830 BEPOKT— 1886. 



aristocratic thing to clip the h's, and the fashion may have gradually gone to the 

 lower classes like the swallow-tailed coat worn by the typical Irish peasant, while 

 the upper classes have been partially reformed back to true English by contact 

 with the Scotch — only partially, though, for they still say ' wen ' and ' wale ' 

 instead of ' when ' and ' whale,' to say nothing of ' idear ' and ' Indiar.' 



This, however, is a digression. I am afraid I have been long in coining to the 

 main object of this address, viz. to recommend the systematic and scientific 

 cultivation of man — what I may call ' homi-culture,' in the same sense as ' oyster- 

 culture,' ' bee-culture,' or ' cattle-culture ' — and that with a view both to physical 

 and mental qualities. It seems very sad, indeed, that, when so much has been 

 done to improve and develop dogs, cattle, oysters, cabbages, nothing whatever has 

 been done for man, and he is left very much where he was when we have the first 

 authentic records of him. Knowledge, education, arts he has no doubt acquired ; 

 but there seems to be no reason to suppose that the individual man is physically or 

 mentally a superior creature to what he was five thousand years ago. We are not 

 sure that under very modern influences he may not retrograde. No one doubts that, 

 by careful selection and cultivation, cattle, vegetables, and many other things have 

 been immensely improved. In regard to animals and plants we have very largely 

 mastered the principles of heredity and culture, and the modes by which good 

 qualities may be maximised, bad qualities minimised. Why should not man be 

 similarly improved ? It is true that the mind has a larger share in that which 

 constitutes a man ; but after all this is only a question of degree — the cultivation 

 of the mind does enter very largely into animal-culture. I apprehend there is no 

 doubt that the superiority for our purposes of shorthorns, black-poUed, and other 

 famous breeds of cattle is very largely due to placid and well-regulated minds, 

 which enable them to take calmly a short and happy life, and to assimilate their 

 food, differing in this very much from their restless and often vicious ancestors. 

 Surely, then, if we only had the requisite knowledge, and, taking a practical view 

 of life, could regulate our domestic arrangements with some degree of reason, rather 

 than by habit, prejudice, and the foolish ideas cultivated by foolish novelists, man 

 too might be greatly improved. 



It may be admitted that we are not in a position to begin confident man- 

 culture at once. Much study is first required and much knowledge must be accu- 

 mulated before we can be confident in practice. The first thing that most strikes us 

 ia man, as compared with all domesticated and even most widely-spread wild animals, 

 is the extremely small variation in man all over the globe. There are diflerences 

 which seem large to us, but are extremely small from a more enlarged point of 

 view. How enormous are the diflPerences between difierent breeds of dogs, horses, 

 and cattle ! When we come to man the diflPerence of which we make most is that 

 of colour — a feature which we think quite trivial in animals. Who thinks very 

 much more highly of a white than of a black cow, of a grey horse than of a black 

 one ? Our skilled eyes recognise variations of human feature, but they are so slight 

 that the inhabitant of another planet would see no more diflerence than in the 

 countenances of a flock of sheep. In size, compared to other animals, the diflrer- 

 ences are but slight. Probably there is no race whose average height really 

 approaches six feet, and I doubt if any are on the average so small as five feet. In 

 other physical features there aie no considerable differences of formation whatever. 

 Then as regards the mind we have yet to learn that there are very wide differences 

 of mental capacity between different races. Very likely — probably, I may say — 

 there are considerable variations, but they are not so wide as to be apparent with- 

 out careful and accurate study. With the superficial knowledge we have, no one 

 can say that Europeans, Hindus, Chinese, are born with brains superior or inferior 

 to the other ; and even ia regard to the negro I do not know that it is yet shown 

 that with equal advantages negro babies might not grow up nearly or quite as in- 

 telligent as Europeans. I do not say that it is so, but only that the question has 

 not yet been sufficiently worked out. The difference is not so radical as to be self- 

 evident from the first. Still, such experience as we have and the analogies derived 

 from domesticated animals both tend to the belief that there are considerable, 

 if not excessive, variations in the qualities and capacities of different races of men. 



