340 THE RECIPE FOR GENIUS 



The ultimate recipe for genius, then, would appear to 

 be somewhat after this fashion. Take a number of good, 

 strong, powerful stocks, mentally or physically, endowed 

 with something more than the average amount of energy 

 and application. Let them be as varied as possible in 

 characteristics ; and, so far as convenient, try to include 

 among them a considerable small-change of races, disposi. 

 tions, professions, and temperaments. Mix, by marriage, 

 to the proper consistency ; educate the offspring, especially 

 by circumstances and environment, as broadly, freely, and 

 diversely as you can ; let them all intermarry again with 

 other similarly produced, but personally unlike, idiosyn- 

 crasies ; and watch the result to find your genius in the fourth 

 or fifth generation. If the experiment has been properly 

 performed, and all the conditions have been decently favour- 

 able, you will get among the resultant five hundred persons 

 a considerable sprinkling of average fools, a fair proportion 

 of modest mediocrities, a small number of able people, and 

 (in case you are exceptionally lucky and have shuffled your 

 cards very carefully) perhaps among them all a single 

 genius. But most probably the genius will have died 

 young of scarlet fever, or missed fire through some tiny 

 defect of internal brain structure. Nature herself is trying 

 this experiment unaided every day all around us, and, though 

 she makes a great many misses, occasionally she makes a 

 stray hit and then we get a Shakespeare or a Grimaldi. 



' But you haven't proved all this : you have only sug- 

 gested it.' Does one prove a thesis of deep-reaching 

 importance in a ten-page essay ? And if one proved it in 

 a big book, with classified examples and detailed genea- 

 logies of all the geniuses, would anybody on earth except 

 Mr. Francis Galton ever take the trouble to read it ? 



