THE RECIPE FOR GENIUS 335 



me, looking at the matter both a priori and by the light 

 of actual experience. 



Suppose a country inhabited in its interior by a savage 

 race of hunters and fighters, and on its seaboard by an 

 equally savage race of pirates and fishermen, like the 

 Dyaks of Borneo. Each of these races, if left to itself, will 

 develop in time its own peculiar and special type of savage 

 cleverness. Each (in the scientific slang of the day) will 

 adapt itself to its particular environment. The people 

 of the interior will acquire and inherit a wonderful facility 

 in spearing monkeys and knocking down parrots ; while 

 the people of the sea-coast will become skilful managers of 

 canoes upon the water, and merciless plunderers of one 

 another's villages, after the universal fashion of all pirates. 

 These original differences of position and function will 

 necessarily entail a thousand minor differences of intelli- 

 gence and skill in a thousand different ways. Eor example, 

 the sea-coast people, having of pure need to make them- 

 selves canoes and paddles, will probably learn to decorate 

 their handicraft with ornamental patterns ; and the 

 SDsthetic taste thus aroused will, no doubt, finally lead 

 them to adorn the facades of their wooden huts with the 

 grinning skulls of slaughtered enemies, prettily disposed at 

 measured distances. A thoughtless world may laugh, 

 indeed, at these naive expressions of the nascent artistic 

 and decorative faculties in the savage breast, but the 

 aesthetic philosopher knows how to appreciate them at 

 their true worth, and to see in them the earliest ingenuous 

 precursors of our own Salisbury, Lichfield, and West- 

 minster. 



Now, so long as these two imaginary races of ours 

 continue to remain distinct and separate, it is not likely 

 that idiosyncrasies or varieties to any great extent will 

 arise among them. But, as soon as you permit inter- 



