i86 NATURAL SCIENCE. March. 



the lower we descend in the scale of civilisation, and that savages are 

 far more innately alike in every respect than are civilized men ; just 

 as there certainly seems to us to be far more inborn individuality, and 

 far less dead-level, among dogs than among sheep and rabbits ? 

 Secondly, the very conclusion that Mr. Wells controverts, is a 

 necessary deduction from Spencer's definition of evolution ; for, in the 

 mental sphere, increased heterogeneity means increased individuality 

 and decreased ' all-alike-ness.' Mr. Wells will therefore find it 

 necessary to disprove a good deal of " First Principles," in order to 

 clear the way for his own argument. 



In the moral sphere, the case is a good deal worse for Mr. Wells. 

 All the same difficulties must be met ; and in addition there are 

 several others. First, we have no such presumptive evidence for 

 moral geniuses among primitive man as for intellectual geniuses, so 

 that Mr. Wells must make even larger assumptions. Secondly, a good 

 many, who might concede Mr. Wells his primitive intellectual 

 geniuses, probably would agree with me in thinking it far more 

 unlikely, in view of what we know of sociology and psychology, that 

 there were such marked moral geniuses. Lastly, there is a very 

 damaging fact that Mr. Wells has probably entirely overlooked, one 

 that is, perhaps, fatal to his whole argument. Morality, that is 

 subjective morality (the emotional impulse), is entirely a factor of the 

 emotions ; and the emotions are simply the psychical side of, broadly 

 speaking, visceral changes. How potent a factor in morality is this 

 visceral change, may be realised if we reflect upon the profound 

 emotional differences between men and women. Let Mr. Wells 

 carefully study Havelock Ellis' " Man and Woman," and he will see 

 how strong is the case against him, and how vast a difference in moral 

 impulse may reasonably be attributed to a comparatively slight 

 alteration in man's visceral physique. 



But even did we waive every objection, and grant Mr. Wells the 

 second alternative corollary from his argument, how would this benefit 

 him ? His whole drift is that nurture does everything, and Nature 

 almost nothing, for man's advance. How then does it help him to 

 assume that moral and intellectual geniuses were as characteristic 

 "sports" among our Palaeolithic ancestors as among ourselves? 

 For, were this the fact, there were no need of Mr. Wells' alarmist 

 article ; and he would be only endorsing the oft repeated warning that 

 we ought carefully to breed from our most gifted stocks, and strive to 

 repress the great increase of the worthless. 



Several of the arguments here only outlined are set forth more 

 fully in chapter vii. of my " Towards Utopia " and in the Free Review 

 for February, 1895. To Mr. Francis Galton's works on heredity I 

 attach so great value that I venture strongly to commend their study 

 to Mr. Wells and those interested in his argument. 



In conclusion, I will only add that Mr. Wells would perhaps 

 make out a far stronger case were he to invert his argument ; and, 



