I 



Earlt/ Anthnt/whgiatl Rcttearchts 109 



itH piwiM'N. If itM uvfriiffo nliility worn raiHe<l it xradi* <>r two, our now cI«mh<s F KnA O would 

 t-oixlui't tliu coinplcx iin'iiirH «i tli*- .stat4> iil lioini! ami nbrotid iix eAnily •• our prraenl F and O, 

 wIk'ii ill the |H)sitiiiii of country H<|iiii'pH, aro »I>1(' t<i iiiaimK>' the afTsini of their Mt«bliahment« 

 iiiul tttiiiiiitry. All otIiiT claNscH of tint i-ointnutiity would Im* siinilurlv pn>iiioi<><l to the level o( 



the work ro<]iiiri'<I l.v tin' niin't iili century, if ''>" iiv..iM.r,. ^tiM..|iii,l ,,f tlw m. ■. w..r.. nuaed." 



(p. 346.) 



Tlie Greek Htatesinaii or commander liad to deal with huiidredH or 

 thousjinds of men, where onra have to deal with miUion.s in a society where 

 the rehitions ure of immensely increiused com|)loxity ; thut must be iKtrne in 

 mind wlien we compare the intellectual ahility of the two cultures. Foch 

 coiild lijivi' (lone the work of ThemiHtoclea, but the latter would have 

 broken down under the complexity of the work of ii nuxlern commander. 

 He would, as Ualton df^es, have certairdy called for a superman. One 

 wondei-H if the anceMtry of Mr Bernard Shaw's 'superman' otnnot Ije tnice<l 

 to ({alton ; for Mi' Shaw took him from Niet/.sclif. and tlie latttr knew of 

 Galton's work'. 



Cialton's peiiultinuite i-iiapter "Influences that afl'ect the Natural Ability 

 of Nations" contains results almost conunonplaces now, but in 18(»'J they 

 were original suggestions of the highest value, because lie was practically 

 the first to apply the Darwinian doctrines to man and his communities. He 

 notes how careless Nature is of the lives of individuals, she is equally 

 careless of the lives of eminent families, they arise, flourish and decay ; and 

 the same may be said of races and of nations, they have aristMi in the past, 

 reached grandeur and then perished, often leaving but the slenderest shrtnls 

 of their culture to be preserved among the mental traditions of humanity 

 as a whole. Nay it is possible that such may be the story of our earth 

 itself relative to other possible scenes of existence in the cosmos around us. 



"We are exceedinjj;ly ignorant of the reason.s why we exist, confident only that individual 

 life is a |x)rtion of some va.ster system that struggles arduously onwards towards ends that are 

 dimly sit'ii or wholly unknown to us, by means of the various attinitics' -the sentiments, the 

 tjustes, the appetites — of innumerable personalities who ceaselessly succeed one another on the 



stage of existence." (p. 351.) 



But such an outlook produced by the growing physical and historical 

 knowledge of man, while it depressed many of lesser mental calibre, who 

 found themselves torn from their old supernatural moorings and carried 

 helplessly along on the overwhelming tide of new thought, such an outlook 

 only led Galton to proclaim that Man — if at last he would stand on his own 

 feet, and discard his ages-old crutches -could to a large extent make his 

 own future. Confidence in himself, and in his own knowledge — faith in his 

 own intellectual leaders and not in any supernatural kindliness of cosmic 

 purpose — were for Galton the thorny but certain path towards man's 

 salvation. 



"Our world appears hitherto to have developed itself, mainly under the in6aeoce of un- 

 reasoning affinities; hut of late, man slowly growing to lie intelligent, humane, and capftble, 

 has appeared on the scene of life and prt>foundly modified its conditions. He has already 



' Frau Forster Nietwche in The Loitely Nietzsch* gives (p. 191) a letter of Dr Panneth 

 (15/12/1883) and the latter reports a talk" with Nietzsche at Nice, when "the conversation 

 turned on Galton," but there are unfortunately no particulars. 



