gat

altered the path of sexual selection, focused the attention of man as a lover upon woman’s face
and breasts, and changed our ideal of beauty from the steatopygous Hottentot to the modern
European, from the Venus of Brassenpouy to the Venus of Milo."
All evolution might be in jeopardy if there were no more pretty faces to look at, this was the
thesis. Today, there is an aura of the absurd to these assertions, but it would be well to reflect on
the institutional world that emerged from the other end of this same forge, for it is the new moral
world you and I live in, a fully scientized and organized society, managed by the best
people—people who prefer to remain out of sight of the hoi polloi, segregated in their own in
walled villages and other redoubts.
5 Not quite as sinister as it sounds. Virtually all distinguished English names bear a family
relationship toone another; its privileged classes, like those of other nations like Germany (or
Japan) constitute a protected breeding stock in which intermarriage is not just common, but de
rigeur, one might say with only a trace of mischief. Indeed, in a genealogy text whose title I’ve
long forgotten, I learned from the author (alas forgotten, too) that two thirds of all American
presidents stood in an easily traceable family relationship to one another. See Chapter Twelve for
more enlightenment on this score. Or simply ponder the meaning of this: After the 2004
presidential nominations have been decided, if Senator Kerry of Massachusetts is the Democratic
nominee and George W. Bush the Republican, then five presidential terms in a row will have been
served by men with a Yale degree when the eventual victor’s term is complete! And three if those
terms will have featured a president who was a member, while at Yale, of a tiny secret society,
Skull & Bones, which only accepts fifteen members a year. On this score, either Bush or Kerry
will serve equally well as both are Yale graduates and both Skull & Bones initiates.
The Passing Of The Great Race
No discussion of the dreamlike years of overt American scientific racism and schooling would be
complete without a nod to the ghost of Madison Grant, who has mysteriously vanished from the
pages of some standard biographical references, though they still carry his cousins, Grant the
portrait painter and Grant the educator. No matter, I shall tell you about him. If you have ever
been to the Bronx Zoo 6 you have been a guest of Mr. Grant’s beneficent imagination, for he was
its founder and the founder of its parent, the New York Zoological Society. The Bronx Zoo, its
fame and good works inspire worldwide gratitude. Grant’s legacy to us, as free libraries were
Carnegie’s.
Grant was a lifelong bachelor, a childless man. Like many people associated with public schooling
on a policy level, Grant came from a patrician family which had graced society from colonial days.
No Grant ever held a menial job. Madison Grant was considered a leading scientific naturalist of
his time. His monographs on the Rocky Mountain goat, the moose, and the caribou are little
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