The Geography of Intellect

Nathaniel Weyl

• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781789122107
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire antique

Until the first publication of the Geography of Intellect in 1963, the study of human intelligence, its distribution and causes, had been confined to inaccessible scholars' journals. With the publication of works by Carleton S. Coon, Ernst Mayr and others—dealing with the evolution of man and his various sub-groups—has grown a strong popular interest in the findings of anthropological science: What has made man? Why do his civilizations rise and fall? How can we make certain that our current rate of material progress is maintained or increased, that we do not fall into the graveyard of civilizations wherein are buried Periclean Greece, Imperial Rome, Post-Inquisition Spain, Islamic civilization and the monstrous Nazi regime?"No one can read Nathaniel Weyl without realizing the has is clearly a man of intellectual honesty, attempting to perform a signal service for us all."—NATIONAL REVIEW"So lucid and admirable a style"—NEW REPUBLIC"Professor Possony is an admirable historian, and his book is a careful and well-documented account."—THE ANNALS"Dr. Possony—deeply steeped in general sociology—stands out among the younger historians whose work has commanded attention in Europe and in this country."—THE NEW LEADER

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{1} Thomas Jefferson to Henri Gregoire, Washington, February 25, 1809. This is reproduced inter alia in Basic Writings of Thomas Jefferson, editor Philip Foner, (Garden City: Halcyon House, 1950), p. 682.

{2} In a contribution to the Summer 1961 issue of Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, devoted to “Evolution and Man’s Progress,” James F. Crow, Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of Wisconsin, made some pertinent comments on this point. In an article entitled “Mechanisms and Trends in Human Evolution, Crow stated that the experience of animal breeders suggests that it probably would be easier, by selection, to change the intellectual or other aptitudes of the population than to change the incidence of disabling disease or sterility.” Dr. Crow added: “Since society owes so much to a small minority of intellectual leaders, a change in the proportion of gifted children would probably confer a much larger benefit on society than would a corresponding increase in the population average. These potential leaders would probably produce enough change in cultural and other environmental influences to be worth considerably more than the contribution of their genotypes to the genetic average. It has frequently been suggested that when artificial insemination is used, because of sterility or genetic disease in the husband, the donors might be selected from men of outstanding intellectual or artistic achievement.” Daedalus, op. cit., 429-430.

{3} By this, we mean, not the destruction of the artificial aristocracies of birth, but the liquidation of the aristoi (that is to say, the best). We have in mind Thomas Jefferson’s distinction between the traditional aristocracy and the “natural aristocracy of virtue and talents.” v. Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, October 28, 1813, in Foner, op. cit., pp. 714-715.

{4} Daedalus, ibid., 467.

{5} Ernst Mayr, Animal species and Evolution (Cambridge: Harvard university Press, 1963), p. 649.

{6} Translated by Arnold Toynbee and reproduced in his Greek Historical Thought (New York: New American Library, 1952), pp. 143-4. Our emphasis, N.W. and S.P.

{7} Toynbee, ibid., p. 145.

{8} Ibid.

{9} The Spirit of the Laws (New York: Hafner, 1949), pp. 293-4.

{10} Ibid., p. 239.

{11} .Ibid., p. 240.

{12} Ibid.

{13} David Hume, Essays (London: Ward, Lock & Co.), Essay xx: Of National Characters, p. 122.

{14} “I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilized nation of that complexion, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufacturers amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the Whites, such as the ancient Germans...