372 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



A STUDY OF BEITISH GENIUS. . 



By HAVELOCK ELLIS. 



1. INTRODUCTORY. 



UNTIL now it has not been possible to obtain any comprehensive 

 view of the men and women who have chiefly built up English 

 civilization. It has not, therefore, been possible to study their personal 

 characteristics as a group. The sixty-three volumes of the 'Dictionary 

 of National Biography/ of which the last has been lately issued, have 

 for the first time enabled us to construct an authoritative and well- 

 balanced scheme of the persons of illustrious genius, in every depart- 

 ment, who have appeared in the British Isles from the beginning of 

 history down to the end of the nineteenth century; and, with a certain 

 amount of labor, it enables us to sum up their main traits. It has 

 seemed to me worth while — both for the sake of ascertaining the 

 composition of those elements of intellectual ability which Great 

 Britain has contributed to the world, and also as a study of the nature 

 of genius generally — to utilize the 'Dictionary' to work out these results. 

 I propose to present here some of the main conclusions which emerge 

 from such a study. 



The 'Dictionary' contains some record — from a few lines to several 

 dozen pages — of some thirty thousand persons. Now, this is an imprac- 

 ticable and undesirable number to deal with — impracticable because, 

 regarding a large proportion of these persons, very little is here recorded 

 or is even known; undesirable because it must be admitted that the 

 majority, though persons of a certain note in their own day or their 

 own circle, cannot be said to have made any remarkable contribution 

 to civilization or to have displayed any very transcendent degree of 

 native ability. My first task, therefore, was to ascertain a principle 

 of selection in accordance with which the persons of relatively 

 less distinguished ability and achievement might be eliminated. 

 At the outset one class of individuals, it was fairly obvious, should 

 be omitted altogether in the construction of any group in which the 

 qualities of native intellectual ability are essential — I mean royalty, 

 and members of the royal family, as well as the hereditary nobility. 

 Those eminent persons, the sons of commoners, who have founded 

 noble families, are, of course, not excluded by this rule, according to 

 which any eminent person whose father, at the time of his birth, had 

 attained the rank of baronet or any higher rank, is necessarily excluded 

 from my list. Certainly the son of a king or a peer may possess a 



