e not now
based on any profound difference in race, capacity, or inclination. They
are based probably on the chances of some early war, reinforced by
custom and perpetuated by inheritance. A certain circulation,
corresponding in part to proved ability or disability, takes place in
the body politic, and, since the French Revolution, has taken place
increasingly. Some, by energy and perseverance, rise from the bottom;
some, by ill fortune or vice, fall from the top. But these readjustments
are insignificant in comparison with the social inertia that perpetuates
all the classes, and even such shifts as occur at once re-establish
artificial conditions for the next generation. As a rule, men's station
determines their occupation without their gifts determining their
station. Thus stifled ability in the lower orders, and apathy or
pampered incapacity in the higher, unite to deprive society of its
natural leaders.

[Sidenote: Feeble individuality the rule.]

It would be easy, however, to exaggerate the havoc wrought by such
artificial conditions. The monotony we observe in mankind must not be
charged to the oppressive influence of circumstances crushing the
individual soul. It is not society's fault that most men seem to miss
their vocation. Most men have no vocation; and society, in imposing on
them some chance language, some chance religion, and some chance career,
first plants an ideal in their bosoms and insinuates into them a sort of
racial or professional soul. Their only character is composed of the
habits they have been led to acquire. Some little propensities betrayed
in childhood may very probably survive; one man may prove by his dying
words that he was congenitally witty, another tender, another brave.
But these native qualities will simply have added an ineffectual tint to
some typical existence or other; and the vast majority will remain, as
Schopenhauer said, _Fabrikwaaren der Natur_.

Variety in human dreams, like personality among savages, may indeed be
inwardly very great, but it is not efficacious. To be socially important
and expressible in some common medium, initial differences in temper
must be organised into custom and become cumulative by being imitated
and enforced. The only artists who can show great originality are those
trained in distinct and established schools; for originality and genius
must be largely fed and raised on the shoulders of some old tradition. A
rich organisation and heritage, w