328 PROBLEMS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 



recent, as an evolutionist counts time, to be separated from 

 men now living. At least it may be maintained that, if there 

 were any progress at all, men of equally great capacity would 

 have appeared. Mr Gladstone held that the great men of the 

 middle ages were quite on a par with, or even superior to, the 

 greatest intellects of the present day. 



Evid from Literature may help us to a decision. It does not depend 

 literature nearly so much as science upon accumulation. Nevertheless 

 every writer, consciously or unconsciously, is a borrower of the 

 thoughts of other writers. Shakespeare is greatest of such 

 borrowers, though when the work has passed through the 

 crucible of his mind, it is so much better than the crude 

 original, that we cannot help feeling that the borrower deserves 

 more credit than the originator. In addition to such traceable 

 borrowing, the world is full of ideas which once emanated 

 from some man's brain and have now become common property. 

 These are combined and worked up into new shapes by literary 

 men, so that they too, like men of science, are heirs of all the 

 ages. But in literature there is not, as in science, a step-by- 

 step advance ; the dependence of a writer on his predecessors 

 is less direct and obvious. When, therefore, Shakespeare is 

 weighed against any writer of the present century it is more 

 truly an estimate of comparative brain-power than when a com- 

 parison is drawn between two men of science who lived at 

 different dates. And Shakespeare outstrips by a great deal all 

 writers of more recent date. Let the reader who doubts this 

 read Hamlet once more. 



Small We may now approach the subject from another direction. 



for'htgh * s there reason to believe that the progress of the human race 



intellect has been due, to any great extent, to an elimination of stupid 



individuals or tribes because of their stupidity ? It is easy to 



see that many animals foxes for instance depend upon their 



cunning for survival. It is likely, therefore, that there will be 



progress in cunning through the continual elimination of the 



stupid. But when men came to live in tribes together, when 



they had language at their service, and still more when writing 



had been invented, the cleverness which a man required, was 



