DARWINISM AND POLITICS. 51 



rash, and he hardly counts the cost of the 

 stiw;le. 



" If the ' eminent ' men of any period had been change- 

 lings when babies, a very fair proportion [what does he 

 consider such ?] of those who survived and retained their 

 health up to fifty years of age, would, notwithstanding their 

 altered circumstances, have equally risen to eminence. 

 Thus to take a strong case it is incredible that any 

 combination of circumstances could have repressed Lord 

 Brougham to the level of undistinguished mediocrity." 

 (P. 38.) 



Mr. Galton's example is well chosen for his 

 purpose. Lord Brougham was just the kind of 

 man who would anywhere have pushed himself 

 into notoriety of some kind. But those social 

 hindrances which " form a system of natural 

 selection " may allow a great many Lord 

 Broughams to come to the front in different 

 disguises and yet may repress some who might 

 do the world more service than an indefinite 

 array of Lord Broughams. Supposing Mr. 

 Darwin had had to pass his life as an over- 

 worked and over- worried country surgeon or 

 had been a factory hand in a huge manufactur- 

 ing town, he might conceivably have been a 

 noted man in a small naturalists' club and been 

 laughed at by his neighbours for collecting 



