The young men of the nobility of wealth, birth, and fashion usually marry heiresses, if they can.  But only in families of enormous wealth can there be more than one or two heiresses in the same generation.  She has very probably inherited a portion of her wealth from one or more extinct branches of the family.  Moreover, not to speak of other factors, the labor and anxiety which have been essential to the accumulation and preservation of these great fortunes, or the mode of life which has accompanied their use or abuse, tend to diminish the number of children.  Heiresses to very large fortunes usually therefore belong to families which are tending to sterility.  And this has very probably been no unimportant factor in the extinction of “noble” families.

A sound body contains many organs, all of which must be sound.  And in a sound mind there is an even greater number of faculties, all of which must be kept at a high grade of efficiency.  Man is a marvellously complex being, and more in danger of a narrow and one-sided development than any lower animal.  And it is very easy for a certain grade or class of society, or for a whole race, to become so specialized, by the cultivation of only one set of faculties as to altogether prevent its giving birth to a complete humanity.  Along certain broad lines the Greeks and Romans attained results never since equalled.  But their neglect of other, even more important, powers and attainments, especially the moral and religious, doomed them to a speedy decay.  The rude northern races were on the whole better and nobler, and became heirs to Greek art and letters, and to Roman law.  And this is another illustration of the advantage or necessity of the fusion of races.

To answer the question, “Which stratum or class in the community or world at large is heir to the future?” we must seek the one which is still to a large extent generalized.  It must be maintaining, in a sound body, a steady, even if slow, advance of all the mental powers.  It will not be remarkable for the high development or lack of any quality or power; it must have a fair amount of all of them well correlated.  It must be well balanced, “good all around,” as we say.  And this class is evidently neither the highest nor the lowest in the community, but the “common people, whom God must have loved, because he made so many of them.”

They have, as a rule, fair-sized or large families.  Their bodies are kept sound and vigorous by manual labor.  They are compelled to think on all sorts of questions and to solve them as best they can.  They have a healthy balance of mental faculties, even if they are not very learned or artistic.  They are kept temperate because they cannot afford many luxuries.  Their healthy life prevents an undue craving for them.  They help one another and cultivate unselfishness.  The good old word, neighbor, means something to them.  They have a sturdy morality, and you can always rely upon them in great moral crises.  They are patriotic and public-spirited; they have not so many, or so enslaving, selfish interests.  They have always been trained to self-sacrifice and the endurance of hardship; and heroism is natural to them.  They have a strong will, cultivated by the battle of daily life.  And among them religion never loses its hold.