,[251]
defended analogous doctrines in Germany; setting the curve
representing frequency of talent over against that of income, he
attempted to show that all democratic measures which aim at promoting
the rise in the social scale of the talented are useless, if not
dangerous; that they only increase the panmixia, to the great
detriment of the species and of society.

Among the aristocratic theories which Darwinism has thus inspired we
must reckon that of Nietzsche. It is well known that in order to
complete his philosophy he added biological studies to his
philological; and more than once in his remarks upon the _Wille zur
Macht_ he definitely alludes to Darwin; though it must be confessed
that it is generally in order to proclaim the insufficiency of the
processes by which Darwin seeks to explain the genesis of species.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche's mind is completely possessed by an ideal of
Selection. He, too, has a horror of panmixia. The naturalists'
conception of "the fittest" is joined by him to that of the "hero" of
romance to furnish a basis for his doctrine of the Superman. Let us
hasten to add, moreover, that at the very moment when support was
being sought in the theory of Selection for the various forms of the
aristocratic doctrine, those same forms were being battered down on
another side by means of that very theory. Attention was drawn to the
fact that by virtue of the laws which Darwin himself had discovered
isolation leads to etiolation. There is a risk that the privilege
which withdraws the privileged elements of Society from competition
will cause them to degenerate. In fact, Jacoby in his _Studies in
Selection, in connexion with Heredity in Man_,[252] concludes that
"sterility, mental debility, premature death and, finally, the
extinction of the stock were not specially and exclusively the fate of
sovereign dynasties; all privileged classes, all families in
exclusively elevated positions share the fate of reigning families,
although in a minor degree and in direct proportion to the loftiness
of their social standing. From the mass of human beings spring
individuals, families, races, which tend to raise themselves above the
common level; painfully they climb the rugged heights, attain the
summits of power, of wealth, of intelligence, of talent, and then, no
sooner are they there than they topple down and disappear in gulfs of
mental and physical degeneracy." The demographical researches of
Hansen[253]