460 TRADITION AND HEREDITY 



other hand, when the degree of skill is relatively high, we some- 

 times see periods of sudden advance often initiated almost at 

 a definite date, and brought to a climax within a few — perhaps 

 even in one — generations. There often follows a period of stagna- 

 tion or even of decline. Professor Flinders Petrie has set out in 

 a small book some striking facts regarding this tendency based 

 largely on the history of Egypt. He shows how, taking what is 

 left from various periods of artistic production, this tendency 

 may be illustrated, and it would not be difficult to find many 

 further illustrations in the history of any art in the last few 

 hundred years in Europe, and in a less degree in the history of the 

 various sciences. ^ Sir Francis Galton, whose life work has done 

 so much to illuminate the nature and importance of germinal 

 characters, wrote as follows : ' I have studied the causes of civic 

 prosperity in various directions and from many points of view, 

 and the conclusion at which I have arrived is emphatic, namely, 

 that chief among these causes are a large capacity of labour — 

 mental, bodily, or both — combined with eagerness for work.' ^ 

 Now the periods of advance are marked by the exhibition of these 

 characteristics, and we may ask how far they are traditional in 

 nature. Let us take as an example of a period of advance the 

 Renaissance in England. ' Englishmen of the sixteenth century ', 

 says Sir Sidney Lee, ' breathed a new atmosphere intellectually 

 and spiritually. They came under a new stimulus, compounded 

 of many elements, each of them new and inspiring. To that 

 stimulus must be attributed the sudden upward growth of 

 distinctive achievement among them, the increase of the oppor- 

 tunities of famous exploits, and the consequent preservation from 

 oblivion of more names of Englishmen than in any other century 

 before. The stimulus under which Englishmen came in the 

 sixteenth century may be summed up in the familiar word 

 Renaissance. The main factor of the European Renaissance, of 

 the New Birth of the intellect, was a passion for extending the 

 limits of human knowledge, and for employing men's capabilities 

 to new and better advantage than of old. New curiosity was 

 generated in regard to the dimensions of the material world. 

 There was a boundless enthusiasm for the newly discovered art 

 and literature of ancient Greece. Men were fired by a new resolve 



'■ Flinders Petrie, Revolutions of Civilization. ^ Galton, Ev^. Rev., vol. i, 



p. 75. 



