BASIS OF INVESTIGATION. 67 



a manner that corresponds exactly with our deduction from the 

 theory of use-inheritance. 



In the case of Rome we find the same education accompanied 

 by the gradual increase in number and ability of her great men. In 

 Rome the educational rise commenced somewhat later than in 

 Greece and culminated soon after the beginning of the Christian 

 era. 



THE DARK AGES. 



For about a thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire 

 there was in Europe no education of the masses, and no education 

 of any kind except a little attained by the clergy. As priests were 

 forbidden to marry and consequently left no offspring, or at least 

 were not supposed to leave any, there was no possibility of use- 

 inheritance through ancestral education. The almost total absence 

 of any intellectual achievements during this thousand years shows 

 that there was nothing produced which could be referred to as use- 

 inheritance. In other words, the absence of use and the absence of 

 anything that could be called use-inheritance go together for a thou- 

 sand years. 



In the fourteenth century the revival of learning began, and uni- 

 versities were founded at Lyons, Avignon, Orleans, Perugia, Hei- 

 delberg, Coimbra and Vienna. In the fifteenth century we have the 

 invention of printing, and thereafter we have a continually increas- 

 ing amount of education diffused, first through the ruling classes, 

 and afterwards gradually extending to the masses. The theory of 

 use-inheritance demands that accompanying this there should be an 

 increasing number of persons having considerable mental ability, 

 and that mental ability should rise to higher and higher levels as 

 the centuries pass. 



