Such indeed is the
case with the gentleman of the old school, in whom the
leisure-class ideals have suffered no disintegration; and such is
the attitude of his latter-day descendant, in so far as he has
fallen heir to the full complement of upper-class virtues. But
the ways of heredity are devious, and not every gentleman's son
is to the manor born. Especially is the transmission of the
habits of thought which characterize the predatory master
somewhat precarious in the case of a line of descent in which but
one or two of the latest steps have lain within the leisure-class
discipline. The chances of occurrence of a strong congenital or
acquired bent towards the exercise of the cognitive aptitudes are
apparently best in those members of the leisure class who are of
lower class or middle class antecedents -- that is to say, those
who have inherited the complement of aptitudes proper to the
industrious classes, and who owe their place in the leisure class
to the possession of qualities which count for more today than
they did in the times when the leisure-class scheme of life took
shape. But even outside the range of these later accessions to
the leisure class there are an appreciable number of individuals
in whom the invidious interest is not sufficiently dominant to
shape their theoretical views, and in whom the proclivity to
theory is sufficiently strong to lead them into the scientific
quest.
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