time than at another. We can only say that it depends on an increase in
the actual number of the population, on the number of men endowed with
high intellectual and moral faculties, as well as on their standard of
excellence. Corporeal structure appears to have little influence,
except so far as vigour of body leads to vigour of mind.
It has been urged by several writers that as high intellectual powers
are advantageous to a nation, the old Greeks, who stood some grades
higher in intellect than any race that has ever existed (26. See the
ingenious and original argument on this subject by Mr. Galton,
Hereditary Genius, pp. 340-342.), ought, if the power of natural
selection were real, to have risen still higher in the scale, increased
in number, and stocked the whole of Europe. Here we have the tacit
assumption, so often made with respect to corporeal structures, that
there is some innate tendency towards continued development in mind and
body. But development of all kinds depends on many concurrent
favourable circumstances. Natural selection acts only tentatively.
Individuals and races may have acquired certain indisputable
advantages, and yet have perished from failing in other characters. The
Greeks may have retrograded from a want of coherence between the many
small states, from the small size of their whole country, from the
practice of slavery, or from extreme sensuality; for they did not
succumb until they were enervated and corrupt to the very core. (27.
Mr. Greg, Fraser s Magazine, Sept. 1868, p. 357.) The western nations
of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage
progenitors, and stand at the summit of civilisation, owe little or
none of their superiority to direct inheritance from the old Greeks,
though they owe much to the written works of that wonderful people.
Who can positively say why the Spanish nation, so dominant at one time,
has been distanced in the race. The awakening of the nations of Europe
from the dark ages is a still more perplexing problem. At that early
period, as Mr. Galton has remarked, almost all the men of a gentle
nature, those given to meditation or culture of the mind, had no refuge
except in the bosom of a Church which demanded celibacy (28.
Hereditary Genius, 1870, pp. 357-359. The Rev. F.W. Farrar ( Fraser s
Magazine, Aug. 1870, p. 257) advances arguments on the other side. Sir
C. Lyell had already ( Principles of Geology, vol. ii. 1868, p. 489),
in a striking passage called attention to the evil influence of the
Holy Inquisition in having, through selection, lowered the general
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