Moral Consequences of Heredity. 349 



famous salon where so many men of note were wont to assemble, 

 initiated by them into the problems of science and philosophy, 

 refined by their conversation : in such case the opponents of 

 heredity could not fail to see in his genius the product of his edu- 

 cation. The lives of most great men show that the influence of 

 education on them was in some instances of no moment at all, in 

 others injurious, generally trifling. If we take great captains, thai 

 is to say, the men whose entrance into life is most easily fixed 

 because it is the most brilliant, we find Alexander entering on 

 his career as a conqueror at the age of twenty; Scipio Africanus 

 (the elder) at twenty-four, Charlemagne at thirty, Charles XII. at 

 eighteen, Prince Eugene commanding the Austrian army at twenty- 

 five, Buonaparte the army of Italy at twenty-six, etc. And the 

 same precocity in many thinkers, artists, inventors, and men of 

 science, shows how small a thing education is, compared with 

 spontaneity. 



We restrict education, as we think, within its just limits, when 

 we say that its power is never absolute and that it exerts no effica- 

 cious action except upon mediocre natures. Suppose the various 

 human intelligences to be so graduated as to form a great linear 

 series, rising from idiocy, the bottom of the scale, to genius, which 

 is at the top. The influence of education is at its minimum at 

 the two ends of the series. On the idiot it has hardly any effect : 

 unheard of exertions and prodigies of patience and ingenuity often 

 produce only insignificant and transient results. But as we rise 

 towards the middle degrees this influence grows greater. It 

 attains its maximum in average minds, which, being neither good 

 nor bad, are much what chance makes them ; but as we ascend to 

 the higher forms of intelligence we see it again decrease, and as 

 we come nearer to the highest order oi genius it tends towards its 

 minimum. 



So variable is the influence of education that we may doubt 

 whether it is ever absolute. It is needless to cite facts from his- 

 tory, which tells only of men of eminence or distinction we need 

 only appeal to every-day experience. It is not rare to find 

 children sceptical in religious families, or religious in sceptical 

 families ; debauched men amid good examples, or ambitious men 

 in a family of retiring, peaceable disposition. Yet we are speaking 



