SELECTION 181 



cuity and struggle with which nineteenth- 

 century anthropology was too much obsessed ; 

 for if we seek the modern representatives 

 of these old cultivators and selectors, these 

 breeders and arboriculturists, at their best 

 we must seek them at the very highest grow- 

 ing-point of our own civilization to-day. For 

 with all respect to the great mechanical in- 

 ventors, and the masters of the physical 

 sciences who have accompanied them, we 

 claim a higher primacy in science for Darwin 

 and his peers, and this alike as regards vision 

 of the universe, as in organic not merely 

 physical evolution, and in potential and forth- 

 coming, if not yet fully actual contribution 

 to the service and uplift of man. In short, 

 these prehistoric transformists of wild life 

 into cultivated fruitfulness and domesticated 

 use, had already among them their Darwins 

 and Vilmorins, their Cartons and Burbanks; 

 with the one important difference that these 

 achieved immeasurably greater practical re- 

 sults than have as yet their modern successors. 

 Again, is it likely that those who could 

 transform the lurking, wolfish depredator into 

 the trusty guardian of their flocks, the wild 

 cattle into patient ox and gentle cow, the 

 wild horse into the Arab, neglected their own 

 breeding as we and our progenitors have done 



