( 393 ) 



BEITISH ASSOCIATION FOE THE ADVANCEMENT OF 

 SCIENCE, AUSTRALIA, 1914. 



Address by Professor William Bateson, M.A., F.R.S., President. 

 (Concluded from p. 357.) 



Paet II. — Sydney. 



Such a problem is raised in a striking form by the population of 

 modern Greece, and especially of Athens. The racial characteristics 

 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, numbering many thousands, should have existed, capable 

 of following the great plays at a first hearing, revelling in subtleties 

 of speech, and thrilling with passionate delight 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 recognisable 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 progeny 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 maintained in 

 their integrity there was rather close endogamy, a condition giving 

 the best chance of producing a homogeneous population. 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 example, 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 cannot tell, but in an inbreeding commu- 

 nity homogeneity at least is not surprising. At the end of the sixth 

 century came the "reforms" of Cleisthenes (507 B.C.), which sanc- 

 tioned foreign marriages and admitted to citizenship a number not 



' ;: For tables of these families, see the Supplement to Who's Who in the 

 Theatre. 



Zool. 4th ser. vol. XVIII., October, 1914. 2 H 



