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Hereditary Genius
359
that has so bred our instincts as to keep them in an unnecessarily
long-continued 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 self-deception
and hypocrisy, as a partial refuge from its insistance. 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 free-thinkers at the rate of 1, 000 persons annually, for the
three centuries between 1471 and 1781; an average of 100 persons
having been executed 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 1, 000 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
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