ve the disposal of such free
income as is required for work that has no pecuniary value. And
numerically the gentlefolk are an inconsiderable fraction of the
population. The supply of competently gifted bearers of the community's
culture would accordingly be limited to such as could be drawn by
self-selection from among this inconsiderable proportion of the
community at large.

It may be recalled that in point of heredity, and therefore in point of
native fitness for the maintenance and advance of civilisation, there is
no difference between the gentlefolk and the populace at large; or at
least there is no difference of such a nature as to count in abatement
of the proposition set down above. Some slight, but after all
inconsequential, difference there may be, but such difference as there
is, if any, rather counts against the gentlefolk as keepers of the
cultural advance. The gentlefolk are derived from business; the
gentleman represents a filial generation of the businessman; and if the
class typically is gifted with any peculiar hereditary traits,
therefore, they should presumably be such as typically mark the
successful businessman--astute, prehensile, unscrupulous. For a
generation or two, perhaps to the scriptural third and fourth
generation, it is possible that a diluted rapacity and cunning may
continue to mark the businessman's well-born descendants; but these are
not serviceable traits for the conservation and advancement of the
community's cultural heritage. So that no consideration of special
hereditary fitness in the well-born need be entertained in this
connection.

As to the limitation imposed by the price-system on the supply of
candidates suited by native gift for the human work of civilisation; it
would no doubt, be putting the figure extravagantly high to say that the
gentlefolk, properly speaking, comprise as much as ten percent of the
total population; perhaps something less than one-half of that
percentage would still seem a gross overstatement. But, to cover loose
ends and vagrant cases, the gentlefolk may for the purpose be credited
with so high a percentage of the total population. If ten percent be
allowed, as an outside figure, it follows that the community's
scientists, artists, scholars, and the like individuals given over to
the workday pursuits of the human spirit, are by conventional
restriction to be drawn from one-tenth of the current supply of persons
suited by native gift for these