INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 77 



any kind between them. In this way he has been 

 under complete subjection for a time the limit of which 

 we can simply approximate, and then only hypotheti- 

 cally, and his instinctive faculties have run down and 

 become nearly played out. In other words, their 

 development and expansion have been thwarted and 

 checked generation after generation, until they have 

 dwindled down into a condition of feebleness and 

 attenuation. 



He has never been allowed to run altogether wild ; 

 only occasionally, for temporary convenience a con- 

 dition that would have done much to resuscitate and 

 renew these dormant faculties. Everything, in fact, 

 has been done for him from such a very early period 

 that thousands of years must have elapsed since his 

 ancestors lost, if they ever possessed, any reason, except 

 when in a wild state ; and though we have as yet 

 found no traces of this, it is quite possible to suppose 

 that they were so once upon a time. He has not been 

 permitted in any way whatever to exercise these 

 faculties, but has accepted life and its conditions as 

 inevitable with a long-suffering passivity truly phe- 

 nomenal. Consequently, it is not to be wondered at 

 that these faculties have gradually and steadily dete- 

 riorated until, if not actually extinct, they have be- 

 come so wasted and blunted that it requires a very 

 extraordinary effort to vitalise and bring them into 

 requisition. 



We know that animals will degenerate if there is 

 not enough crossing of breeds ; more so if there is a 

 total exclusion of strange stock. We also know that if 

 for generations the economic pressure has been so great 



