lify the good strain. Mediocrity, as every
Mendelian knows, is a dominant character, and extraordinary ability is
recessive character. In a marriage between an able man and a commonplace
woman, the chances that any given child will resemble the mother are,
roughly speaking, three to one.

The fact suggests the thought that nature is secretly against the
superman, and seeks to prevent his birth. We have, indeed, no ground
for assuming that the continued progress visualized by man is in actual
accord with the great flow of the elemental forces. Devolution is quite
as natural as evolution, and may be just as pleasing, or even a good
deal more pleasing, to God. If the average man is made in God's image,
then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God,
and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority
perish with his bodily frame. All animal breeders know how difficult it
is to maintain a fine strain. The universe seems to be in a conspiracy
to encourage the endless reproduction of peasants and Socialists, but
a subtle and mysterious opposition stands eternally against the
reproduction of philosophers.

Per corollary, it is notorious that women of merit frequently marry
second-rate men, and bear them children, thus aiding in the war upon
progress. One is often astonished to discover that the wife of some
sordid and prosaic manufacturer or banker or professional man is a woman
of quick intelligence and genuine charm, with intellectual interests
so far above his comprehension that he is scarcely so much as aware of
them. Again, there are the leading feminists, women artists and other
such captains of the sex; their husbands are almost always inferior men,
and sometimes downright fools. But not paupers! Not incompetents in a
man's world! Not bad husbands! What we here encounter, of course, is no
more than a fresh proof of the sagacity of women. The first-rate woman
is a realist. She sees clearly that, in a world dominated by second-rate
men, the special capacities of the second-rate man are esteemed above
all other capacities and given the highest rewards, and she endeavours
to get her share of those rewards by marrying a second-rate man at
the to of his class. The first-rate man is an admirable creature; his
qualities are appreciated by every intelligent woman; as I have just
said, it may be reasonably argued that he is actually superior to God.
But his attractions, after a certain po