CHAPTER XX 



WHAT PICK AND SHOVEL REVEAL 



ALL the ancient documents, such as the 

 Homeric poems, point to the firm belief 

 that earlier generations were better than 

 those which succeeded them. This is the moral 

 of the hero legends. The Homeric heroes, in 

 turn, look up to a nobler line from which they 

 have descended. The earliest Egyptian relics 

 tell of a purer faith than that which followed, 

 even though its monuments were erected on a 

 more magnificent scale. It is very interesting to 

 note that Professor Conklin himself holds that 

 human evolution has come to an end: 



There has been no progress in the intellectual capacity of 

 man in the past two or three thousand years, and it seems 

 probable that the limits of intellectual evolution have been 

 reached in the greatest minds of the race. Even in the most 

 distant future there may never appear greater geniuses than 

 Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Newton, Darwin. 1 



His argument if strictly pressed home would 

 argue for a positive decline in the race 2 : &quot;The 

 great increase in nervous and mental diseases in 



1 Princeton Lectures. * Ibid. 



237 



