lled to the solidarity and internal
correlations of groups, especially if they were large and genetic, it
was believed that occult and far-reaching laws had been discovered. That
opinion has long been abandoned. If there are four dice in a box, each
having from one to six dots on its faces, the chance of throwing four
sixes is just the same as that of throwing four ones. The mean of the
sums of the dots which may fall uppermost is fourteen, which can be
produced by one hundred and forty-six throws. Suppose that the
components of social value are four,--intellectual, moral, physical,
economic,--represented by the four dice, and that the degrees are
represented by the dots. We should get four sixes once in twelve hundred
and ninety-six throws. Of the one hundred and forty-six throws which
give the mean fourteen, seventy-two show one six up. That might be a
Hercules fit only for a dime museum. Seventy-eight of the combinations
are inharmonious, but have one strong element.[71] In societal matters
it is by no means indifferent whether the equal sums of societal value
are made up of very unequal, or of harmonious, components. So in a group
of a million persons the chance of a great genius, who would stand alone
towards _X_ is just the same as that of an utter idiot who would stand
alone towards _x_, and the reason why the number at the mode is so great
is that the societal value is the sum of components, of which many sums
may be equal, although the components are very unequal. Two strata at
equal distances above and below _O_ are equal in number, so far as their
useful powers and resistances go, but education introduces a new
component which destroys their equality and forces a redistribution.
Galton[72] suggests that, if people who would when adults fall in
classes _V_, _W_, or _X_ in our diagram could be recognized in infancy,
and could be bought for money, it would be a great bargain for a nation,
England for instance, to buy them for much money and rear them as
Englishmen. Farr estimated the baby of an agricultural laborer as worth
L5, capital value. A baby who could be reared to take a place in the
class _X_ would have a capital value of thousands of pounds. The capital
value would be like that of land of different degrees of natural
advantage, but none of it yet exploited.

+52. The masses and the mores.+ In connection with the mores the masses
are of very great importance. The historical or selected classes are
those