BEAUIT AND THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES 167 



period. Among primitive peoples the best hunter or 

 the best warrior is the most attractive man, inasmuch 

 as he is the best able to hold his own and to provide 

 for liis family. Intellectual gifts are of small account 

 in a savage community. The Government of Virginia 

 in 1744 offered to educate some of the young men 

 belonging to the Iroquois Indians, and a deputation 

 of the tribe replied in the following terms : "We thank 

 you for your kind attention. We have already had 

 some experience of your education. Some of us whom 

 you educated in all your science came back bad 

 runners, ignorant of all woodcraft, unable to trap deer 

 or to build a wigwam. Of what good was their edu- 

 cation ? " The Iroquois took a very sensible view of 

 their position. 



The ancient Greeks developed an art more congenial 

 to savage notions than to the intellectuality of modern 

 civilisation. The most cultured Athenian was but 

 little removed in point of time from barbarism, and 

 his instincts were strongly influenced by the condi- 

 tions of savage life, as known to his immediate 

 ancestors. Hence the tendency of the Greeks to extol 

 the purely physical. "It was an artistic law in 

 Greece that no victor in the games could have a 

 portrait statue of himself set up unless he had been 



