190 THE DESCENT OF MAN 



tinned development in mind and body. But development 

 of all kinds depends on many concurrent favorable circum- 

 stances. Natural selection acts only tentatively. Individ- 

 uals and races may have acquired certain indisputable 

 advantages, and yet have perished from failing in other 

 characters. The Greeks may have retrograded from a want 

 of coherence between the many small states, from the small 

 size of their whole country, from the practice of slavery, 

 or from extreme sensuality; for they did not succumb until 

 "they were enervated and corrupt to the very core." " The 

 western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably sur- 

 pass their former savage progenitors, and stand at the 

 summit of civilization, owe little or none of their superior- 

 ity to direct inheritance from the old Greeks, though they 

 owe much to the written works of that wonderful people. 



Who can positively say why the Spanish nation, so 

 dominant at one time, has been distanced in the race ? The 

 awakening of the nations of Europe from the dark ages is 

 a still more perplexing problem. At that early period, 

 as Mr. Galton has remarked, almost all the men of a gentle 

 nature, those given to meditation or culture of the mind, 

 had no refuge except in the bosom of a Church which de- 

 manded celibacy;"^ and this could hardly fail to bave had 

 a deteriorating influence on each successive generation. 

 During this same period the Holy Inquisition selected with 

 extreme care the freest and boldest men in order to bum 

 or imprison them. In. Spain alone some of the best men — 

 those who doubted and questioned, and without doubting 

 there can be no progress — were eliminated during three 

 centuries at the rate of a thousand a year. The evil which 

 the Catholic Church has thus effected is incalculable, though 



'''' Mr. Greg, "Eraser's Magazine," September, 1868, p. 357. 



'8 "Hereditary Genius," 1870, pp. 357-359. The Rev. P. W. Farrar 

 ("Fraser's Mag.," Aug. 1870, p. 257) advances arguments on the other side. 

 Sir C. Lyell had already ("Principles of Geology," vol. ii., 1868, p. 489), in a 

 striking passage called attention to the evil influence of the Holy Inquisition 

 in having, through selection, lowered the general standard of Intelligence in 

 Europe. 



