loria] SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY— A REVIEW 285
desirable that the number of the best shall increase to the utmost.
Luckily, human society, through a wonderful and unconscious tendency, has for centuries obeyed precisely this law of equilib- rium and of progress. In fact, in human society it is the best, the worthiest, who win the highest positions, who reach the sum- mit of wealth and power; the insignificant, the mediocrities, go to form the impecunious and laboring class, while the de- generate, the spiritless, and the silly furnish the contingent of the great army of prostitution, pauperism, and crime. Hence, to increase, so far as possible, the number of superior intellects, and to elevate their mental power, the segregation of the highest classes — their crystallization into privileged castes inaccessible to lower circles — is an admirable device, inasmuch as by it the indi- viduals of those classes are rigorously obliged to unite in marriage only with individuals of their own class. In fact, a law that would guard against the marriage of individuals possessing supe- rior qualities with those who lack them, would result in the avoid- ance of panmixia (as Weissmann would say), or that intercrossing of individuals gifted and not gifted with useful qualities, which leads to the fatal disappearance of those qualities in future gen- erations and thus to the irreparable deterioration of the species. Therefore, it is highly desirable, in the interest of the human race f that the wealthier and more cultured classes should persist in their aristocratic exclusiveness to which they are already inclined, and should zealously practice Horace's precept, Odi profanum valgus et arceo (I hate the profane crowd and keep them away). The evident proofs, continues Ammon, of the advantages of this method are seen the moment one observes the splendid results attained where the rule is most rigorously applied. As an exam- ple he mentions the princely marriages and the robust, intelligent offspring they usually produce.
At this point that invisible reader whom every writer has be- fore him while he writes, will venture to express doubt concerning
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