PERFECTIBILITY OF MAX. 175 



guinity), so as to bring into union, through one or more 

 generations, certain special qualities eminent in kind or 

 degree, and including mental as well as bodily endow- 

 ments. As the experiment may probably never be 

 made, it is useless, if not impossible, to conjecture its 

 results whether the progeny of such conjunctions 

 would be prodigies of excellence or of defects. I 

 mention the latter contingency because what we call 

 genius has for the most part a certain kindred with 

 aberration of mind ; and because we are yet ignorant 

 of those laws of generation and hereditary affinity on 

 which are founded family character, and on a wider 

 scale the character of communities and races. To 

 seek for definite results from the blending of mental 

 qualities by inheritance would be working with untried 

 tools or materials too fine and fugitive for experiment. 

 Putting aside this speculative form of our enquiry. 

 we recur to it under that larger aspect which makes the 

 past history of mankind the interpreter of the possible 

 or probable future. But here, again, under this phrase 

 of the past history of man, how vague from its com- 

 plexity is all we bring into the argument ! Who can 

 define or describe this history even on a single region 

 of the earth's surface, seeing that in every region of 

 which we have historical record changes have been 

 unceasingly in progress, in some cases raising man in 

 the scale of civilisation, in others degrading him to a 

 lower level of life ? These changes and relative condi- 

 tions are manifestly of supreme interest in a question 

 where the extremes are so widely apart ; where we 

 have to compare the Hottentots and Bushmen, the 



