Chap. V.] . CIVILIZED NATIONS. m 



tcllectual powers are advantageous to a nation, the old 

 Greeks, who stood some grades higher in intellect than any 

 race that has ever existed, 24 ought to have risen, if the 

 power of natural selection were real, still higher in the 

 scale, increased in number, and stocked the whole of Eu- 

 rope. Here we have the tacit assumption, so often made 

 with respect to corporeal structures, that there is some in- 

 nate tendency toward continued development in mind and 

 body. But development of all kinds depends on many 

 concurrent favorable circumstances. Natural selection 

 acts only in a tentative manner. 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 ex- 

 treme sensuality ; for they did not succumb until " they 

 were enervated and corrupt to the very core." 26 The 

 western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably sur- 

 pass their former savage progenitors and stand at the sum- 

 mit*of civilization, owe little or none of their superiority to 

 direct inheritance from the old Greeks ; though they owe 

 much to the written works of this 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 this early period, as 

 Mr. Gait on 28 has remarked, almost all the men of a gentle 



24 See the ingenious and original argument on this subject by Mr. 

 Galton, ' Hereditary Genius,' pp. 340-342. 



25 Mr. Greg, ' Fraser's Magazine,' Sept. 1868, p. 357. 



26 ' Hereditary Genius,' 1870, pp. 357-359. The Rev. F. H. Farraf 

 (' Fraser's Mag.', Aug. 1870, p. 257) advances arguments on the other 

 side. Sir C. Lyell had already (' Principles of Geology,' vol. ii. 1868, 

 p. 489) called attention, in a striking passage, to the evil influence of the 



