result of gradual development aiming
at higher improvement. By following strictly the laws that govern the
evolution of life, we control the formation of the body and brain.
Strong mental traits become intensified by cultivation from generation
to generation and finally culminate in one glorious outburst of power,
called Genius. But there is one peculiarity about mind. It resembles
that wonderful century plant which, after decades of developing, flowers
and dies. Genius is the long unfolding bloom of mind, and leaves no
posterity. We carefully prepare for the future development of Genius. We
know that our children will be neither deformed nor imbecile, but we
watch the unfolding of their intellects with the interest of a new
revelation. We guide them with the greatest care.

"I could take a child of your people with inherited weakness of body and
mind. I should rear it on proper food and exercise--both mental and
physical--and it would have, when matured, a marked superiority to its
parents. It is not what Nature has done for us, it is what we have done
for her, that makes us a race of superior people."

"The qualities of mind that are the general feature of your people," I
remarked, "are so very high, higher than our estimate of Genius. How was
it arrived at?"

"By the processes I have just explained. Genius is always a leader. A
genius with us has a subtlety of thought and perception beyond your
power of appreciation. All organized social bodies move intellectually
in a mass, with their leader just ahead of them."

"I have visited, as a guest, a number of your families, and found their
homes adorned with paintings and sculpture that would excite wondering
admiration in my own land as rare works of art, but here they are only
the expression of family taste and culture. Is that a quality of
intellect that has been evolved, or is it a natural endowment of your
race?"

"It is not an endowment, but has been arrived at by the same process of
careful cultivation. Do you see in those ancient portraits a variety of
striking colors? There is not a suggestion of harmony in any of them. On
the contrary, they all display violent contrasts of color. The originals
of them trod this land thousands of years ago. Many of the colors, we
know, were unknown to them. Color is a faculty of the mind that is
wholly the result of culture. In the early ages of society, it was known
only in the coarsest and most brilliant hues. A conception