DOGMATIC TRAINING 497 



hope that Moors will form a civilized community except after ages 

 of selective elimination ; in other words, it implies that they are 

 now as a nation so incapable of learning as to be extremely 

 feeble-minded in the technical sense. All orthodox Mohammedan 

 communities, in proportion to their orthodoxy, in proportion as 

 their faith is steadfast and fanatical, exhibit much the same social 

 phenomena. Amongst them are descendants of the Pagan Greeks, 

 who, also, as well as most Hindoos and Buddhists, must be feeble- 

 minded. How, in that case, shall we explain the fact that a few 

 generations back, during the middle ages, the ancestors and co- 

 religionists of these same Moors were, in Spain, far more 

 enlightened, progressive, and orderly than our own contemporary 

 ancestors ? We derive the beginnings of modern science from them. 

 During our own Dark Ages Europe was in a state of social and 

 intellectual stagnation, perpetual foreign war, and domestic disorder 

 identical with that of Morocco of to-day. If, then, the social state 

 depends on innate racial characteristics, what caused the rapid and 

 tremendous change that occurred at the Reformation in some of the 

 countries of Western Europe ? At that time the various peoples 

 turned from the teachings of an infallible church to that of a book 

 which, it is true, they believed infallible, but on which each man 

 exercised his wits and which he interpreted in his own way. 

 Hence the diverging heresies, the clashing sects, which in them- 

 selves were indications of, and conduced to, divergent and 

 independent thought. Was the greatness of the Greeks and 

 Romans at a time when the teaching tended to develop the 

 reflective faculties due to race, and their decline when the teaching 

 tended to crush independent thought due to race also ? How did 

 it happen that the tiny community of Athens, which in the former 

 period produced more really great thinkers, poets, historians, 

 philosophers, and the like, and more great men of action who of 

 necessity were men of great thought also than all Europe during 

 its Dark Ages, never again produced any ? Did the Chinese achieve 

 civilization because they were less feeble-minded than their con- 

 temporaries ? Have they stagnated for centuries because they are 

 more feeble-minded ? Were the Japanese feeble-minded half a 

 century ago ? Are they no longer so ? How is it that, except 

 when the teaching is more liberal or less liberal than the ordinary, 

 the adherents of each religion, who may be of many diverse races, 

 are so much alike mentally, but so dissimilar from the adherents 

 of other religions even when of the same race ? 



812. Whether, or not, connected as cause and effect, there can be 

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