Note 71 — YOUTH AND AGE (continued 8)
Reading edition
The whole argument seems to have little foundation. Are we to assume, for example, that the “average ability” of the Greeks before and after their great period, or of the English before and after the Elizabethan age, was enormously inferior because the proportion of very illustrious men was so much less? Why should not the average be higher, the ability (through intermarriage) being more equally distributed?