that the higher intellectual and moral nature of man has been approximately stationary during the whole period of human history, and that the cause of the phenomenon has been the absence of any selective agency adequate to increase it.
Somewhat earlier than this Wallace asked:[1]
Looking back at the course of our history from the Saxon invasion to the end of the nineteenth century, what single cause can we allege for an advance in intellect and moral nature? What selective agency of "survival value" has ever been at work to preserve the wise and good and to eliminate the bad? And it must have been a very powerful agency, acting in a very systematic manner, even to neutralize the effect of the powerful deteriorating agencies above referred to.
And again:
there is no good evidence of any considerable improvement in man's average intellectual and moral status during the whole period of human history.
At one point in this essay, as a matter of fact, Wallace goes so far as to say, after discussing the ways in which the human breed was brutalized by the withdrawal of the more refined natures to monasteries and nunneries, and the destruction of radicals and students during the witchcraft mania and by the inquisition, that:
we are to-day, in all probability, mentally and morally inferior to our semibarbaric ancestors.
Must we accept this view as final? Are we sure that a denial of selection during historic times, strongly supported as it is, expresses the whole truth? In the first place, it certainly runs counter to the widespread belief that men are to-day inherently more humane, kindlier in character and action, than they were in antiquity. Attention is often called to the growth of altruism, especially during the past century. It is maintained that suffering will not be endured, either among men or animals, as in former times; that cruel punishments have been abolished; that brutal sports, once popular, now only disgust and repel. Further evidence of increasing altruism is offered in the development of social legislation, and in the multiplication of charitable and educational enterprises. And it must be admitted that the twentieth century, with its vast philanthropies, its soft-heartedness, verging so often even to sentimentality, and its insistence on the ideal of service, belongs to a different world from the hard life of the Greek and Latin city states, which seem, sometimes, in their unthinkable indifference to human pain and the rights of the weaker, to be prototypes of nothing modern except the Camorra and the Mafia.
This notion that the human breed is now, in civilized societies, kinder, gentler, more tractable, is not merely a popular idea. One phase of it has been remarked upon by that keen observer, Walter Bagehot.[2]
