Heredity, Variation and Genius jj- 



The motive forces of the great human propul- 

 sions, religious, reformative, revolutionary, spring 

 not from reason but from feeling, whose current 

 then sweeps resentful reason along, unwilling and 

 vainly resisting at first but submissive afterwards, 

 painfully to make its rational accommodations. 

 Borne along by the stream, individuals move with 

 it without noticing how fast it moves or even that 

 it moves, perhaps imagining all the while that it is 

 the bank which moves. Think how quickly and 

 quietly a cause apparently weak and hopeless in 

 face of a dense host of opposing reasons swells and 

 swells in volume and flows irresistibly on, the hostile 

 forces silently melting away when the underlying 

 feeling is changed. Think again how impotent 

 are the counsels of reason to check the torrent of 

 folly when a vast wave of feeling surges through 

 a crowd of persons or a whole people ; no more 

 potent then to stay the mad rush than if addressed 

 to the surge of a raging sea. Were men the pre- 

 dominantly rational creatures they pride them- 

 selves on being they might, looking back on the 

 generations of them which have been and the 

 sore evils done to one another and to other living 

 creatures in their painful travail of development 

 through the agonies of the ages, have long since 

 resolved to leave off the propagation of their 

 species. Far from picturing such an event, so 

 great is their self-esteem that they eagerly crave 

 knowledge rather than pray for oblivion of a past 

 which has been what it has been ; nay, would, if 



