A STUDY OF BRITISH GENIUS. 595 



A STUDY OF BRITISH GENIUS. 



By HAVELOCK ELLIS. 

 IV. HEREDITY AND PARENTAGE. 



THE heredity of intellectual genius has been very fully discussed, 

 with special reference to eminent persons of British birth, by Mr. 

 Francis Galton.* With, perhaps, even an excess of zeal — for persons of 

 somewhat minor degrees of ability have sometimes been taken into account 

 — Mr. Galton has shown that intellectual ability has frequently tended 

 to run in families. If this hereditary tendency is by no means omnipres- 

 ent, the present data prove conclusively that it is a very real factor. 

 Notwithstanding that the effects of hereditary position have been so 

 far as possible excluded, and that our lists only include persons of pre- 

 eminent ability, distributed over fifteen centuries, it is yet found that 

 among these 902 persons there are 31 groups, of two or three individuals 

 in each group, who are closely related. These groups include 65 per- 

 sons in all. The recognized relationships are father and son, brother 

 and brother, brother and sister, sister and sister, uncle and nephew, aunt 

 and nephew, uncle and niece, grandfather and grandson. Cousinship 

 and more remote relationships also occur, but have not been included.f 

 In nineteen of these groups the ability shown may be said to be of a 

 similar kind; in twelve it may be said to be of different kinds. There 

 are only three cases in which the group consists of three persons: the 

 Bacons, the Kembles, the Wordsworths. It is scarcely necessary to re- 

 mark that in a very large number of cases the preeminent persons in 

 our list were nearly related to other eminent persons who have not 

 reached the degree of distinction entitling them to appear in the list. 

 Of these no note has been taken. 



I have, however, noted every case in which it is stated or implied 

 that one or other, or both, of the parents possessed an unusual amount 

 of intellectual ability, by no means necessarily involving any degree 

 whatever of 'eminence.' These cases are very numerous, and as such 

 ability may often have been displayed in very unobtrusive ways, it must 

 frequently have escaped the attention of the national biographers. In 



*See especially bis 'Hereditary Genius.' 



| It is quite possible, however, that such remote relationships are not without 

 significance. One cannot but be struck by such a fact as the relationship of 

 Shelley through his mother with the lyric poet Southwell, with whom he has ao 

 real an emotional affinity. 



