Heredity, Variation and Genius 59 



that certain ancestral characters contribute noth- 

 ing of these characters to certain offspring. In- 

 stead of a proved law of inheritance we have at 

 best only the general statement of an average 

 resemblance which, true or not, throws no light 

 upon that which we particularly wish to know 

 and would, if known, be practically useful. 



Always it is an aching void of satisfying know- 

 ledge which statistics leave in the mind. To 

 learn that nearly the same number of undirected 

 letters will be posted yearly in a certain city, or 

 that nearly the same average number of murders 

 will be committed in it, is interesting as a piece 

 of curious information showing how limited is 

 the human mechanism and how liable it is to go 

 wrong in the same limited ways — for mankind 

 are not inventive in modes of wrong thinking and 

 doing any more than in their modes of right 

 thinking and doing — but it is no more useful than 

 it would be to learn that on a measured mile of a 

 recently macadanized road there will be an aver- 

 age number of so many sharply shaped stones 

 calculated to puncture the motor traveller's tyres. 

 Could the knowledge be instilled into the stone- 

 breaker's hammer so as to instruct and empower 

 it to break hurtless fragments only matters would 

 be very different. 



Although it might be safe to say, making a 

 broad survey of men as they are, that sound 

 human germs do not contain equal potentialities 

 of development, seeing how differently and some- 



