No attempt is made in this book to deal with the transmission of
ability of the very highest order, as the data in hand do not furnish
the required material, nor will the conclusions be re-examined at
length that I published many years ago in "Hereditary Genius." Still,
some explanation is desirable to show the complexity of the
conditions that are concerned with the hereditary transmission of the
highest ability, which, for the moment, will be considered as the
same thing as the highest fame.
It has often been remarked that the men who have attained pinnacles
of celebrity failed to leave worthy successors, if any. Many
concurrent causes aid in producing this result. An obvious one is
that such persons are apt to be so immersed in their pursuit, and so
wedded to it, that they do not care to be distracted by a wife.
Another is the probable connection between severe mental strain and
fertility. Women who study hard have, as a class--at least, according
to observant caricaturists--fewer of the more obvious feminine
characteristics; but whether this should be considered a cause or a
consequence, or both, it is difficult to say. A third, and I think
the most important, reason why the children of very distinguished
persons fall sometimes lamentably short of their parents in ability
is that the highest order of mind results from a fortunate mixture of
incongruous constituents, and not of such as naturally harmonize.
Those constituents are _negatively_ correlated, and therefore the
compound is unstable in heredity. This is eminently the case in the
typical artistic temperament, which certainly harmonizes with
Bohemianism and passion, and is opposed to the useful qualities of
regularity, foresight, and level common sense. Where these and
certain other incongruous faculties go together in well-adjusted
proportions, they are capable of achieving the highest success; but
their heritage is most unlikely to be transmitted in its entirety,
and ill-balanced compounds of the same constituents are usually of
little avail, and sometimes extraordinarily bad. A fourth reason is
that the highest imaginative power is dangerously near lunacy. If
one of the sanest of poets, Wordsworth, had, as he said, not
unfrequently to exert strength, as by shaking a gate-post, to gain
assurance that the world around him was a reality, his mind could not
at those times have been wholly sane. Sanity is difficult to define,
except negatively; but, even though we may be convinced of the truths
of the mystic, that nothing is what it seems to be, the
above-mentioned conduct suggests temporary insanity. It is sufficient
to conclude, as any Philistine would, that whoever has to shake a
gate-post to convince himself that it is not a vision is dangerously
near madness. Mad people do such things; those who carry on the work
of the world as useful and law-abiding citizens do not. I may add
that I myself had the privilege of hearing at first hand the
narrator's own account of this incident, which was much emphasized by
his gestures and tones. Wordsworth's unexpected sally was in reply to
a timid question by the late Professor Bonamy Price, then a young
man, concerning the exact meaning of the lines in his famous "Ode to
Immortality," "not for these I raise the song of praise; but for
those obstinate _questionings of sense and outward things_," etc.
I cannot speak from the present returns, but only from my own private
knowledge of the somewhat abnormal frequency with which eccentricity,
or other mental unsoundness, occurs in the families of very able
scientific men. Lombroso, as is well known, strongly asserted the
truth of this fact, but more strongly, as it seems to myself, than
the evidence warrants.
It is, therefore, not in the highest examples of human genius that
heredity can be most profitably studied, men of high, but not of the
highest, ability being more suitable. The only objection to their use
is that their names are, for the most part, unfamiliar to the public.
The vastness of the social world is very imperfectly grasped by its
several members, the large majority of the numerous persons who have
been eminent above their far more numerous fellows, each in his own
special department, being unknown to the generality. The merits of
such men can be justly appreciated only by reference to records of
their achievements. Let no reader be so conceited as to believe his
present ignorance of a particular person to be a proof that the
person in question does not merit the title of noteworthy.
I said what I have to say about the modern use of the word "genius"
in the preface to the second edition of my "Hereditary Genius." It
has only latterly lost its old and usual meaning, which is preserved
in the term of an "ingenious" artisan, and has come to be applied to
something akin to inspiration. This simply means, as I suppose,
though some may think differently, that the powers of unconscious
work possessed by the brain are abnormally developed in them. The
heredity of these powers has not, I believe, been as yet especially
studied. It is strange that more attention has not been given until
recently to unconscious brain-work, because it is by far the most
potent factor in mental operations. Few people, when in rapid
conversation, have the slightest idea of the particular form which a
sentence will assume into which they have hurriedly plunged, yet
through the guidance of unconscious cerebration it develops itself
grammatically and harmoniously. I write on good authority in
asserting that the best speaking and writing is that which seems to
flow automatically shaped out of a full mind.