420 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 



But this marvellously gifted race declined, 



as all such races have in time declined : 



Social morality grew exceedingly lax, marriage be- 

 came unfashionable and was avoided, many of the 

 more ambitious and accomplished women were 

 avowed courtesans and consequently infertile, and 

 the mothers of the incoming population were of a 

 heterogeneous class. ... It can be therefore no sur- 

 prise to us, though it has been a severe misfortune 

 to humanity, that the high Athenian breed decayed 

 and disappeared, for if it had maintained its excel- 

 lence and had multiplied and spread over large 

 countries, displacing inferior populations (which it 

 well might have done, for it was naturally very pro- 

 lific), it would assuredly have accomplished results 

 advantageous to human civilization, to a degree that 

 transcends our powers of imagination. (Galton, 

 "Hereditary Genius," page 331.) 



Bateson suggests that the high intellectual 

 qualities of the ancient Athenian race were due 

 to the inbreeding of homogeneous and very su- 

 perior phratries and gentes, but when foreign 

 marriages were sanctioned, and aliens and 

 manumitted slaves were admitted to citizenship 

 by the "reforms" of Cleisthenes (507 B.C.) the 

 population gradually became mongrelized and 

 its intellectual superiority declined. 



3. Why the Race has not Improved. — If 

 mankind has made no progress in hereditary 



