell of a devout king