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Will not a time come when, although more favorable to the popularization of science, the
conditions of our civilized life will be less compatible with the discovery of truly profound new
scientific theories? Mr. de Candolle’s History of Science enumerates the circumstances most
propitious to the formation of true scholars and original creators. Will family life—austere, moral,
self-contained, and traditionalist yet inspiring—will the peacefulness of the countryside, that halfsolitude
needed for the best development of scientific genius, be possible in the whirlpool of the ever
busier and more dispersive urban life in which people seem to be turning? And what are the best
conditions for the formation and growth of genius in all the paths of art? Certainly they are not the
same as those which favor its success and glory after it has been born. 2
Following these general considerations we should note the importance of those two acknowledged
social superiorities, nobility and a capital—one or the other of which is dominant according to the
times—in creating and propagating a form of government and as a breeding ground for governmental
personnel. A nobility or a capital is a sometimes necessary, always useful agent of creation for a
country’s political and administrative institutions at the same time that it is an agent of propagation, a
social fountain for literary, religious, moral, and even industrial novelties born outside it, in a foreign
country or in the lower levels of the nation itself. 3 The English nobility is not alone in having made
the constitution of England; in America the big Southern plantation owners made that of the United
States. The French nobility made the Capetian monarchy, and after that, Paris completed France just
as London did England after the lords. Let us first ask how a nobility is founded—a major problem in
sociology, as is the question, to be examined later, of how a city is founded.
There are many different, often coexisting origins of the nobility: success in war, wealth,
mysterious and transcendental saintliness or morality, aesthetic and civilized culture. But whatever
the point of view, superiority always depends on the adaptation of one individual—and then of his
children and family through presumed inheritance of aptitudes—to the state of knowledge and all the
kinds of resources which enable a man to win, gain wealth, become saintly or heroic, and be reputed
more civilized. It is always a question of a real or supposed relationship between the individual, and
later his family, and the ideas or needs of his time in the various areas enumerated.
When no greater weapon has been invented than the club, no better means of making a fortune than
the harpoon or the bow and arrow, no greater morality than fidelity to prescriptions of family
vendettas or to the requirements of ritual fetishism, no greater art or luxury than tattooing or rough
sculptures from reindeer antlers, then the most noble personnage can only be the one who has the
greatest muscular force and ability of an archer, who is the most ferociously vindictive or madly
superstitious, who has the most complicated tattoo or the most beautiful club to command with. Later,
when animals have been domesticated and the art of sewing and weaving has been invented as well
as that of metallurgy, the most noble will be the one who is the best rider, has the most herds, is the
most faithful observer of domestic and ancestral worship, and the wisest in divining the future, has the
most reckless and bracelets of gold and the most purple garments woven by the women. Still later,
when the knowledge of cultivable plants, the invention of farming implements, and the discovery of
agricultural secrets and of masonry have rendered social groups sedentary and enabled small armies
to withstand sieges, when the fine arts have been perfected and religious ideas have become sublime,
nobility will be acquired through strategic ability, wealth in land and domains cultivated by slaves
conquered in war, through conformity of life to divine examples, the possession of sacred books,
sacrifices in the temples, through gladiatorial combat, and through a luxurious life, especially the
luxury of food, clothes, and housing, though not yet furnishings. Finally, in the industrial era, when