490 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



practise the industry and thrift and self-denial, etc., which the other systematically 

 does practise, then the latter should enjoy the full benefit of his merits, and the 

 former should suffer all the natural results of his wilful demerits. That if a man 

 will not work, neither shall he eat ; that if he insist on wasting he shall be 

 suffered to want ; and that in general he shall reap as he will persist in sowing ; 

 seems to be both biologically sound and sociologically just. Very obviously, too, 

 it is to the permanent and general interest of the whole Community that the one 

 type shall be encouraged and the other discouraged — and the more so since, on 

 the average, the odds are that the children of each will be brought up to follow 

 their respective parents' desirable or reprehensible procedure. In so far, then, 

 it seems to me that the position of the Individualist is tolerably unassailable and 

 in strict accord with scientific ethics. 



It is when we come to (i b) that the main difficulty arises : and here, if any- 

 where, the Spencerian position can be turned. Consider the case of the men who 

 may make fortunes ranging from comfortable to colossal, not by any exceptional 

 practice of the virtues aforesaid, but by the exercise (in itself a pleasure by the 

 bye) of such inborn genius as that of the inventor and discoverer, the outstanding 

 artist or musical composer, or even very exceptionally, and under very favourable 

 environmental conditions, the poet ' or author — or by the mere possession and 

 exercise of an unusually beautiful musical voice. I would include with such men 

 also the exceptionally skilled surgeon who occasionally makes a moderate fortune, 

 and the subtle and plausible forensic pleader who more frequently and less 

 worthily achieves a larger fortune ; and also, in short, every man who finds a 

 profitable market for the practice of some inborn genius or talent or uncommon 

 natural endowment. 



Now, the plain layman, I think, would very strongly affirm that all these men, 

 just as much as the industrious, etc., men in (i a), should reap the full money- 

 harvest of the exercise of their abilities ; and he would quite correctly remind us 

 that many such men have started life under an initial heavy handicap of poverty 

 or social inferiority, and by sheer force of genius — and, of course, by hard work — 

 have achieved fame and success. Quite correctly, too, he will point out that, as 

 regards the inventors of steam-engines and telegraphs et id omne genus, and as 

 regards the supreme poets and artists and musical composers, any fortunes that 

 they may — occasionally !— have achieved for themselves are only drops in the 

 reservoir of material and aesthetic wealth that they have filled for the benefit of the 

 whole world. Spencerian Individualism, as I understand it, vehemently approves 

 this decision of the plain man, and deduces from biology a complete justification 

 thereof. In a word, what is true of (i a) is held to be equally true of (i b) : but 

 here precisely it is that I join issue, and maintain that deductions from that part 

 of biology dealing with heredity exactly invert the conclusion, and force us to 

 admit that those in (i b) are not entitled to the full harvest of their "merits," or to 

 more than sometimes a very small proportion indeed thereof. 3 If there is one 

 thing most conclusively proved by those inquiries into heredity and genius, of 

 which Francis Galton was the great pioneer, it is that as regards every degree of 

 genius and talent and ability of every sort, Nature — i.e., inborn capacity— counts 

 for everything, and Nurture for nothing. Since, then, not even the man of the 

 greatest genius can claim the very slightest moral merit for his possession of 

 genius — since it is inborn in him, and if not so inborn could not have been 



1 Monetarily, Tennyson did not do so badly. 



2 The key to the kernel of this argument was indicated in a note to p. 96 of 

 my Towards Utopia, in 1894. 



