INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL HEREDITY ^j 



Charles Darwin, son of Erasmus, died young after having 

 won the gold medal of Edinburgh University for a medi- 

 cal essay. 



Dr. Robert Darwin of Shrewsbury, also a son of Erasmus, 

 an eminent physician. 



Charles Darwin, the illustrious modern naturalist, grandson 

 of Erasmus : one of his sons was second wrangler at 

 Cambridge in 1868, and is a Professor of Mathematics 

 there ; another was second in the Woolwich examina- 

 tion of the same year, while a third is a distinguished 

 teacher of botany at Cambridge. 



M. E. Caro, of the Institute of France, review- 

 ing this part of his work, argues that Galton has 

 not proved genius to be hereditary, but simply 

 that special faculties are transmitted. He says 

 the solitary great men, like Bossuet, Pascal, 

 Byron, Goethe, Dante, Shakespeare, cannot be 

 accounted for either by organic evolution, the in- 

 tellectual medium, or generation. " To this day 

 the great gift of inspiration in science, poetry, 

 and art has not revealed its secret. Those sover- 

 eign minds, precisely by what they possess that 

 is incommunicable, rise high and alone above the 

 flood of generations which precede and follow 

 them, and, by reason of this superior side of their 

 nature, they do not belong to nature. Those 

 exalted originals in mind who tower above man- 

 kind have no fathers and leave no sons in the 



