the servile, the indifferent, and, again, the stupid. Thus, as sheto repeat my expression-brutalized human nature by her system of celibacy applied to the gentle, she demoralized it by her system of persecution of the intelligent, the sincere, and the free. It is enough to make the blood boil to think of the blind folly that has caused the foremost nations of struggling humanity to be the heirs of such hateful ancestry, and that has so bred our instincts as to keep them in an unnecessarily longcontinued antagonism with the essential requirements of a steadily advancing civilization. In consequence of this inbred imperfection of our natures, in respect to the conditions under which we have to live, we are, even now, almost as much harassed by the sense of moral incapacity and sin as were the early converts from barbarism, and we steep ourselves in half-unconscious selfdeception and hypocrisy as a partial refuge from its insistence. Our avowed creeds remain at variance with our real rules of conduct, and we lead a dual life of barren religious sentimentalism and gross materialistic habitudes.

The extent to which persecution must have affected European races is easily measured by a few well-known statistical facts. Thus, as regards martyrdom and imprisonment, the Spanish nation was drained of freethinkers at the rate of 1000 persons annually, for the three centuries between 1471 and 1781; an average of 100 persons having been excuted and 900 imprisoned every year during that period. The actual data during those three hundred years are 32,000 burnt, 17,000 persons burnt in effigy (I presume they mostly died in prison or escaped from Spain), and 291,000 condemned to various terms of imprisonment and other penalties. It is impossible that any nation could stand a policy like this without paying a heavy penalty in the deterioration of its breed, as has notably been the result in the formation of the superstitious, unintelligent Spanish race of the present day.

Italy was also frightfully persecuted at an earlier date. In the diocese of Como, alone, more than 1000 were tried annually by the inquisitors for many years, and 300 were burnt in the single year 1416.

The French persecutions, by which the English have been large gainers, through receiving their industrial refugees, were on a nearly similar scale. In the seventeenth century three or four hundred thousand Protestants perished in prison, at the galleys, in their attempts to escape, or on the scaffold, and an equal number emigrated. Mr. Smiles, in his admirable book on the Huguenots, has traced the influence of these and of the Flemish emigrants on England, and shows clearly that she owes to them almost all her industrial arts and very much of the most valuable lifeblood of her modern race. There has been another emigration from France of not unequal magnitude, but followed by very different results, namely, that of the Revolution in 1789. It is most instructive to contrast the effects of the two. The Protestant emigrants were able men, and have profoundly influenced for good both our breed and our history; on the other hand, the political refugees had but poor average stamina, and have left scarcely any traces behind them.

It is very remarkable how large a proportion of the eminent men of all countries bear foreign names, and are the children of political refugees, - men well qualified to introduce a valuable strain of blood. We cannot fail to reflect on the glorious destiny of a country that should maintain, during many generations, the policy of attracting eminently desirable refugees, but no others, and of encouraging their settlement and the naturalization of their children.

No nation has parted with more emigrants than England, but whether she has hitherto been on the whole a gainer or a loser by the practice, I am not sure. No doubt she has lost a very large number of families of sterling worth, especially of laborers and artisans; but, as a rule, the very ablest men are strongly disinclined to emigrate; they feel that their fortune is assured at home, and unless their spirit of adventure is overwhelmingly strong, they prefer to live in the high intellectual and moral atmosphere of the more intelligent circles of English society, to a self-banishment among people of altogether lower grades of mind and interests. England has certainly got rid of a great deal of refuse through means of emigration. She has found an

men who

outlet for men of adventurous and Bohemian natures, who are excellently adapted for colonizing a new country but are not wanted in old civilizations; and she has also been disembarrassed of a vast number of turbulent radicals and the like, are decidedly able but by no means eminent, and whose zeal, selfconfidence, and irreverence far outbalance their other qualities. The rapid rise of new colonies and the decay of old civilizations is, I believe, mainly due to their respective social agencies, which in the one case promote, and in the other case retard, the marriages of the most suitable breeds. In a young colony, a strong arm and an enterprising brain are the most appropriate fortune for a marrying man, and again, as the women are few, the inferior males are seldom likely to marry. In an old civilization the agencies are more complex. Among the active, ambitious classes none but the inheritors of fortune are likely to marry young; there is especially a run against men of classes C, D, and E,1 those, I mean, whose future is not assured except through a good deal of self-denial and effort. It is almost impossible that they should succeed well and rise high in society, if they hamper themselves with a wife in their early manhood. Men of classes F and G are more independent, but they are not nearly so numerous, and therefore their breed, though intrinsically of more worth than E or D, has much less effect on the standard of the nation at large. But even if men of classes F and G marry young, and ultimately make fortunes and achieve peerages or high social position, they become infected with the ambition current in all old civilizations of founding families. Thence result the evils I have already described, in speaking of the marriages of eldest sons with heiresses and of the suppression of the marriages of the younger sons. Again, there is a constant tendency of the best men in the country to settle in the great cities, where marriages are less prolific and children are less likely to live. Owing to these several causes, there is a steady check in an old civilization upon the

1 In an earlier chapter Mr. Galton graded men of average ability or higher, into the classes A, B, C, D, E, F, and G, A being the average men, and G the geniuses. ED.

fertility of the abler classes; the improvident and unambitious are those who chiefly keep up the breed. So the race gradually deteriorates, becoming in each successive generation less fitted for a high civilization, although it retains the external appearances of one, until the time comes when the whole political and social fabric caves in and a greater or less relapse to barbarism takes place, during the reign of which the race is perhaps able to recover its tone.

The best form of civilization in respect to the improvement of the race would be one in which society was not costly; where incomes were chiefly derived from professional sources, and not much through inheritance; where every lad had a chance of showing his abilities and, if highly gifted, was enabled to achieve a first-class education and entrance into professional life, by the liberal help of the exhibitions and scholarships which he had gained in his early youth; where marriage was held in as high honor as in ancient Jewish times; where the pride of race was encouraged (of course I do not refer to the nonsensical sentiment of the present day that goes under that name); where the weak could find a welcome and a refuge in celibate monasteries or sisterhoods, and, lastly, where the better sort of emigrants and refugees from other lands were invited and welcomed, and their descendants naturalized.

XXVI

NATURAL SELECTION AND SOCIAL SELECTION 1

PREPONDERANCE OF SOCIAL SELECTION

Aristotle, the founder of political science, defined man as "the animal which lives under social conditions." These conditions force themselves upon man so peremptorily that solitary life implies a very serious psychic anomaly, barring the special cases which produce Robinson Crusoes. However shy a savage may be, he carries with him a rudimentary society, his mate and his young; and the population is never so sparse that he can avoid meeting other groups with whom he must have relations and. exchange courtesies or spear cuts.

His situation, then, is quite different from that of the common run of animals. He thinks; he speaks; he is armed. He will never pass his fellow as animals do without looking at him. His existence will all of it be dominated by social relations, rudimentary as they may be, and natural selection ceases to exercise the same pressure upon him as upon the rest of the animated world. I mean that it is transformed into social selection, in proportion as the social environment surpasses in influence the environment of nature.

In man, social selection overrides natural selection. This, I believe, is the oldest principle of selectionism. Wallace, Darwin's rival, rightly maintained in entering upon the then new and dreadful question of the origin of man ("The Origin of Human Races," Journal of the Anthropological Society, 1864, p. 158) that on the day when man's brain had acquired its power, natural selection ceased to have a hold on him. Broca, in his critical

1 From Les Sélections Sociales, by G. Vâcher de Lapouge, Paris, Librairie Thorin & Fils (A. Fontemoing, successeur), 1896, chap. vii. Translated by Steven T. Byington.