GENIUS AND HEREDITY. 195 



ture examination, he does not believe that there is any special heredity 

 for a particular science, but only admits a transmission of the element- 

 ary faculties in a condition of harmony and vigor agreeable to a sound 

 mind. This precious heritage may be applied in several very differ- 

 ent ways. A person who has received from his parents a certain de- 

 gree and a favorable combination of the faculties of attention, memory, 

 judgment, and will, is not destined to be condemned by a kind of fatal 

 heritage to any special kind of work. Generally, a reflexive choice, or 

 the rule of circumstances, rather than a special heredity, determines 

 the use that is made of these faculties ; its particular direction is 

 decided by the medium and the family ; and the success of the 

 effort is determined by the energetic application of the will. A res- 

 ervation should doubtless be made in the case of a determined taste 

 for a certain career imposing itself upon a young man when he enters 

 into life ; but the facts that such tastes and inclinations are often 

 opposed to paternal habits, and that they may be very different as 

 between brothers, are proofs that they are not hereditary ; they are 

 often the products of an active imagination called forth by certain 

 attractions, which it has forged for itself, or of notions suggested by 

 some conversation or some entertaining lecture. Much room, then, 

 is left for circumstances and liberty in the employment of the facul- 

 ties which one has received. " The man endowed with marked traits 

 of perseverance, attention, and judgment, with no considerable defect 

 in his other faculties, will become a jurist, historian, scholar, chemist, 

 geologist, or physician, according as his will is influenced by a host of 

 circumstances. In each of these occupations he will advance in pro- 

 portion to his strength, his zeal, and the concentration of his energy 

 upon a single specialty. I have little faith in the necessity of innate 

 and imperious vocations for particular objects. This is not to deny 

 the influence of heredity, but to reduce it to something very general, 

 compatible with the liberty of the individual, and susceptible of being 

 inclined or modified according to ulterior influences, the action of 

 which increases as the child becomes a man." Moreover, even when 

 mental heredity seems to have been effectual, it may be regarded as 

 working in the line of the grand categories of faculties, rather than of 

 special faculties. Thus, it is not uncommon to find two brothers, or 

 father and son, celebrated, one in the natural sciences, the other in his- 

 torical and social sciences : as, for instance, the two Humboldts ; Oersted 

 and his brother the jurist ; Hugo de Mohl, the botanist, and his brother 

 Jules de Mohl, the Orientalist ; Madame Necker, daughter of the ge- 

 ologist De Saussure ; Ampere, scholar and literary maD, son of a physi- 

 cist. If there were a special heredity guiding to a particular science, 

 these examples would be inexplicable, while they are quite natural 

 under the supposition of a transmission of general faculties applicable 

 to all sciences having analogous methods. Translated for the Popular 

 Science Monthly from the Revue des Deux Mondes. 



