228 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



product of their genius not being returned to the 

 common fund, but being lost to them in a material 

 sense. Thus is explained the phenomenon known to 

 history as the old age and decrepitude of nations. 

 By the operation of selection and the fatal law of the 

 extinction of privileged races, certain peoples become 

 civilised, rise to greatness, then decline and disappear, 

 to be supplanted by younger peoples in whom the 

 selection of talents and energies is barely begun. 

 ... In lowering all who lift themselves above the 

 common level of humanity, in chastising the proud, 

 and avenging the excess of their happiness, Nature 

 makes the privileged classes their own executioners. 

 Too much prosperity offends the gods, said the 

 ancients ; and a medical study of the results of all 

 social and intellectual distinction, and selection gener- 

 ally, has led us to the same conclusion." ^ 



The true moral to be drawn from the passages 

 above quoted is the danger of metaphor in discussing 

 a scientific subject. These laboured comparisons of 

 the race with the individual we believe to be wholly 

 misleading. Nations, it is true, have risen and fallen, 

 civilisations have grown up and declined ; and in the 

 European communities of the present day causes of 



^ Jacoby's Etudes sur la Selection. 



