The investigation need not be limited to problems of bad breeding. Eugenics, as its name shows, is primarily interested in "good breeding;" it is particularly worth while, therefore, to examine the relations between heredity and environment in the production of mental and moral superiority. If success in life--the kind of success that is due to great mental and moral superiority--is due to the opportunities a man has, then it ought to be pretty evenly distributed among all persons who have had favorable opportunities, provided a large enough number of persons be taken to allow the laws of probability full play. England offers a good field to investigate this point, because Oxford and Cambridge, her two great universities, turn out most of the eminent men of the country, or at least have done so until recently. If nothing more is necessary to ensure a youth's success than to give him a first-class education and the chance to associate with superior people, then the prizes of life ought to be pretty evenly distributed among the graduates of the two universities, during a period of a century or two. This is not the case. When we look at the history of England, as Galton did nearly half a century ago, we find success in life to an unexpected degree a family affair. The distinguished father is likely to have a distinguished son, while the son of two "nobodies" has a very small chance of becoming distinguished. To cite one concrete case, Galton found[9] that the son of a distinguished judge had about one chance in four of becoming himself distinguished, while the son of a man picked out at random from the population had about one chance in 4,000 of becoming similarly distinguished. The objection at once occurs that perhaps social opportunities might play the predominant part; that the son of an obscure man never gets a chance, while the son of the prominent man is pushed forward regardless of his inherent abilities. This, as Galton argued at length, can not be true of men of really eminent attainments. The true genius, he thought, frequently succeeds in rising despite great obstacles, while no amount of family pull will succeed in making a mediocrity into a genius, although it may land him in some high and very comfortable official position. Galton found a good illustration in the papacy, where during many centuries it was the custom for a pope to adopt one of his nephews as a son, and push him forward in every way. If opportunity were all that is required, these adopted sons ought to have reached eminence as often as a real son would have done; but statistics show that they reached eminence only as often as would be expected for nephews of great men, whose chance is notably less, of course, than that of sons of great men, in whom the intensity of heredity is much greater.