Heredity, Variation and Genius 65 



and the chances of such a lucky concurrence of 

 unknown and widely dispersed factors are incal- 

 culable. Here, if anywhere, is a long chapter of 

 accidents and a very short chapter of knowledge. 

 But to think of the rarity of logical thought and 

 feeling in mortal minds ! As rare usually as sane 

 and sage imagination. Not knowing how it 

 comes to pass, knowing only that there is no 

 individual merit in the matter, they nevertheless 

 laud and admire genius as they do other qualities, 

 like beauty, which cannot be acquired. Does the 

 deeper logic of feeling then silently teach that 

 it is a happy fulfilment of cosmic purpose, to be 

 openly excused or silently condoned even when 

 it makes its own morality ? If genius does great 

 work the gratitude of a world which gets the 

 abiding benefit of it may allow the morality of 

 doings to pass away with the passing of individual 

 relations. In no case, we may be sure, will 

 nature fail in its equilibrating processes of being 

 and becoming, of doing and undoing, to work 

 moral and immoral material alike to its good. 

 However that be, certain it is that two germs 

 coming together in the chances of human com- 

 position may, like two chemical substances, be 

 fitted to combine well or ill, or unfitted to com- 

 bine at all — on the one hand may be so com- 

 pletely wanting in affinities as to be sterile, or on 

 the other hand may have such apt affinities as to 

 make the fine composition of genius ; or, again — 

 a noteworthy fact — may unluckily have such 



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