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346
Hereditary Genius
Alps, and disappears altogether a little higher up. We want as much
backbone as we can get, to bear the racket to which we are
henceforth to be exposed, and as good brains as possible to contrive
machinery, for modern life to work more smoothly than at present.
We can, in some degree, raise the nature of man to a level with the
new conditions imposed upon his existence, and we can also, in some
degree, modify the conditions to suit his nature. It is clearly right that
both these powers should be exerted, with the view of bringing his
nature and the conditions of his existence into as close harmony as
possible.
In proportion as the world becomes filled with mankind, the relations
of society necessarily increase in complexity, and the nomadic
disposition found in most barbarians becomes unsuitable to the novel
conditions. There is a most unusual unanimity in respect to the causes
of incapacity of savages for civilization, among writers on those
hunting and migratory nations who are brought into contact with
advancing colonization, and perish, as they invariably do, by the
contact. They tell us that the labour of such men is neither constant
nor steady; that the love of a wandering, independent life prevents
their settling anywhere to work, except for a short time, when urged
by want and encouraged by kind treatment. Meadows says that the
Chinese call the barbarous races on their borders by a phrase which
means “hither and thither, not fixed.”
And any amount of evidence
might be adduced to show how deeply Bohemian habits of one kind
or another, were ingrained in the nature of the men who inhabited
most parts of the earth now overspread by the Anglo-Saxon and
other civilized races. Luckily there is still room for adventure, and a
man who feels the cravings of a roving, adventurous spirit to be too
strong for resistance, may yet find a legitimate outlet for it in the
colonies, in the army, or on board ship. But such a spirit is, on the
whole,
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