accumulated knowledge available in the text-books of to-day. Dr. Alfred
Russell Wallace held strongly to this opinion. He could see no proof of
continuously increasing intellectual power; he thought that where the
greatest advance in intellect is supposed to have been made this might
be wholly due to the cumulative effect of successive acquisitions of
knowledge handed down from age to age by written or printed books; that
Euclid and Archimedes were probably the equals of any of our greatest
mathematicians of to-day; and that we are entitled to believe that the
higher intellectual and moral nature of man has been approximately
stationary during the whole period of human history. This great and
intrepid thinker states his view with characteristic incisiveness thus:
"Many writers thoughtlessly speak of the hereditary effects of strength
or skill due to any mechanical work or special art being continued
generation after generation in the same family, as amongst the castes of
India. But of any progressive improvement there is no evidence whatever.
Those children who had a natural aptitude for the work would, of course,
form the successors of their parents, and there is no proof of anything
hereditary except as regards this innate aptitude. Many people are
alarmed at the statement that the effects of education and training are
not hereditary, and think that if that were really the case there would
be no hope for improvement of the race; but close consideration will
show them that if the results of our education in the widest sense, in
the home, in the shop, in the nation, and in the world at large, had
really been hereditary, even in the slightest degree, then indeed there
would be little hope for humanity, and there is no clearer proof of this
than the fact that we have not _all_ been made much worse--the wonder
being that any fragment of morality, or humanity, or the love of truth
or justice for their own sakes still exists among us."[15]

I think the majority of thoughtful people will agree that these words