There now only remains for consideration the means by which, in such a society, a continuous improvement of the race could be brought about, on the assumption that for this purpose education is powerless as a direct agency, since its effects are not hereditary, and that some form of selection is an absolute necessity. This improvement I believe will certainly be effected through the agency of female choice in marriage. Let us, therefore, consider how this would probably act.

It will be generally admitted that, although many women now remain unmarried from necessity rather than from choice, there are always a considerable number who feel no strong inclination to marriage, and who accept husbands to secure a subsistence or a home of their own rather than from personal affection or sexual emotion. In a society in which women were all pecuniarily independent, were all fully occupied with public duties and intellectual or social enjoyments, and had nothing to gain by marriage as regards material well-being, we may be sure that the number of the unmarried from choice would largely increase. It would probably come to be considered a degradation for any woman to marry a man she could not both love and esteem, and this feeling would supply ample reasons for either abstaining from marriage altogether or delaying it till a worthy and sympathetic husband was encountered. In man, on the other hand, the passion of love is more general, and usually stronger; and as in such a society as is here postulated there would be no way of gratifying this passion but by marriage, almost every woman would receive offers, and thus a powerful selective agency would rest with the female sex. Under the system of education and of public opinion here sug gested there can be no doubt how this selection would be exercised. The idle

and the selfish would be almost universally rejected. The diseased or the weak in intellect would also usually remain unmarried; while those who exhibited any tendency to insanity or to hereditary disease, or who possessed any congenital deformity

A Theory of Population deduced from the General Law of Animal Fertility. Republished from the Westminster Review for April, 1852.

because it would be considered an offence against society to be the means of perpetuating such diseases or imperfections.

We must also take into account a special factor hitherto, I believe, unnoticed in this connection that would in all probability intensify the selection thus exercised. It is well known that females are largely in excess of males in our existing population, and this fact, if it were a necessary and permanent one, would tend to weaken the selective agency of women, as it undoubtedly does now. But there is good reason to believe that it will not be a permanent feature of our population. The births always give a larger proportion of males than females, varying from 3 to 4 per cent. But boys die so much more rapidly than girls that when we include all under the age of five the numbers are nearly equal. For the next five years the mortality is nearly the same in both sexes; then that of females preponderates up to 30 years of age, then up to 60 that of men is the larger, while for the rest of life female mortality is again greatest. The general result is that at the ages of most frequent marriage-from 20 to 35-females are between 8 and 9 per cent. in excess of males. But during the ages from 5 to 35 we find a wonderful excess of male deaths from two preventible causes

-"accident" and "violence." For the year 1888 the deaths from these causes in England and Wales were as follows:

Males (5 to 35 years) 4,158.
Females (5 to 35 years) 1,100.*

Here we have an excess of male over between the ages of 5 and 35, a very large female deaths in one year of 3,058, all greater risks run by men and boys in variportion of which is no doubt due to the ous industrial occupations. In a state of society in which the bulk of the populaquite certain that almost all these deaths tion were engaged in industrial work, it is would be prevented, and thus bring the with the female. But there are also many male population more nearly to an equality unhealthy employments in which men are exclusively engaged, such as the grinders and many others; and many more men of Sheffield, the white-lead manufacturers, have their lives shortened by labor in un

Annual Report of the Registrar General, 1888, pp. 106-7.

ventilated workshops, to say nothing of the loss of life in war. When the lives of all its citizens are accounted of equal value to the community, no one will be allowed to suffer from such preventible causes as these; and this will still further reduce the mortality of men as compared with that of women. On the whole, then, it seems highly probable that in the society of the future the superior numbers of males at birth will be maintained throughout life, or, at all events, during what may be termed the marriageable period. This will greatly increase the influence of women in the improvement of the race. Being a minority they will be more sought after, and will have a real choice in mariage, which is rarely the case now. This actual minority, being further increased by those who, from the various causes aiready referred to, abstain from marriage, will cause considerable numbers of men to remain permanently unmarried, and as these will consist very largely, if not almost wholly, of those who are the least perfectly developed either mentally or physically, the constant advance of the race in every good quality will be insured.

This method of improvement by elimination of the worst has many advantages over that of securing the early marriages of the best. In the first place it is the direct instead of the indirect way, for it is more important and more beneficial to society to improve the average of its members by getting rid of the lowest types than by raising the highest a little higher. Exceptionally great and good men are always produced in sufficient numbers, and have always been so produced in every phase of civilization. We do not need more of these so much as we need less of the weak and the bad. This weeding-out system has been the method of natural selection, by which the animal and vege

table worlds have been improved and developed. The survival of the fittest is really the extinction of the unfit. In nature this occurs perpetually on an enormous scale, because, owing to the rapid increase of most organisms, the unfit which are yearly destroyed form a large proportion of those that are born. Under our hitherto imperfect civilization this wholesome process has been checked as regards mankind; but the check has been the result of the development of the higher attributes of our nature. Humanity-the essentially human emotion-has caused us to save the lives of the weak and suffering, of the maimed or imperfect in mind or body. This has to some extent been antagonistic to physical and even intellectual race-improvement; but it has improved us morally by the continuous development of the characteristic and crowning grace of our human, as distinguished from our animal, nature.

In the society of the future this defect will be remedied, not by any diminution of our humanity, but by encouraging the activity of a still higher human characteristic-admiration of all that is beautiful and kindly and self-sacrificing, repugnance to all that is selfish, base, or cruel. When we allow ourselves to be guided by reason, justice, and public spirit in our dealings with our fellow-men, and determine to abolish poverty by recognizing the equal rights of all the citizens of our common land to an equal share of the wealth which all combine to produce-when we have thus solved the lesser problem of a rational social organization adapted to secure the equal well-being of all, then we may safely leave the far greater and deeper problem of the improvement of the race to the cultivated minds and pure instincts of the Women of the Future.-Fortnightly Review.

BY PROFESSOR

THE traveller from Hebron to Gaza cannot fail to be struck with the sudden contrast presented by the mountainous country that he leaves behind him and the long stretch of almost level plain into which he descends. After passing Bêt

A. H. SAYCE.

Jibrin, in which some scholars would see the site of the ancient Gath, he has to wend his way through narrow defiles and precipitous limestone crags until he suddenly finds himself in the rich plain which formis the Negeb, or district of "southern"

hundred yards lower down. Mr. Petrie is doubtless right in thinking that it was to this spring that the city now represented by the Tel el-Hesy owed its importance. The spring would have borne the same relation to the old town that the spring of the Virgin bore, and still bears, to Jerusalem. When swollen by rain the stream is capable of doing a considerable amount of mischief. It has washed away a large portion of the eastern and southeastern sides of the mound, thus laying bare a section of the tel from its top to the bottom. This has proved, however, of invaluable service to the explorer, as the time at his disposal would never have allowed him to uncover a tenth part of the soil which has been removed by the water. Another season of work would have been needed before the lowest part of the tel could have been reached, and the history of the mound revealed, together with that of the pottery which is embedded in it. The kindly assistance of the water was the one piece of good fortune that fell to Mr. Petrie's lot, and he knew how to make the most of it.

66

On the southern and western sides of the tel is an enclosure, about thirty acres square, which is surrounded by a clay rampart" still seven feet high in certain parts, and in one place by a brick wall. As there is but a slight deposit of earth within the enclosure, while nothing was found in it, Mr. Petrie is doubtless right in holding that it was intended to shelter cattle in case of an invasion. It probably belongs to the later period of the city to which it was attached.

The city is represented by the tel or mound. This rises to a height of no less than sixty feet, formed by the accumulated ruins of successive towns, the lowest of which stood on a platform of natural soil about fifty feet above the stream which runs through the wadi below. The mound is about two hundred feet square.

Mr. Petrie's description of it reads like the record of Dr. Schliemann's discoveries at Troy. City has been piled upon city, the latest colonists being Greeks, whose settlement was itself swept away before the age of Alexander the Great. The lowest and earliest city was the most important, if we may judge from the size of the wall with which it was encircled. This was 28 feet 8 inches thick, and was formed, like the walls of an Egyptian

It

city, of clay bricks baked in the sun. had been twice repaired in the course of its history, and it still stands to a height of twenty-one feet. As thin black Phoenician pottery was found above it, which Egyptian excavation has shown to be not later than about B. C. 1100, we may follow Mr. Petrie in regarding the wall as that of one of those Amorite cities which, as we are told, were "walled up to heaven" (Deut. i. 28). It is the first authentic memorial of the ancient Canaanitish population which has been discovered in Palestine. As large quantities of potsherds have been met with both outside and within it, we now know the precise characteristics of Amorite pottery, and can consequently tell the age of a site on which it occurs.

The city to which the wall belonged was taken and destroyed, and the wall itself was allowed to fall into ruin. Then came a period when the site was occupied by rude herdsmen or squatters, unskilled in the arts either of making bricks or of fortifying towns. Their huts were built

of mud and rolled stones from the wadi below, and resembled the wretched "shanties' of the half-savage Beduin, which we may still see on the outskirts of the Holy Land. They must have been inhabited by members of the invading Israelitish tribes who had overthrown the civilization that had long existed in the cities of Canaan, and were still in a condition of nomadic barbarism. We may gather from the Book of Judges that the period was brought to an end by the organizing efforts of Samuel and the defeat of the Philistines by Saul. With the foundation of the Israelitish monarchy came a new epoch of prosperity and culture. Jerusalem and other cities were enlarged and fortified (1 Kings ix. 15–19), and the Chronicler tells us (2 Chron. xi. 5) that after the revolt of the Ten Tribes the chief cities of Judah were further strengthened by Rehoboam. The ruins of Tel el-Hesy furnish numerous evidences of this new epoch of building. First of all we have a wall of crude brick thirteen feet thick, which is probably identical with a wall traced by Mr. Petrie along the western and northern faces of the tel, where it ends in a tower at the north-west corner. However this may be, the section laid bare by the stream on the eastern face of the tel shows that the thirteen feet wall

was repaired and rebuilt three or four times over. All these rebuildings must be referred to the age of the Kings, since the only remains of post-exilic times discov ered on the mound are those of the Greek settlement of the fifth century B. C.

One of the later rebuildings is illustrated by a massive brick wall twenty-five feet thick, and of considerable height, which Mr. Petrie has discovered on the southern slope of the tel, and which he refers to the reign of Manasseh. It has been built above a glacis formed of large blocks of stone, the faces of which were covered with plaster. Mr. Petrie has traced the glacis to a height of forty feet, and has found that it was approached by a flight of steps, at the foot of which, in the valley, was a fortified building, of which only the gateway now remains. The earth on which the glacis rests is piled ten feet deep around a large building eighty-five feet in length, and composed of crude brick walls more than four feet in thickness. Ten feet below the building are the ruins of another large building, which, after having been burned, was rudely put together again out of the old materials. The original edifice was of crude brick with doorways of "fine white limestone." Several slabs of the latter have been discovered; on three of them is "a curious form of decoration by a shallow pilaster, with very sloping side, resting on a low cushion base, and with a volute at the top." As Mr. Petrie remarks, "we are here face to face at last with work of the earlier Jewish kings, probably executed by the same school of masons who built and adorned the temple of Solomon." In the volute Mr. Petrie sees a representation of a ram's horn, and calls to mind the Biblical expression, "The horns of the altar." Whether this be so or not, the volute is an earlier form of that which characterizes the Ionic capital. On one of the slabs is a graffito, which must have been scratched upon the stone by one of the subjects of Solomon or his immediate successors. It represents a lion or dog walking, and as the slab was built into the reconstructed edifice upside down, the drawing must have been made while the stone still formed part of the original edifice. This can hardly have been erected at a later date than the reign of Rehoboam.

The stones of the glacis have led Mr. Petrie to a very important conclusion.

They are drafted, the surface of the stone being smoothed away toward the edges so as to leave a rough projection in the middle. But they show no trace of the clawtool, or comb-pick, as Mr. Petrie prefers to call it. Now this tool is characteristic of Greek work, and as it was used in Greece in the pre Persian era, while it was introduced into Egypt only after the contact of Egypt with Greece, we may infer that it was of Greek invention. Its employment in Palestine, therefore, would imply that any building in which it was used belonged to the Greek age, Mr. Petrie's excavations at Tel el-Hesy having shown that older Jewish work exhibits no traces of it. Consequently the dispute as to the age of the Harâm wall at Jerusalem is at last settled. Here the stones have been dressed with a claw-tool from the foundation upward, and it becomes clear, accordingly, that they must all be referred to an Herodian date. I have always felt doubtful about the antiquity commonly ascribed to them on the strength of certain masons' marks pronounced by Mr. Deutsch to be early Phoenician characters. But it is questionable whether they are characters at all; at any rate, they do not belong to an early form of the Phoenician alphabet, and no argument can be drawn from them as to the pre-exilic origin of the monument on which they occur.

But while the date of the great wall which surrounds the Mosque of Omar at Jerusalem is thus brought down to the classical period, the very fact which has reduced its claims to antiquity has served to establish the pre-exilic character of another monument near Hebron. This is the Râmet-el-Khalil, or "Shrine of Abraham," about three miles to the north of Hebron. The huge blocks of stone of which this building was composed have never been touched by the claw-tool, and we may therefore see in them the relics of a temple the foundation of which must be older than the exile. Can it represent the site of Kirjath-sepher, the Canaanite, city of books?"

In Tel el-Hesy Mr. Petrie sees the ruins of Lachish. The spring which flowed beneath its walls is, as has been said, the only fountain of fresh water which gushes from the soil for many miles around, and

Major Conder had already suggested the same identification (" Memoirs of the Survey of Western Palestine," iii. p. 261).