Edrlfi Aiifhro/io/itffi'ral PtucorrhfM 



ftS 



(ralton was an ardent democrat, if hucIi ineanH to reftiHe birth any privi- 

 lege if liirtli he not accompaii!e<l l»y mental siiperinrity; he wfw a thor< • ' 

 {foing ariHtocrat, if such Ix) involverl in a denial of the wiuaHty of all im ;. , 

 le would have graded mankind by their natural aptitudeH, and have done 

 his best to check the reproduction of the lower j^radfs. The last jtaniLfrapliH 

 of the pajier deal in a very novel manner with th(^ theological problem of 

 the sense of original sin. We have already noted that Galton held that 

 conscience and with it the religious sentiments were develoj>ed in man by 

 natural selection, they were the highest form of the herd instinct, and the 

 tribe in which they were developed h.ad greater social stability than any 

 group that did not j)ossess them. But man was barbarous but yesterday, 

 and many of Ids native (jualities are not yet moulded into harmony with 

 his recent advance. Even our Anglo-Sa.xon civilisation is but skin deep, 

 and the majority of English were the merest boora at a much later date 

 than the Nornjan con(juest. We are still barbarians in a large part of our 

 nature ; our no very distant ancestry grubbed with their hands for food, and 

 dug out pitfalls for their game, and hoKjs for their hut-poles and palisades 

 with their fingers as tools. We see it all in the pleasure which the most 

 delicately reared children take in dabbling and digging in the dirt, an ir»- 

 heritance from barbarian forefathers, akin to that of the pet dog who runs 

 away from its mistress to sniti' at any roadside refuse in the instinct to find 

 the lost pack. The whole moral nature of man is tainted with 'sin,' which 

 prevents him following his conscience, his social sense. From the Darwinian 

 view the development of our religious sentiment has advanced — at any rate 

 in certain members of the community — more rapidly than the elimination 

 of the savage instincts of past stages of culture. The more recent the 

 barbarism the more conscious the race is of the iuadetjuacy of its nature to 

 its moral needs. 



"The conscience of n negro is aghast at his own wild, impulsive nature, and is easily stirred 

 by a proAcher, but it is scarcely possible to ruffle the self-complacency of a steady-going China- 

 man." (p. 327.) 



The revivalist meets with the greater success, the more degraded and 

 less cultured is the population he works on. 



"The sense of original sin would show according to ray theory, not that man was fallon fn>ra 

 a high estate, hut that ho was rapidly rising from a low one^ It would therefore confirm the 

 conclusion that has been arrived at by every iiulejH^ndent line of ethnological research — that 

 our forefathers were utter savages from the beginning, and that after myriad years of barWrism, 

 our race has but very recently grown to be civilised and religious.'' (p. 327.) 



Thus on the basis of Darwin's law of natural selection, and on the 

 theory that natural aptitudes are not at the same time harmoniously de- 

 veloped, or eradicated, Galton accounts for the conflict in human nature 

 summed up in the doctrine of ' original sin.' It will not be cleared away 

 by any atonement, but solely by breeding out the unenulicated and 

 hereditary savagery of human nature still dominating civilised man. WHiat 

 an illustration of his views Galton might have drawn from the events of the 

 decade which followed his death ! 



