GENIUS AND HEREDITY. i 9 i 



been judged bad or good, oftener tending to show right or wrong in 

 conduct which had been judged indifferent. 



If moral laws, then, are to be established on a scientific basis, it is 

 essential that conduct at large should be carefully considered ; and not 

 conduct only as it is seen in man, but as it is seen in animals of every 

 grade. Thus and thus only can the evolution of conduct be rightly 

 studied ; by the study of the evolution of conduct only can the scien- 

 tific distinction between right and wrong be recognized ; from and out 

 of this distinction only can moral laws be established for those with 

 whom the authoritative enunciation of such laws has no longer the 

 weight it once had, those who find no other inherent force in moral 

 statutes than they derive as resulting from experience, and who reject 

 as unreasonable all belief in the intuitive recognition of laws of morality. 



We proceed, then, to consider the evolution of conduct in the various 

 types of animal life, from the lowest upward to man. Knowledge. 



-++- 



GENIUS AM) HEREDITY. 



By M. E. CAEO, 



OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. 



IT has been shown by the researches of Galton, Bibot, and others, 

 that a law of heredity exists, and is applicable to our psychological 

 qualities. Without attempting to deny the operation of this law, it is 

 our intention here, believing that its scope has been considerably mag- 

 nified, to endeavor to determine its limits in particular directions. 

 With this object, we shall confine our inquiry to two points : Is it 

 according to a good philosophical method to explain by heredity alone 

 all the most complex, most delicate, and most considerable phenomena 

 of human life, when we can, with at least as much probability, bring 

 in other causes which, though they have been much neglected, are very 

 perceptible and even more directly observable ? And is it true, as is 

 assumed, that all the exceptions to the law of heredity, even in the 

 intellectual and moral order, are only apparent ? We shall speak first 

 of those curious facts concerning intellectual heredity, some of which, 

 and those the most extraordinary ones, can not be accounted for by 

 any assignable cause. Other facts in the category can equally well, 

 perhaps better than by heredity, be explained by reference to the me- 

 dium, to education, to habit, to the moral and intellectual atmosphere 

 m which the child lives, to the force of the influences to which it is sub- 

 ject, and to the examples that are set before it. We acknowledge that 

 the medium can not afford an explanation of genius and can not create 

 superior faculties ; but it furnishes the opportunity for their manifes- 

 tation, and reveals them where they exist. How many noble and high 

 minds have been extinguished by unfavorable cricumstances and hos- 



