d, it may be hoped, partly neutralise a
social cause that is now very adverse to the early marriages of the
most gifted, namely, the cost of living in cultured and refined
society. A young man with a career before him commonly feels it
would be an act of folly to hamper himself by too early a marriage.
The doors of society that are freely open to a bachelor are closed
to a married couple with small means, unless they bear patent
recommendations such as the public recognition of a natural nobility
would give. The attitude of mind that I should expect to predominate
among those who had undeniable claims to rank as members of an
exceptionally gifted race, would be akin to that of the modern
possessors of ancestral property or hereditary rank. Such persons
feel it a point of honour not to alienate the old place or make
misalliances, and they are respected for their honest family pride.
So a man of good race would shrink from spoiling it by a lower
marriage, and every one would sympathise with his sentiments.

CONCLUSION.

It remains to sketch in outline the principal conclusions to which
we seem to be driven by the results of the various inquiries
contained in this volume, and by what we know on allied topics from
the works of others.

We cannot but recognise the vast variety of natural faculty, useful
and harmful, in members of the same race, and much more in the human
family at large, all of which tend to be transmitted by inheritance.
Neither can we fail to observe that the faculties of men generally,
are unequal to the requirements of a high and growing civilisation.
This is principally owing to their entire ancestry having lived up
to recent times under very uncivilised conditions, and to the
somewhat capricious distribution in late times of inherited wealth,
which affords various degrees of immunity from the usual selective
agencies.

In solution of the question whether a continual improvement in
education might not compensate for a stationary or even retrograde
condition of natural gifts, I made inquiry into the life history of
twins, which resulted in proving the vastly preponderating effects
of nature over nurture.

The fact that the very foundation and outcome of the human mind is
dependent on race, and that the qualities of races vary, and
therefore that humanity taken as a whole is not fixed but variable,
compels us to reconsider what may be the true place and function of
man in the order of the wo