IDIOSYNCRASY. 4 oi 



occasional convergence which will give us either the old popular-song- 

 writers, or Burns himself, or on a slightly lower level such a woman 

 as Janet Hamilton ? Again, the case of Dickens looks at first sight 

 somewhat more difficult ; but then one may remember that, as far as 

 general mental power went, Dickens was nowhere. He was a pure 

 artist in a special and very restricted line ; he possessed a peculiar 

 faculty for describing queer and original people in a queer and origi- 

 nal way. Doubtless this faculty was in him so fully developed that 

 it rose to the rank of genius in its own line ; but the line was by no 

 means an exalted one. In such a case, who can say what quaint little 

 combinations of ordinary elements went to make up the power that 

 amused and delighted us so much ? Are there not thousands of 

 people in our midst who possess just the same faculty in a less de- 

 gree people who, without depth or brilliancy in other respects, can 

 raise a laugh, by their clever caricatures of the habits and conversa- 

 tion of their friends ? Throw in the merest side-twist of comical ex- 

 aggeration and a grain of plot-forming capacity into such a raconteur, 

 and you get the framework for the genius of Dickens. Of genius of 

 that sort, indeed, more than of any other, one may fairly say that it 

 differs only by a hair's breadth from humorous mediocrity. It is 

 otherwise, I believe, with really deep philosophical or scientific power. 

 Grasp, insight, luminousness, breadth ; the capacity for dealing with 

 the abstract ideas of mathematics, of logic, of metaphysics ; the power 

 of seeing or formulating great generalizations these things, if I read 

 the lives of thinkers aright, come only from a convergence of able and 

 powerful stocks. It takes three generations, they say, to make a gen- 

 tleman ; surely it takes many generations of trained intelligence on 

 both sides to make a philosopher. 



At the same time, it must be remembered that a convergence even 

 of two mediocre strains may produce comparatively high results, pro- 

 vided the endowments of the two strains be complementary or supple- 

 mentary to one another. To this cause may perhaps be attributed the 

 general high level of intelligence displayed by half-breeds even half- 

 breeds with a lower race. I have already alluded to the intellectual 

 superiority of mulattoes, a large proportion of whom appear to me 

 (and to some other observers) considerably above the average of either 

 Europeans or negroes. And this is not surprising when we recollect 

 that the negro brain, though relatively inferior, must almost neces- 

 sarily be highly cultivated in some particular directions, where the 

 European brain is comparatively deficient. If, then, a mulatto child 

 inherits in fair degrees the quick perceptive faculties and intuitions of 

 his mother, and the higher reasoning faculties and forethought of his 

 father, he is likely on the average to be better equipped in inherited 

 potentialities than either.* Similarly, one may take it for granted 



* Darwin has somewhere noted that half-breeds with lower races appear to be on the 

 whole often morally inferior to either parent race ; and he has suggested that this inferiority 

 tol. xxiv. 26 



