A STUDY OF BRITISH GENIUS. 



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A STUDY OF BRITISH GEmUS. 



By HAVELOCK ELLIS. 

 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS. 



WE have now examined all those characteristics of the most emi- 

 nent British persons of intellectual ability which the 'Dic- 

 tionary of National Biography' enables us to investigate in a fairly 

 generalized manner. We have found that, excluding the living, at least 

 902 persons (859 men and 43 women) of such preeminent ability have 

 appeared in the British Islands between the fourth and the end of 

 the nineteenth centuries, the century richest in genius being, so far as 

 we can trace, the eighteenth. We have found that, in regard to dis- 

 tribution among the various elements of nationality, England seems to 

 have her fair proportion of eminent persons, Scotland an excess, Ire- 

 land and Wales a deficiency, though Ireland and Wales profit consider- 

 ably among those cases in which there has been intermixture ; the only 

 important foreign strain is derived from France. We have found that, 

 as regards social class, the upper and upper middle classes have been 

 peculiarly rich in genius, that the country and small towns have chiefly 

 yielded notable men, and that of all professions the clergy have pro- 

 duced by far the greatest number of distinguished children. Our in- 

 quiry, further, confirms the views of Galton and others that intellec- 

 tual ability is to some extent hereditary, though it may well be that 

 different kinds of ability are not all equally apt to be transmissible. 

 We have found that persons of genius, like the members of other men- 

 tally abnormal groups, tend to belong to unusually large families, are 

 much oftener youngest children, and still more eldest children, than 

 in any intermediate position, and that, much more frequently than in 

 the case of the ordinary population, they are the offspring of elderly 

 parents. These eminent persons, we have seen, have in a notal)le num- 

 ber of instances showed remarkably feeble health during infancy and 

 childhood (being in many cases the only surviving children of large 

 families) but have tended to become more robust as they grew older, 

 and they have been notably precocious. Though not generally subjected 

 to very strenuous intellectual training, they have usually enjoyed excel- 

 lent opportunities for intellectual development; the majority were at 

 some university; a very large proportion possessed extended opportuni- 

 ties for studvinsT life in foreign lands durins: vouth or earlv manhood. 

 There is a marked tendencv to a celibate life, and marriage when it 



