Septembee 4, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



329 



strains until tlie present type became so 

 rare as to be negligible. It by no means 

 follows that in any other respect the re- 

 sulting population would be distinguishable 

 from the present one. Difficulties of this 

 kind beset the efforts of anthropologists to 

 trace racial origins. It must continually 

 be remembered that most characters are 

 independently transmitted and capable of 

 much recombination. In the light of Men- 

 delian knowledge the discussion whether a 

 race is pure or mixed loses almost all 

 significance. A race is pure if it breeds 

 pure, and not otherwise. Historically we 

 may know that a race like our own was, as 

 a matter of fact, of mixed origin. But a 

 character may have been introduced by a 

 single individual, though subsequently it 

 becomes common to the race. This is 

 merely a variant on the familiar paradox 

 that in the course of time, if registration is 

 accurate, we shall all have the same sur- 

 name. In the case of music, for instance, 

 the gift, originally, perhaps, from a Welsh 

 source, might permeate the nation, and the 

 question would then arise whether the na- 

 tion, so changed, was the English nation 

 or not. 



Such a problem is raised in a striking 

 form by the population of modern Greece, 

 and especially of Athens. The racial char- 

 acteristics of the Athenian of the fifth 

 century B.C. are vividly described by 

 Galton in ' ' Hereditary Genius. ' ' The fact 

 that in that period a population, number- 

 ing many thousands, should have existed, 

 capable of following the great plays at a 

 first hearing, reveling in subtleties of 

 speech, and thrilling with passionate de- 

 light in beautiful things, is physiologically 

 a most singular phenomenon. On the basis 

 of the number of illustrious men produced 

 by that age Galton estimated the average 

 intelligence as at least two of his degrees 

 above our own, differing from us as much 



as we do from the negro. A few genera- 

 tions later the display was over. The origin 

 of that constellation of human genius 

 which then blazed out is as yet beyond all 

 biological analysis, but I think we are not 

 altogether without suspicion of the sequence 

 of the biological events. If I visit a 

 poultry-breeder who has a fine stock of 

 thoroughbred game fowls breeding true, 

 and ten years later — that is to say ten fowl- 

 generations later — I go again and find 

 scarcely a recognizable game-fowl on the 

 place, I know exactly what has happened. 

 One or two birds of some other or of no 

 breed must have strayed in and their pro- 

 geny been left undestroyed. Now in 

 Athens we have many indications that up 

 to the beginning of the fifth century, so 

 long as the phratries and gentes were main- 

 tained in their integrity, there was rather 

 close endogamy, a condition giving the best 

 chance of producing a homogeneous popu- 

 lation. There was no lack of material from 

 which intelligence and artistic power might 

 be derived. Sporadically these qualities 

 existed throughout the ancient Greek world 

 from the dawn of history, and, for ex- 

 ample, the vase-painters, the makers of the 

 Tanagra figurines, and the gem-cutters 

 were presumably pursuing family crafts, 

 much as are the actor-families^ of England 

 or the professorial families of Germany at 

 the present day. How the intellectual 

 strains should have acquired predominance 

 we can not tell, but in an inbreeding com- 

 munity homogeneity at least is not sur- 

 prising. At the end of the sixth century 

 came the "reforms" of Cleisthenes (507 

 B.C.), which sanctioned foreign marriages 

 and admitted to citizenship a number not 

 only of resident aliens, but also of manu- 

 mitted slaves. As Aristotle says, Cleis- 

 thenes legislated with the deliberate pur- 



3 For tables of these families, see the Supple- 

 ment to "Who's Who in the Theater." 



