PROGRESS OF MAN. 191 



an audience would consist solely of Darwins. 

 The same must have been the case to a very 

 large extent in ancient Athens, or not the 

 grade of intellect but the very principles of 

 human nature would have been totally different. 

 Moreover, Gralton has reasoned from the free- 

 born Athenians alone, who can only be fairly 

 compared with our educated classes, and not 

 with the whole nation, and he will not deny that 

 the ability of our own educated classes is above 

 that of the bulk of the population. It is also 

 doubtful whether he is correct in ranking 

 Socrates and Phidias above all who have suc- 

 ceeded them in Europe. Socrates belonged 

 to a type of Eastern sages who are, perhaps, 

 Semitic rather than Aryan in their genius, and 

 who have no counterparts among ourselves. 

 We cannot fairly compare men of Eastern 

 and Western genius, who have very little in 

 common. But it does not follow that the 

 latter are necessarily inferior. Phidias towers 

 above his contemporaries like Shakespeare 

 among the Elizabethan dramatists ; but because 

 modern Europe cannot produce a Phidias (to 

 whom Michael Angelo was probably the nearest 

 approach), it does not follow that Europe 



