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140
Hereditary Genius
ability (I do not speak of illustrious or prodigious genius) have not left
descendants behind them, it is not because they are sterile, but
because they are apt to marry sterile women, in order to obtain
wealth to support the peerages with which their merits have been
rewarded. I look upon the peerage as a disastrous institution, owing to
its destructive effects on our valuable races. The most highly-gifted
men are ennobled; their elder sons are tempted to marry heiresses,
and their younger ones not to marry at all, for these have not enough
fortune to support both a family and an aristocratical position. So the
side-shoots of the genealogical tree are hacked off, and the leading
shoot is blighted, and the breed is lost for ever.
It is with much satisfaction that I have traced and, I hope, finally
disposed of the cause why families are apt to become extinct in
proportion to their dignity—chiefly so, on account of my desire to
show that able races are not necessarily sterile, and secondarily
because it may put an end to the wild and ludicrous hypotheses that
are frequently started to account for their extinction.
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