Note 72 — YOUTH AND AGE (continued 8)

If Galton had referred only to the Athenians of the great period, as Wallace imagined, the statement would have been even more absurd. It would then mean that an African tribe of blacks might suddenly become as intelligent as ourselves, continue so for two generations, and then relapse at once into their old barbarism. Yet Dr. Verrall went some distance in this direction, for he says the Athenians of the great period “had plainly an immense superiority of mind in comparison with their predecessors.” (The Bacchants of Euripides, p. 168).