ained
without rising or falling. Occasionally, it happens that the ambitious
and energetic son of a prosperous master-craftsman becomes a
professional man, marries into the professional caste, and founds a
professional family; such a family seems to flourish for some three
generations, and then suddenly fails and dies out in the male line,
while the vigour of the female line is not impaired.

[14] The new social adjustment of a family, it is probable, is always
difficult, and if the change is sudden or extreme, the new environment
may rapidly prove fatal to the family. Lorenz (_Lehrbuch der
Genealogie_, p. 135) has shown that when a peasant family reaches an
upper social class it dies out in a few generations.

[15] See, on this point, Reibmayr, _Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talentes
und Genies_, Vol. I, ch. VII.

[16] Fahlbeck, _op. cit._, p. 168.

[17] Regeneration implies that there has been degeneration, and it cannot
be positively affirmed that such degeneration has, on the whole,
occurred in such a manner as to affect the race. Reibmayr (_Die
Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talentes und Genies_, Bd. I, p. 400) regards
degeneration as a process setting in with urbanization and the tendency
to diminished population; if so, it is but another name for
civilization, and can only be condemned by condemning civilization,
whether or not physical deterioration occurs. The Inter-departmental
Commission on Physical Deterioration held in 1904, in London, concluded
that there are no sufficient statistical or other data to prove that the
physique of the people in the present, as compared with the past, has
undergone any change; and this conclusion was confirmed by the
Director-General of the Army Medical Service. There is certainly good
reason to believe that urban populations (and especially industrial
workers in factories) are inferior in height and weight and general
development to rural populations, and less fit for military or similar
service. The stunted development of factory workers in the East End of
London was noted nearly a century ago, and German military experience
distinctly shows the inferiority of the town-dweller to the
country-dweller. (See e.g. Weyl, _Handbuch der Hygiene_, Supplement, Bd.
IV, pp. 746 _et seq._; _Politisch-Anthropologische Revue_, 1905, pp. 145
_et seq._) The proportion of German youths fit for military service
slowly decreases every year; in 1909 it was 53.6 per cent, in 1910 only
53 per cent;