The fight for our national intelligence / by Raymond B. Cattell.

  • Raymond Cattell
Date:
1937
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The fight for our national intelligence / by Raymond B. Cattell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CHAPTER I THE TWILIGHT OF WESTERN CIVILISATION? In the path of progress of England and most civilised nations stands a threat, challenging all who have the intelligence to perceive it. For it is not a menace apparent to all eyes, as are the perils of economic collapse, or cultural and religious confusion, nor is it so easily dramatised as political reaction or war. Yet it strikes insidiously at the very roots of national life and brings all these evils and many more besides in its train. I refer to the approach, foreseen by scientists a generation ago, of a grave decline in the level of national intelligence. To meet and over¬ come this enemy is the special task of the twentieth century, and if the victory is gained there is little doubt that history will rank it as the most important achieve¬ ment of Western culture, for no civilisation has achieved it before. Let us scrutinise the threat more closely and glance at the effects likely to occur if the danger materialises. Certain historians who have recently made their subject a scientific study, an affair of measuring and calculation, tell us that the decline of the early Eastern civilisations, of Greece and of Rome, was primarily due to a biological withering of those strains of the population bearing high mental capacity.^ To create a civilisation, to let it burst 1 See Seeck, Geschichte des Untergangs der Antiken Welt, Vol. ii; Nilsson, Imperial Rome-, Tarn, Hellenistic CÌ4JÌlisation, 1930, p. 91; Fisher, R. A., The Problem of the Decay of Civilisation, Eugenics Re4jie4x>, 1926; RostovtzeflP, Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire-, Gunther, The Racial Elements of European History-, Dill, Roman Society, and McDougall, National Welfare and National Decay. It is not asserted that the disappearance of ability was the only cause of
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