We know very well that some qualities may make either for good or bad.
Strength, ability, courage, emulation, may go to the making of a great
hero, or a great criminal..
If a man's bent, or teaching, be good, he will do better, if it be
evil he will do worse by reason of his talents, his daring, or his
resolution.
Dirt has been defined as "matter in the wrong place": badness might
be often defined as goodness misapplied. Courage ill-directed is
foolhardiness; caution in excess is cowardice; firmness overstrained is
obstinacy.
Many of our inherited qualities are what we call "potentialities": they
are "possibilities," capabilities, strong, or potential for good or
evil.
Love of praise may drive a man to seek fame as a philanthropist, a
tyrant, a discoverer, or a train-robber.
Love of adventure and love of fame had as much to do with the exploits
of Gaude Duval and Morgan, the buccaneer, as with those of Drake or
Clive.
Nelson was as keen for fame as Buonaparte: but the Englishman loved his
country; the Corsican himself.
Doubtless Torquemada had as much religious zeal as St. Francis; but the
one breathed curses, the other blessings.
Pugnacity is good when used against tyranny or wrong; it is bad when
used against liberty or right.
Men of brilliant parts have failed for lack of industry or judgment. Men
of noble qualities have gone to ruin because of some inborn weakness,
or bias towards vice. Our minds "are of a mingled yarn, good and ill
together." Many of life's most tragic human failures have been "sweet
bells jangled out of tune and harsh." Ophelia was not the first woman,
nor the last by many millions, to perish through reaching for flowers
that grow aslant the brook. If virtue is often cowardice, frailty is
often love; and the words of Laertes to the "churlish priest" might
frequently be spoken for some poor "Bottom Dog" in reproach of the
unjust censure of a Pharisee: "a ministering angel shall my sister be,
when thou liest howling."
We must remember, then, that the happiness or unhappiness of our nature
depends not so much upon any special quality as upon the general balance
of the whole.
Poor Oscar Wilde had many fine qualities, but his egotism, his vicious
taint, and, perhaps, his unfortunate surroundings, drove him to
shipwreck, with all his golden talents aboard. Every day noble ships
run upon the rocks; every day brave pennons go down in the press of the
battle, and are trampled in the blood and dust; every day lackeys ride
in triumph, and princes slave on the galleys; every day the sweet buds
go to the swine-trough, and the gay and fair young children to shame or
the jail.
Some fall through loving too much, others through loving not at all.
Some are shattered by a single fault, like a ruby cup with one flaw in
its radiant heart. Some are twisted out of all hope from birth, like one
of Omar's pots, which the potter moulded awry. Some seeds of innocent
lilies, or roses of loveliness, or passion flowers divine, are scattered
upon the rocks, or blown by harsh winds out to sea.
Do you know Thomas Carlyle's burning words concerning these tragic
fates?
Cholera doctors, hired to dive into black dens of infection and despair,
they, rushing about all day, from lane to lane, with their life in their
hand, are found to do their function; which is a much more rugged one
than Howard's. O, what say we, Cholera Doctors? Ragged losels, gathered
by beat of drum from the over-crowded streets of cities, and drilled a
little, and dressed in red, do not they stand fire in an uncensurable
manner; and handsomely give their life, if needful, at the rate of a
shilling per day? Human virtue, if we went down to the roots of it, is
not so rare. The materials of human virtue are everywhere abundant as
the light of the sun: raw materials--O woe, and loss, and scandal thrice
and three-fold, that they so seldom are elaborated, and built into a
result. That they lie yet unelaborated and stagnant in the souls of
widespread dreary millions, fermenting, festering; and issue at last as
energetic vice instead of strong practical virtue! A Mrs. Manning "dying
game"--alas, is not that the foiled potentiality of a kind of heroine
too? Not a heroic Judith, not a mother of Gracchi now, but a hideous
murderess, fit to be mother of hyenas! To such extent can potentialities
be foiled.
Let us bear in mind, then, that a man's powers, like the powers of a
state, will work for good or for evil, as they are ill or well governed.
And the government of human powers and desires depends partly upon
heredity, and largely upon environment, of which in its due place.
How Does Heredity Make Genius?
I shall not weary the reader with proofs of heredity. It would be a
waste of words to quote pages of Darwin, Spencer, Weissmann, and Galton
for the sake of proving the obvious. Our own observation and common
sense will convince us that our traits and qualities of body and mind
are inherited.
We know that rabbits do not breed kittens, nor eagles geese, nor apples
oranges, nor negroes whites. We know that in all cases where the breed
is pure the descent is pure; and we understand that where a black
sheep is born into a white flock, or a fair child is born of dark
fore-parents, the "sport," as it is called, is due to atavism, or
breeding back. Somewhere, near or far, the breed has been "crossed."
But there is one question that has caused a good deal of doubt and
perplexity, and, as the answer to that question is not obvious, we will
consider it here.
A "sport" is "an individual departure from a type." A sport is a "freak
of nature." A genius is a "sport"; and the question we are to answer
here is:
How does heredity account for genius?
To make the matter quite clear, and to meet all doubts, we will split
our question into two: