Control of Heredity: Eugenics 277 



Jctinus, Phidias, Praxiteles, Polygnotus ; among historians Thucy- 

 didcs and Xenophon; among orators yEschines, Demosthenes, 

 Isocrates, Lysias. In this small country in the space of two cen- 

 turies there appeared such a galaxy of illustrious men as has 

 never been found on the whole earth in any two centuries since 

 that time. 



These illustrious men came from a remarkable race composed 

 of individuals drawn together from all the shores of the Mediter- 

 ranean by a process of unconscious but severe selection. Athens 

 was the intellectual and social capital of the world and to it the 

 most ambitious and most capable men were irresistibly drawn. 

 It was good immigration as well as good native stock that made 

 Athens famous. Galton concludes that the average ability of the 

 Athenian race of that period was, on the lowest estimate, as much 

 greater than that of the English race of the present day as the 

 latter is above that of the African negro. 



But this marvellously gifted race declined, as all such races 

 have in time declined : 



Social morality grew exceedingly lax, marriage became unfash- 

 ionable and was avoided, many of the more ambitious and ac- 

 complished women were avowed courtesans and consequently in- 

 fertile, and the mothers of the incoming population were of a 

 heterogeneous class. ... It can be therefore no surprise to us, 

 though it has been a severe misfortune to humanity, that the 

 high Athenian breed decayed and disappeared, for if it had main- 

 tained its excellence and had multiplied and spread over large 

 countries, displacing inferior populations (which it well might 

 have done, for it was naturally very prolific), it would assuredly 

 have accomplished results advantageous to human civilization to 

 a degree that transcends our powers of imagination. (Galton, 

 "Hereditary Genius," page 331.) 



Bateson suggests that the high intellectual qualities of the an- 

 cient Athenian race were due to the inbreeding of homogeneous 

 and very superior phratries and gentes, but when foreign mar- 

 riages were sanctioned, and aliens and manumitted slaves were 

 admitted to citizenship by the "reforms" of Cleisthenes (507 



