68 Appendix I 



intellectual decadence, if it be upon us, was not altogether 

 due to the causes assigned by Professor Pearson and 

 Mr. Balfour, and was not necessarily destined to deepen 

 as time went on. In a people like our own there was 

 always outside the actually intellectual class a still larger 

 class potentially intellectual with abilities incompletely 

 evolved, because never called forth, but capable under 

 stress of circumstances of the higher development. Many 

 of our finest intellectuals had sprung from the unintel- 

 lectual class, and genius was generally more or less of a 

 sport. His own view was that any dearth of ability from 

 which we might be suffering was to be ascribed not so 

 much to the infertility of the cultivated classes as to the 

 artificial production of stupidity in various ways, and to 

 the incessant draining from the country which was the 

 I fit and proper breeding-place and rearing-ground of 

 intellect of the best elements of our people to be 

 swallowed up or deteriorated in our big towns. \ Not 

 less untenable than the notion that the agricultural 

 labourer was dull of intellect was the idea that the city 

 urchin was cleverer and better endowed mentally than the 

 little yokel. The rule seemed to be that the mental 

 development of children was hastened by city life, but 

 soon stopped short. Up till thirteen or fourteen years 

 of age they were precocious, and then came to a stand- 

 still. City life at its best was bad for children, involving, 

 as it did, early puberty, exciting distraction, superficiality 

 of knowledge, insufficient repose, and the want of sooth- 

 ing influences that the country afforded ; and at its worst, 

 when it meant a tight squeeze in squalid dwellings, poor 

 food, foul air, contact with vice, and manifold tempta- 

 tions, it was utterly demoralizing. It seemed obvious 

 that, if the city went on growing at the nineteenth-century 

 rate, and under nineteenth-century conditions, it would 

 dry up the reservoirs of strength in the population and 

 leave an immense proletariat of inferior quality and 

 without commanders.' 



These words seem to me to mark a case 

 in which a more subtle and dangerous factor 



