178 THE DESCENT OF MAN. Part I. 



risen, if the power of natural selection were real, still 

 higher in the scale, increased in number, and stocked 

 the whole of Europe. Here we have the tacit assump- 

 tion, 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 cir- 

 cumstances. 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 extreme sensuality ; 

 for they did not succumb until "they were enervated 

 " and corrupt to the very core." 25 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 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. Galton 26 has remarked, almost 

 all the men of a gentle nature, those given to medi- 

 tation or culture of the mind, had no refuge except in 

 the bosom of the Church which demanded celibacy ; 



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



26 'Hereditary Genius,' 1870, p. 357-359. The Eev. F. H. Farrar 

 (' 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 Holy Inquisition in having lowered, through selection, the general 

 standard of intelligence in Europe. 



