334 THE RECirE FOR GENIUS 



and relentless way, cutting off ruthlessly the stupid or the 

 weak, and allowing only the strong and the cunning to 

 become the parents of future generations. 



Hence every young savage, being descended on both 

 sides from ancestors who in their own way perfectly fulfilled 

 the ideal of complete savagery — were good hunters, good 

 fishers, good fighters, good craftsmen of bow or boomerang 

 — inherits from these his successful predecessors all those 

 qualities of eye and hand and brain and nervous system 

 which go to make up the abstractly Admirable Crichton of 

 a savage. The qualities in question are ensured in him by 

 two separate means. In the first place, survival of the 

 fittest takes care that he and all his ancestors shall have 

 duly possessed them to some extent to start with ; in the 

 second place, constant practice from boyhood upward 

 increases and develops the original faculty. Thus savages, 

 as a rule, display absolutely astonishing ability and clever- 

 ness in the few lines which they have made their own. 

 Their cunning in hunting, their patience in fishing, their 

 skill in trapping, their infinite dodges for deceiving and 

 cajoling the animals or enemies that they need to outwit, 

 have moved the wonder and admiration of innumerable 

 travellers. The savage, in fact, is not stupid : in his own 

 way his cleverness is extraordinary. But the way is a very 

 narrow and restricted one, and all savages of the same race 

 walk in it exactly alike. Cunning they have, skill they 

 have, instinct they have, to a most marvellous degree ; but of 

 spontaneity, originality, initiative, variability, not a single 

 spark. Know one savage of a tribe and you know them all. 

 Their cleverness is not the cleverness of the individual 

 man : it is the inherited and garnered intelligence or instinct 

 of the entire race. 



How, then, do originality, diversity, individuality, 

 genius, begin to come in ? In this way, as it seems to 



