ve conquered. The
experience of the English in India shows--if it shows anything--that a
highly civilised race may fail in producing a rapidly excellent effect
on a less civilised race, because it is too good and too different. The
two are not en rapport together; the merits of the one are not the
merits prized by the other; the manner-language of the one is not the
manner-language of the other. The higher being is not and cannot be a
model for the lower; he could not mould himself on it if he would, and
would not if he could. Consequently, the two races have long lived
together, 'near and yet far off,' daily seeing one another and daily
interchanging superficial thoughts, but in the depths of their mind
separated by a whole era of civilisation, and so affecting one another
only a little in comparison with what might have been hoped. But in
early societies there were no such great differences, and the rather
superior conqueror must have easily improved the rather inferior
conquered.

It is in the interior of these customary groups that national
characters are formed. As I wrote a whole essay on the manner of this
before, I cannot speak of it now. By proscribing nonconformist members
for generations, and cherishing and rewarding conformist members,
nonconformists become fewer and fewer, and conformists more and more.
Most men mostly imitate what they see, and catch the tone of what they
hear, and so a settled type--a persistent character--is formed. Nor is
the process wholly mental. I cannot agree, though the greatest
authorities say it, that no 'unconscious selection' has been at work at
the breed of man. If neither that nor conscious selection has been at
work, how did there come to be these breeds, and such there are in the
greatest numbers, though we call them nations? In societies
tyrannically customary, uncongenial minds become first cowed, then
melancholy, then out of health, and at last die. A Shelley in New
England could hardly have lived, and a race of Shelleys would have been
impossible. Mr. Galton wishes that breeds of men should be created by
matching men with marked characteristics with women of like
characteristics. But surely this is what nature has been doing time out
of mind, and most in the rudest nations and hardest times. Nature
disheartened in each generation the ill-fitted members of each
customary group, so deprived them of their full vigour, or, if they
were weakly, killed them. The Spartan char