EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



vergence of sociological pressures " in the Eng- 

 land of 1564 that a " W. Shakespeare, with all 

 his mental peculiarities," happened to be born 

 at Stratford-on-Avon, in that year. In some 

 of those omitted sentences of the passage cited 

 which Dr. James represents by dots, Mr. Spen- 

 cer indicates very clearly what he means. He 

 reminds us that by no possibility could a New- 

 ton be born of Hottentot parents, or an Aris- 

 totle " come from a father and mother with facial 

 angles of fifty degrees ; " and further that, even 

 supposing it possible for a Watt to be born in 

 a tribe unacquainted with the use of iron, his 

 inventive genius would be likely to effect but 

 little. Dr. James himself alleges parallel truths : 

 as that after a Voltaire you cannot have a Peter 

 the Hermit, or that under the social conditions 

 of the tenth century a John Stuart Mill would 

 have been impossible. 



Now the bearing of these considerations upon 

 the question which Mr. Spencer is discussing is 

 obvious. If it be true that a genius of a given 

 kind can appear under certain social conditions, 

 and not under others, as a Newton among civi- 

 lized Englishmen, but not among Hottentots ; 

 or if it be true that a given genius can work out 

 its results under certain social conditions, and 

 not under others, as a Mill in the nineteenth 

 century, but not in the tenth ; then it follows 

 that in order to understand the course of history 

 174 



