Heredity, Variation and Genius 67 



and the liability to overthrow greater when, as is 

 often the case, the superior sensibility is that of 

 the one-sided eccentric genius whose ill-balanced 

 mental structure is the disproportionate growth 

 of a single mental facet, not a sound, proportioned 

 and stable whole. 



Notwithstanding that the occurrence of genius 

 in a family is not predictable, yet one may justly 

 assume a good level of normal ability dispersed at 

 random among the persons of the ancestral stock, 

 although not hitherto educed particularly by 

 favourable circumstances. The happy conjunc- 

 tion of qualities which has taken effect in the 

 favoured individual could not otherwise well 

 happen. That it is not transmitted to offspring 

 is not surprising in view of the extraordinary con- 

 currence of complementary qualities necessary to 

 its production, of its frequent instability when not 

 a complete and stable whole, and of the improba- 

 bility that a similar goodly composition of com- 

 plexities should be hit upon in the intermingling 

 agitations of subsequent germinal unions. Not 

 wholly unwarranted was the old saying, for it was 

 the shrewd inference of common observation, that 

 giants in mind, like giants in body, are commonly 

 infertile. Nature, mindful of the species, careless 

 of the single life, seems bent on a constant rever- 

 sion to the average. What may perchance 

 happen is that like as in families a remarkable 

 reversion to the features and character of a par- 

 ticular ancestor occurs sometimes, so in a family 



