64 Heredity^ Variation and Genius 



were to the past first beginnings of life ; for then, 

 as now, the stronger most likely fed on the 

 weaker or crushed it out of life, leaving a gap 

 in the development of life which experiment 

 cannot yet fill ; and that the individual who, 

 emerging out of the common ruck, rises to 

 eminence owes his distinction largely to the 

 more favourable surroundings in which fortune 

 has placed him. How poor a chance has many 

 a tender and tentative variation against a hard, 

 narrow and fixed environment ! That is the 

 frequent pity of it. Without doubt it would be 

 quite easy to pick half a dozen persons at random 

 out of a company of skilled mechanics, or for that 

 matter out of an assembly of village ploughmen, 

 whose heads and features denote greater natural 

 capacity, although never developed in them, than 

 could be found in the same number of judges or 

 on a whole bench of bishops ; dignitaries not 

 always raised to eminence for the eminent pos- 

 session of superior abilities. 



Having regard to the complexity of composition 

 of the human germ, its innumerable constituent 

 elements and the many possible atomic groupings 

 or systems in the molecules, what need to wonder 

 that genius is occasionally born of an ordinary 

 stock or that a genius breeds only an ordinary 

 product ? The extraordinary composition evi- 

 dently requires the concentration in one person 

 of good qualities which have been separately 

 possessed by different branches of two stocks ; 



