192 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tile mediums ! What an important part, on the other hand, may have 

 been played in the expansion of superior minds in certain favored 

 families, by the influence of examples of the most delicate methods of 

 investigation in questions of the natural sciences, by habituation to 

 rigorous methods in the exact sciences ! Who could in such cases sep- 

 arate what, in the working of such different influences, is attributable 

 to education and what to heredity ? 



We must first leave out of the consideration genius, properly so 

 called, which can not be included in any determinate category. At 

 this point we meet the error which has vitiated Mr. Galton's whole 

 work, and which is curiously illustrated in the title itself of his book, 

 " Hereditary Genius." Genius is of all things not a phenomenon of 

 heredity. It is precisely in what is extraordinary and exceptional in it 

 — that is, in its essential quality — that genius escapes all our formulas. 

 It is pre-eminently the abnormal phenomenon, the one that we can not 

 reduce to its elements, or put into a classification, an irreducible form- 

 ula, the resolution of which recognizes no law within the compass of 

 human knowledge. At this point, certainly, Mr. Galton's lists betray 

 their poverty ; and he tries in vain to connect the lines of artists and 

 scientific men with the illustrious genius who all at once bursts out 

 from among them. Even in the musical family of the Bachs, which 

 was distinguished for eight generations and through two centuries, we 

 may count up all the examples of the special musical talent which 

 appeared again and again in each generation ; we may review all those 

 gifted persons, the organists, the choir-singers, the choir-leaders, the 

 city musicians, whether they be ancestors, sons, or grandsons ; but we 

 can find only one Sebastian Bach. Whence came that particular 

 impulsion, that soaring force, that carried him to the very summit of 

 inspiration ? Why is it that he alone of the whole family could com- 

 pose that marvelous series of preludes, fugues, and oratorios which 

 stand as isolated monuments in the history of the great art ? Why 

 were none of the others like him ? Mr. Galton's tables do not give us 

 the key to this mystery ; they simply reveal a transmission of the 

 musical faculty, a community of aptitudes among the members of this 

 family. But that which was not common to him with the others, that 

 which made Sebastian Bach, is the thing we want explained, and it 

 is precisely this that heredity does not explain. The aptitudes were 

 transmitted like a patrimony, but the grand phenomenon of genius 

 was the property of only one, and was produced but once. It is, then, 

 outside of heredity, for it is unique. The same thoughts might be 

 applied to Beethoven, and with still more force, for the only musical 

 examples in his line were those of his father and grandfather, chapel- 

 masters. Similar instances are abundant. We might cite, among the 

 painters, Raphael, whose father, and Titian, whose sons and brother, 

 were respectable but not illustrious artists. Among great men of sci- 

 ence what real relation can exist, in the order of skill and genius, be- 



