ELEMENTS OF ORIGINALITY 195 



estimate, very nearly two grades higher than 



our own; that is, about as much as our race is 



above the African Negro. This estimate, which 



may seem prodigious to some, is confirmed by 



the quick intelligence and high culture of the 



Athenian commonalty, before whom literary 



works were recited, and works of art exhibited, 



of a far more severe character than could possibly 



be appreciated by the average of our race, the 



caliber of whose intellect is easily gauged by a 



glance at the contents of a railway bookstall. "^^ 



It is important to take into account : As it was the 



Greek nation — a handful of people — that produced 



the highest intellectual development ever known on 



earth, so it was Athens which was the flower of this 



development. Athens was a city in which, Augustus 



Boeckh says, "in 445 B.C., according to Philochoras 



.... there were but 14,240 genuine Athenians. Four 



thousand seven hundred and sixty who had crept 



into the privileges of citizenship, were on that 



account, according to Plutarch, sold into slavery, 



but at all events, they were excluded from the rights 



of citizenship. Before that time, therefore, there 



were 19,000 acknowledged as citizens The 



relation of the free population to the slaves may .... 

 be assumed to have been 27 : 100 or about 1 :4."^* 



2' Hereditary Genius, 331. 



** The Public Economy of the Athenians, 51, 55. 



