INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION 325 



During three consecutive years an aboriginal school in the colony 

 of Victoria stood highest of all the state schools, obtaining 100 

 per cent, of marks. 1 The Maoris retain their intelligence longer, 

 taking honours at the Universities and on the average out- 

 stripping lads of European stock. But after this the European 

 draws ahead. 2 In the same way the negro boys in the United 

 States are sharp and bright up to the age of puberty, when 

 taught by Europeans. These facts are beyond dispute, and there 

 is a great mass of literature on the subject to which the reader 

 can easily refer. 



Very different conclusions are drawn from these facts. On 

 the one side we have Mr Francis Galton weighing the intel- 

 lectual capacity of the natives of Damara against that of his 

 spaniel, and inclined to decide that the spaniel had the advan- 

 tage. On the other we have Mr Benjamin Kidd quoting with 

 approval a writer in the Contemporary* who says " nine hundred 

 and ninety-nine parts out of the thousand of every man's pro- 

 duce are the result of his social inheritance and environment." 

 No doubt Mr Galton was wrong in measuring the comparative 

 attainment of the savage and civilised man and assuming that the 

 gulf between them in natural capacity was equally great. But it 

 is also true, I think, that the importance of innate intellectual 

 power is much underrated by some theorists. The children of 

 savages who compete successfully with children of European 

 extraction soon get to the end of their tether. Moreover they 

 have their intellectual pabulum served up to them in a peptonised 

 state by their teachers. It has yet to be proved that they are capable 

 of original thought or of making discoveries or inventions, and 

 without this power in some of its members a nation cannot advance. 



Having thus protested against undue depreciation of intellect, intellectual 

 we may agree with what Mr Benjamin Kidd so stoutly maintains, jj* 3 ^ 8 ,. 

 viz. that human progress depends on "social efficiency" even cumulation 

 more than on intellect ; that we make progress mainly through J^g^,. 



the accumulation of knowledge, each generation adding a little to evolu- 

 tion of 



1 See Mr Benjamin Kidd, Social Evolution, chap. ix. higher in- 



2 See Mr F. Boyle, loc. cit. teflectual 



3 Mr E. Bellamy, Contemporary Rtvifw, July 1890, " What Nationalism means." 



