THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 525 



or of any of the men who have single handed and alone set guide- 

 posts to history, and given the world large portions of its heritage 

 of truth. What can set limit to the possible variations of fruit- 

 ful intellectual power ? Rare such variations that is their law : 

 the greater the variation, the more rare ! But so is genius : the 

 greater, the more rare. And as to the rat with the human hand, 

 he would not be left to starve and decay in his hole ; he would 

 be put in alcohol when he died, and kept in a museum ! And the 

 lesson which he would teach to the wise biologist would be that 

 here, in this rat, Nature had shown her genius by discounting in 

 advance the slow processes of evolution. 



It is indeed the force of such considerations as these which has 

 led to many justifications of the position that the genius is quite 

 out of connection with the social movement of his time. Prof. 

 William James, for instance, in a most vivid and interesting 

 article in the Atlantic Monthly, October, 1888, brings out the 

 implications of the doctrine of variations very clearly, and bases 

 upon it the further position that the causes which enter into the 

 production of variations in the heredity of the individual are 

 altogether physiological, and so represent a complete "cycle," 

 apart from the other " cycle " of causes found in the physical and 

 social environment of the individual. So that the individual 

 brings his variations to his society whether society will or not ; 

 and as to whether there be any harmony between him and his 

 social fellows that is a matter of outcome rather than of expec- 

 tation or theory. 



But this is not tenable, as we have reason to think, from the in- 

 teraction which actually takes place between the two so-called 

 " cycles " of causation. To be sure, the heredity of the individual 

 is a physiological matter, in the sense that the son must inherit 

 from his parents and their ancestors alone. But granted that 

 two certain parents are his parents, we may ask how these two 

 certain parents came to be his parents. How did his father come 

 to marry his mother, and the reverse ? This is distinctly a social 

 question ; and to its solution all the currents of social influence 

 and suggestion contribute. Who is free from social considera- 

 tions in selecting his wife ? Does the coachman have an equal 

 chance to get the heiress, or the blacksmith the clergyman's 

 daughter ? Do we find inroads made in Newport society by the 

 ranchman and the dry-goods clerk ? And are not the inroads 

 which we do find, the inroads made by the dukes and the mar- 

 quises, due to influences which are quite social and psychological ? 

 And, on the other hand, what leads the duke and the marquis to 

 lay their titles at Newport doors, while the ranchman and the 

 dry-goods clerk keep away, but the ability of both these types of 

 suitors to estimate their chances just on social and psychological 



