The question asked depends upon the proposition that achievement is the sole test of capacity or, in other words, that achievement must necessarily follow capacity, and this is a proposition by no means free from doubt. It is plain that a desire to achieve is a condition precedent to achievement but it is equally plain that there may well be ability without ambition. The question why civilisation has not followed apparent capacity may with equal propriety be asked about races whose mental abilities have never been doubted. Consider, for instance, two such widely separated races as the Red Indians of our own times and the Northmen who roamed over the seas in the days of Alfred the Great. The North American Indians, though they achieved no civilisation to be compared with the cultures of Mexico and Peru, yet conserved a very high degree of initiative in other directions. According to competent observers, these people have shown a capacity for wiliness and a power of divination of the obscured workings of nature and of the human mind which have never been surpassed elsewhere. That the high moral and mental status of these people is fully recognised by their European successors is proved by the fact that many Americans in high stations to-day actually boast of having in their veins the blood of the North American Indian. And yet these highly gifted people had not when Columbus discovered America attained to the knowledge of iron. Despite the advantages of a most favourable environment and a stimulating climate, the Red Indians were in point of mechanical development behind the earliest Bantu; they had no iron implements, no tillage and no settled or permanent abodes, and whatever may have been the cause of their lack of development, the fact remains that there was no achievement despite undeniable capacity. The early Scandinavians who lived in a state of barbarism ages before and long after Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, Greece and Rome developed their various civilisations, furnish another illustration of the fact that there may well be capacity without accomplishment, for no one can doubt the keenness of the minds of these people who have advanced to the front ranks of human endeavour. These rude sea-rovers must have lived in what is generally supposed to have been a most stimulating climate during long ages while other races in Southern Europe and in Asia built up mighty civilisations within environments that seem to have been far less incitative of progress.