Our present natural dispositions make it impossible for us to attain the ideal standard of a nation of men all judging soberly for themselves, and therefore the slavishness of the mass of our countrymen, in morals and intellect, must be an admitted fact in all schemes of regenerative policy.

The hereditary taint due to the primeval barbarism of our race, and maintained by later influences, will have to be bred out of it before our descendants can rise to the position of free members of an intelligent society:  and I may add that the most likely nest at the present time for self-reliant natures is to be found in States founded and maintained by emigrants.

Servility has its romantic side, in the utter devotion of a slave to the lightest wishes and the smallest comforts of his master, and in that of a loyal subject to those of his sovereign; but such devotion cannot be called a reasonable self-sacrifice; it is rather an abnegation of the trust imposed on man to use his best judgment, and to act in the way he thinks the wisest.  Trust in authority is a trait of the character of children, of weakly women, and of the sick and infirm, but it is out of place among members of a thriving resolute community during the fifty or more years of their middle life.  Those who have been born in a free country feel the atmosphere of a paternal government very oppressive.  The hearty and earnest political and individual life which is found when every man has a continual sense of public responsibility, and knows that success depends on his own right judgment and exertion, is replaced under a despotism by an indolent reliance upon what its master may direct, and by a demoralising conviction that personal advancement is best secured by solicitations and favour.

INTELLECTUAL DIFFERENCES.

It is needless for me to speak here about the differences in intellectual power between different men and different races, or about the convertibility of genius as shown by different members of the same gifted family achieving eminence in varied ways, as I have already written at length on these subjects in Hereditary Genius and in Antecedents of English Men of Science.  It is, however, well to remark that during the fourteen years that have elapsed since the former book was published, numerous fresh instances have arisen of distinction being attained by members of the gifted families whom I quoted as instances of heredity, thus strengthening my arguments.

MENTAL IMAGERY.