average people that the breed of kings will produce a statesman.”[1]
When one recalls that Wood is discussing a period in which absolute monarchy and hereditary succession were the rule, his statement that opportunity “may have” helped monarchs more than ministers seems a jest, and his reference to the comparative chances of the common people, a snobbish jest. With the same logic one can argue that the reason a hereditary priesthood shows the capacities it does in temple rites is to be found in its genetic superiority to laymen. And so far is it from being a settled thing that “differences of opportunity are shown by other tests to be usually of slight causative value,” one can cite numerous tests, ranging from educational to military achievement, which prove that differences of opportunity are often of great causative value. The greatest generals, as is well known, have almost always been professionally trained.
Perhaps the most conclusive evidence that Wood is riding a biological hobby-horse can be found in his own historical data as well as in the history of monarchy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By his own admission, from the year 1603 to 1811, no sovereign of outstanding capacity, with the possible exception of William III., sat on the English throne. And yet this prolonged period, according to him, was one of continuous progress. The same situation obtains for Scotland. There is no gametic explanation offered for this startling difference between English and Scotch history and that of other European nations. In the entire nineteenth century, monarchs were dwarfed by national statesmen in almost every country. In the twentieth century they were either thrown into the discard or became decorative symbols. Napoleon, a commoner by virtue of gametic and social station, played ducks and drakes with the crowned heads of Europe. A century later, Lenin, Trotsky, Mussolini, Hitler, Ataturk, Metaxas, and other midget followers of the pattern set by the dictators either buried their monarchs or converted the seed of “the most superior” family in the world into paltry retainers. So much for the gametic interpretation of history! ••••• The way is now clear for a consideration of Wood’s positive findings freed from the quaint conceits of his social Darwinism.
- ↑ The Influence of Monarchs, p. 261.
