312 THE PRINCIPLES OF HEREDITY 



four or five generations have won enduring fame by virtue of 

 genius, not by mere possession of place, he will find that, with 

 hardly an exception, they have been heretics either members 

 of regular heretical communities or seceders, declared or 

 actual, from orthodoxy. Amongst the latter have been 

 Voltaire, the men of the French Revolution, Napoleon and 

 his marshals, Cavour, Garibaldi, Gambetta, Renan, Zola, de 

 Lesseps, Tolstoy. Evidently, therefore, while genius is not 

 confined to any race, its manifestation is almost exclusively 

 restricted to the heretical. Amongst Buddhists, Mahomed- 

 ans, and Hindoos, whose intellectual freedom is even less at 

 the present day than that of any Christian community, great 

 men in any real sense of the word are practically unknown, 

 Their prominent men are generally fanatics brutal leaders 

 of a brutal and foolish crowd. Japan is an apparent excep- 

 tion. But, with her awakening Japan became intensely 

 heretical, as may be judged from the fact that she sent a 

 commission round the world to discover the best form of 

 religion. In their newly-acquired mental daring, enterprise, 

 originality and activity, the Japanese resemble the Pagan 

 Greeks much more than do other Eastern peoples or the 

 nations of mediaeval Europe. 



492. We have attributed the mental differences shown by 

 the followers of different religions largely to methods of 

 mental training. This explanation will be very unpalatable 

 to many people. The only alternatives, however, will be 

 more unpalatable still. These alternatives, as we have seen, 

 are the hypothesis that the mental differences are due (1) to 

 differences in doctrines, or (2) to inborn racial differences. 

 The first presupposes that the doctrines of orthodox sects are 

 inferior (i. e. less true, and therefore less adaptive) to those of 

 heretical sects. But on this hypothesis the Christian religion 

 must be more untrue than the Pagan ; and since the mental 

 differences between heretical and orthodox Christians is very 

 great, the difference between their doctrines should also be 

 very great. This is patently not the case; the doctrines 

 professed by all Christians are fundamentally alike. I for 

 one cannot believe that the South Irishmen and Spaniards 

 are less law-abiding, enterprising and progressive than Scotch- 

 men or Germans, merely because the former believe in such 

 things as purgatory, whereas the latter do not. The second 

 hypothesis presupposes that innately inferior races choose 

 orthodox religions. The difficulty then arises of explaining 

 why races, which are now heretical and superior, were 

 formerly orthodox and no whit superior. Moreover, as 



