324 PROBLEMS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 



debarred and which makes sixty miles an hour a possibility. 

 The superiority of the better man in miles per hour is now 

 fifty-six instead of one. It can hardly be said that this illus- 

 tration overstates the difference in the amount gained by the 

 very clever and the very stupid from the records of the dis- 

 coveries of great men, the machinery, that is, which makes 

 further advance possible. 



From this it would seem that it is not so easy to measure the 

 comparative superiority in actual brain power of the senior 

 wrangler to the "wooden spoon." Assuming that such a thing 

 can be represented numerically, twenty-five times may be alto- 

 gether too low an estimate. But, whatever may be correct, it is 

 quite clear that education multiplies the power of the better 

 brain more times than it multiplies that of the inferior. The 

 man of great calibre enters into a glorious inheritance. All that 

 previous ages have discovered is open to him and his original 

 work is an addition to a pile already heaped mountain high. 

 And as knowledge advances it is clearly of importance that all 

 that has been already attained should be made easily accessible. 

 Otherwise the preliminary work to be done before new fields of 

 thought and observation can be explored will be too burden- 

 some. Already the mass of it appals the imagination. 

 The brain ^ e are now j n a b etter position to compare the capacity of 

 savages savages with that of civilised men. It is matter of common 

 knowledge, how limited is the arithmetic of the savage. The 

 native Australian can count only up to four, at any rate he has 

 words only for the first four numbers, Mr Benjamin Kidd says 

 only for the first three. The Andamanese, when not educated 

 by Europeans, have no words for numbers above two, though 

 they can count up to ten by striking the nose and saying " this 

 also." But now schools have been founded in the Andaman 

 Islands and up to the age of twelve or fourteen young Anda- 

 manese boys are as intelligent as any other children. 1 Of 

 Australian children we have similar accounts : when taught by 

 Europeans they show great intelligence up to the age of puberty. 



1 I give this on the authority of Mr Frederic Boyle. See Macmillarts Magazine, 

 November 1898. See also Tylor's Primitive Culture. 



