418 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 



development enables men at the present day 

 to get more out of their heredity than was 

 possible in the past. Advance of civiliza- 

 tion has meant only improvement of environ- 

 ment. But neither environment nor training 

 has changed the hereditary capacities of man. 

 There has been no perceptible improvement in 

 human heredity within historic times, nothing 

 comparable with the changes which have oc- 

 curred in domesticated animals. Indeed no 

 modern race of men is the equal of certain an- 

 cient ones. Galton has pointed out the fact 

 that in the little country of Attica in the cen- 

 tury between 530 and 430 B. C. there were 

 produced fourteen illustrious men, one for 

 every 4,300 of the free born, adult male popu- 

 lation. In the two centuries from 500-300 

 B.C. this small, barren country with an area 

 and total population about equal to that of the 

 present State of Rhode Island but with less 

 than one-fifth as many free persons produced 

 at least twenty-five illustrious men. Among 

 statesmen and commanders there were Milti- 

 ades, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, 

 Phocion; among poets iEschylus, Euripides, 



