12 HEREDITY. 



gray rock, historically loftier, perhaps, than any other 

 Athenian summit, and certainly more easily visible 

 through the dun smokes of distance than any of its 

 companion heights. We call it Mars Hill; and on 

 it was made a speech which eighteen centuries have 

 heard, and to which eighteen more will listen. This 

 audacious address in the presence of a city filled 

 with temples of gods in marble, and underneath the 

 shadow of Minerva and the Acropolis, face to the 

 face with the immemorial customs of polytheism, 

 asserted the existence of one personal God, omnipo- 

 tent, omnipresent, and in conscience tangible. To- 

 ward the west the white sacred road to Eleusis passes 

 over the low, thinly-wooded heights of Daphne. 

 Parnes yonder juts sternly into the northern sky, 

 with a few streaks of vapor clinging to his gnarled 

 and barren sides. In the east is Hymettus, and in 

 the north-east Pentelicus ; beyond it Marathon ; and 

 in the opposite direction gleam the straits of Salamis. 

 What has all this to do with hereditary descent? 



1. This ancient Attica opened her arms to emi- 

 grants from Phoenicia, Egypt, Asia Minor, and all 

 the teeming shores of the Mediterranean. 



2. The social life of Athens in the classical age 

 was such that only very able men could take any 

 pleasure in it ; and no other city on the globe offered 

 equal attractions to such men. 



3. Able emigrants were attracted to a city giving 

 exceptional privileges to the able, and only to the 

 able. 



4. Thus arose a system of partly unconscious selec- 

 tion. (See Galton, Hereditary Genius.') 



