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358
Hereditary Genius
to enable their race to rise to its present, very moderate level of
natural morality. A relic of this monastic spirit clings to our
Universities, who say to every man who shows intellectual powers of
the kind they delight to honour, “Here is an income of from one to
two hundred pounds a year, with free lodging and various advantages
in the way of board and society; we give it you on account of your
ability; take it and enjoy it all your life if you like: we exact no
condition to your continuing to hold it but one, namely, that you shall
not marry.”
The policy of the religious world in Europe was exerted in another
direction, with hardly less cruel effect on the nature of future
generations, by means of persecutions which brought thousands of
the foremost thinkers and men of political aptitudes to the scaffold, or
imprisoned them during a large part of their manhood, or drove them
as emigrants into other lands. In every one of these cases, the check
upon their leaving issue was very considerable. Hence the Church,
having first captured all the gentle natures and condemned them to
celibacy, made another sweep of her huge nets, this time fishing in
stirring waters, to catch those who were the most fearless, truth-
seeking, and intelligent in their modes of thought, and therefore the
most suitable parents of a high civilization, and put a strong check, if
not a direct stop, to their progeny. Those she reserved on these
occasions, to breed the generations of the future, were the servile, the
indifferent, and, again, the stupid. Thus, as she—to repeat my
expression— brutalized human nature by her system of celibacy
applied to the gentle, she demoralised 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
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