Darwinism and race progress / by John Berry Haycraft.

  • Haycraft, John Berry, -1922.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Darwinism and race progress / by John Berry Haycraft. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    cases been due to circumstances which we may term surrounding or accidental. We shall see that races, unlike individuals, may remain through the whole of their historic period without any sign of organic decay, but that the organisations, on the part of individuals of the race for purposes of trade or pro- tection, may be prone to dangers which sooner or later overtake them. The Fall of Greek and Roman Political Organisation. A few illustrations will assist in making these points clear, and we may begin with the fall of the Greek states under Macedonian rule. It is here quite wrong to assume that the Greeks were at the time of their first conquest a deteriorated race ; individually their conquerors were probably inferior to them; indeed, Alexander, the Macedonian, is reported to have said in a burst of passion, “The Greeks are demigods among Macedonian brutes.” The Greeks from earliest times lived in small and independent states, jealously competing with each other, and unwilling to join hands in the face of a common danger. Their political organisation was from the first of the weakest kind, and they were at all times in their history liable to fall a prey to any aggressors who might have a stronger and bigger political organisation than theirs. This want of cohesion all but gave Greece to Persia;