430 NATURE AND NURTURE 



to Pearson, then, there must be, on the average, a tremendous 

 germinal difference between Englishmen of the upper classes and 

 those of the lower, between Englishmen of the country and those 

 of the town, between Englishmen of to-day and those of a century 

 or two ago, between Englishmen and foreigners, between Greeks 

 and Romans of the period of national greatness and their immedi- 

 ate predecessors and successors, between Greek Mohammedans and 

 Greek Christians, and so forth ; and an English child reared by 

 African cannibals should develop the moral and intellectual as well 

 as the physical characteristics of his progenitors not of his educators. 

 709. Moreover, " If the conclusion we have reached to-night be 

 substantially a true one, and for my part I cannot for a moment 

 doubt that it is so, then what is its lesson for us as a community ? 

 Why simply that geniality and probity and ability may be fostered 

 indeed by home environment and by provision of good schools and 

 well equipped institutes for research, but that their origin like health 

 and muscle, is deeper down than these things. They are bred, not 

 created. That good stock breeds good stock is a common-place 

 of every farmer ; that the strong man and woman have healthy 

 children is widely recognized too. But we have left the moral and 

 intellectual faculties as qualities for which we can provide amply 

 by home environment and sound education." l . . . " Looking 

 round dispassionately from the calm atmosphere of anthropology, 

 I fear there really does exist a lack of leaders of the highest 

 intelligence, in science, in the arts, in trade, even in politics. I 

 do seem to see a want of intelligence in the British merchant, in 

 the British professional man and in the British workman. But I 

 do not think the remedy lies solely in adopting foreign methds of 

 instruction or in the spread of technical education. I believe we 

 have a paucity, just now, of the better intelligences to guide us 

 and of the moderate intelligences to be successfully guided. The 

 only account we can give of this on the basis of the results we have 

 reached to-night is that we are ceasing as a nation to breed 

 intelligence as we did fifty or a hundred years ago. The mentally 

 better stock in the nation is not reproducing itself at the same 

 rate as it did of old ; the less able, and the less energetic are 

 more fertile than the better stocks. No scheme of wider and 

 more thorough education will bring up in the scale of intelligence 

 hereditary weakness to the level of hereditary strength. The only 

 remedy, if one be possible at all, is to alter the relative fertility of 

 the good and bad stocks in the community. Let us have a census 



1 Loc. cit., p. 306. 



