Early Anthropoloyiail Jti'Mearches 107 



"The iieafunt women uf Nurtliuinberlaiid work nil day in the fields and arv not broken down 

 by the work ; on tlio contrary, they take h prido in their e(lt>ctive labour hh ({iriii, and whon 

 niHrri(HJ, thoy iitt4>ii(l well to tht) comfort of tlicir hoin<>N. It is jK-rfttrtiv diHtn-iuiiiia t4i mii to 

 witrifHH tho drHj{gl('<l, drudgefl, inoiii !<M)k of t\w mass of individuals, c-i n-n, 



that one meets in the streets of London, and olhei- pun^ly Knglish ti>wnH. I lujr 



life seem too hard for their constitutions, and to be crushing them into degeiierai^y." (p. 340.) 



Giiltoii then turns to (ireece, and having muated Fhito and Bacon, hy 

 what must hugely be the unpressionism of individual personal judgment, con- 

 cludes that the Athenian race from 530 B.C. to 430 B.c. was very nearly two 

 grades above our own, 



"that is, alx)ut as much a« our race is alKjve tiiat of the African negro. Tliis estimate, which may 

 seem prodigious to some, is confirme<l by tiie quick intelligence and high culture of the Athenian 

 commonalty, Ixfforo whom liUM'ary works were recited, and works of art exhibited, of a far 

 more severe character than could possibly be apprecia(e<l by the average of our race, the calibre 

 of whose intellect is easily gauged by a glance at the contents of a railway bookstalL" (p. 342.) 



I do not think (Jalton's comparison is justified, for he leaves out in the 

 one case the labouring and artizan pofuilation of 400,000 slaves, and includes 

 such a population in the other when reckoning liLs percentages of extreme 

 ability. Again he writes : 



"We have no men to put by the side of Socrates and Phidias, Iwcause the millions of all 

 Europe, breeding as they have done for the 8ubse(|uent 2000 years, have never produc«>d their 

 equals." (p. 342.) 



Without belittling Phidias we may re;isonably (piestion whether his genius 

 was really greater than that of the designer of any one of the great meilieval 

 Gothic cathedrals. Who can determine whether lljiphivel or Phidias was the 

 gi-eater artist? As for Socrates we see him through the mists; we do not 

 know the man himself, but still only perceive liim amid the glamour of his 

 contemporaries and the veneration of renascent humanists'. If we judge 

 him by the Socrates of the Platonic dialogues, his subtlety is not always deep 

 and his wisdom does not invariably apjiear very fundamental to the modern 

 cultured mind. If we require a fair test of relative fineness of intellect, in 

 two ages, surely we may ask this: Would the ablest minds of Age A have 

 gnusped the subtlest thought of Age B, and would the genius of B have 

 uiiled to appreciate the intellectual product of A's most eminent minds? 

 Judged by this test, I think both Kant and Einstein could fully gni-sp and 

 duly a])preciate what the Platonic Socrates had to s«iy, but I gravely doubt 

 whethei- the ideas of both Kant and Einstein would not have transcende*! 

 Socrates' mental capacity, even ius the nuxlern geometrician himself fully 

 understands Euclid, but Euclid would have failed to understand him. And 

 this is not a matter of the accunuilated knowlnfyc of the intervening cen- 

 turies, it is a result of the able.st intellects l>eing more subtle, more capable 

 of forming generalised conceptions than the most capable of ancient Greeks. 



Again, it is trui' that 1) /, of the Athenian population' did enjoy the 



' 'Sancte Stx-rates, ora pro nobis.' 



' llather 2 to 3°/^, if we take no account of the women and children, who did not of courae 

 witness the plays. 



14— S 



