1875.) Heredity. 165 
“‘a clever painter.” To the name of Jeremy Bentham, 
legist and moralist, the author appends—‘ His brother, 
General Samuel Bentham, a distinguished officer. His 
nephew, George, an eminent botanist, president of the 
Linnean Society.” 
Of course this view renders it very easy to find evidence 
of hereditary genius. Our own observations lead us, how- 
ever, to the antagonistic opinion—the speciality of genius. 
To us it appears that men of universal powers—‘‘ admirable 
Crichtons,” who adorn whatsoever they touch—are of all 
psychological phenomena the rarest. —The man who in one 
faculty rises high above the average of his fellows is very 
likely, in accordance with the great law of compensation, to 
fall below them in others. The mind, or the brain, if the 
latter term be preferred, has its idiosyncrasies no less than 
the stomach. To take a striking instance :—Towards the 
beginning of the present century, at a German educational 
establishment of the old type, where pupils were gauged 
solely according to their proficiency in classics, there was a 
boy who was the acknowledged dunce of the school. Sneered 
at by his companions, and denounced by the masters as little 
better than an idiot, his declaration that he intended to 
become a chemist was received with a general outburst of 
contemptuous laughter. But the boy knew his own spe- 
ciality. His success in chemistry was yet more decided than 
his failure in classics, and when he passed away from our 
midst he left the name of Justus von Liebig, second to none 
in the annals of Science. There are, of course, groups of 
sciences or of studies within which the choice of an aspirant 
may be determined by what is commonly called accident. 
Thus a great chemist, doubtless, if placed under slightly 
different influences, might have reached equal distinétion as 
a physicist. The same powers which render a man eminent 
in botany would have done him equal service in zoology, 
paleontology, or physiology. But to maintain that a distin- 
guished cultivator of any of the above sciences could there- 
fore, if he liked, have attained corresponding success as a 
barrister, a preacher, or a parliamentary orator, seems to us 
hazardous in the extreme. In these latter spheres eminence 
absolutely requires great power of expression, and the faculty 
which is aptly—though clumsily—called ready-wittedness. 
Now a man of science may be very poor in expression and 
very slow in thought, provided only that he thinks profoundly 
and originally. If some evil star had placed Henry Caven- 
dish in the bar, the pulpit, or, we may add, at the merchant’s 
desk, would he not have made a most deplorable figure ? 
