32 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
In the study of history biological treatment is only beginning to be 
applied. For us the causes of the success and failure of races are 
physiological events, and the progress of man has depended upon a 
chain of these events, like those which have resulted in the ‘ improve- 
ment’ of the domesticated animals and plants. It is obvious, for 
example, that had the cereals never been domesticated cities could 
scarcely have existed. But we may go further, and say that in tem- 
perate countries of the Old World (having neither rice nor maize) 
populations concentrated in large cities have been made possible by 
the appearance of a ‘ thrashable’ wheat. The ears of the wild wheats 
break easily to pieces, and the grain remains in the thick husk. Such 
wheat can be used for food, but not readily. Ages before written 
history began, in some unknown place, plants, or more likely a plant, 
of wheat lost the dominant factor to which this brittleness is due, and 
the recessive, thrashable wheat resulted. Some man noticed this 
wonderful novelty, and it has been disseminated over the earth. The ori- 
ginal variation may well have occurred once only, in a single germ-cell. 
So must it have been with Man. Translated into terms of factors, 
how has that progress in control of nature which we call civilisation 
been achieved? By the sporadic appearance of variations, mostly, per- 
haps all, consisting in a loss of elements, which inhibit the free 
working of the mind. The members of civilised communities, when 
they think about such things at all, imagine the process a gradual one, 
and that they themselves are active agents in it. Few, however, contri- 
bute anything but their labour; and except in so far as they have 
freedom to adopt and imitate, their physiological composition is that 
of an earlier order of beings. Annul the work of a few hundreds— 
I might almost say scores—of men, and on what plane of civilisation 
should we be? We should not have advanced beyond the medieval 
stage without printing, chemistry, steam, electricity, or surgery worthy 
the name. These things are the contributions of a few excessively rare 
minds. Galton reckoned those to whom the term ‘ illustrious’ might 
be applied as one in a million, but in that number he is, of course, 
reckoning men famous in ways which add nothing to universal progress. 
To improve by subordinate invention, to discover details missed, even 
to apply knowledge never before applied, all these things need genius 
in some degree, and are far beyond the powers of the average man of 
our race; but the true pioneer, the man whose penetration creates a 
new world, as did that of Newton and of Pasteur, is inconceivably 
rare. But for a few thousands of such men, we should perhaps be in 
the Paleolithic era, knowing neither metals, writing, arithmetic, 
weaving, nor pottery. 
In the history of Art the same is true, but with this remarkable 
difference, that not only are gifts of artistic creation very rare, but 
