EVOLUTION OF MIND IN MAN 65 



genius is the exception and is the result of a throw back to a 

 large number of musical maternal, not male, ancestors, prob- 

 ably brought about by both parents being musical and engaging 

 in a musical occupation of more than every-day interest at the 

 time of conception, or by a throw back to some musical ances- 

 tors of great antiquity, whose brains are now reproduced. 



In another chapter I have given an illustration from the 

 breeding of cattle, showing that these exceptions of phenomenal 

 cases are not according to rule, but may be evolved when 

 least expected. This is the reason why we find that men who 

 are born of town-reared parents, even with the best agricultural 

 training, so seldom succeed as farmers. It is also one of the 

 reasons that makes such a wide gap between the rich and 

 poor, for this difference is a social not a class distinction. 

 There are rich and poor just the same as good and bad in all 

 classes. Wealth is only the result of success, and success 

 is the result of fitness to certain occupations, and the posses- 

 sion of certain hereditary qualifications. Many extremes of 

 poverty or wealth which appear to us at first sight as unjust, 

 are in the order of evolution allowed to exist, or are inflicted 

 upon man as a caution to instruct us that we are not using 

 our energies and talents to the best possible advantage, or 

 to utilise it as a means of bringing out certain qualifications, 

 improvements, and virtues, which past acts of our ancestors 

 have sown the seed of or raised the foundations perhaps in 

 better circumstances, but which still require some gene- 

 rations to further physically strengthen them by means of 

 physical hardships, before it will be possible to evolve higher 

 mental capabilities in the same direction. The same reason 

 also accounts for the fact that many of our ablest and greatest 

 geniuses rise from families who for many generations have 

 been submerged in poverty, and also for the fact that many 

 of those are blessed with a superabundance of wealth, although 

 we are unable to see the immediate qualities which merit such 

 rewards, but which may be only the just reward of several 

 generations who have borne their poverty and still kept the 

 high mental ability employed in the right directions, and pre- 

 served under the most trying circumstances. In reality the 

 possession of large sums of wealth only amounts to a trust 

 ownership exerted by one individual, over what is the united 

 property of the community, and divine wisdom in so doing 



