174 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In studying the history of illustrious men, how often do we find 

 brilliant imagination and extraordinary capacity for art, poetry, and 

 literary composition, which are by no means the result of heredity. 

 We have not far to go for instances of this. Lamartine, Alfred de 

 Musset, Meyerbeer, Ingres, Delacroix, Merimee, displayed talents for 

 which they were in no wise indebted to their parentage. The history 

 of men of science exhibits the part played by heredity still farther 

 cut down. We are told of families of savants. How many of these 

 might be enumerated ? A dozen at the most. On the other hand, 

 how many illustrious savants there are, among whose ascendants are 

 found only people of very common stamp, or else distinguished for 

 talents of a very different order from those which characterize the 

 man of science ! What hereditary influences fashioned a Cuvier, a Biot, 

 a Fresnel, a Gay-Lussac, an Ampere, a Blainville ? It is plain that in 

 these instances spontaneity and education enacted the chief part. Nor 

 does the history of authors agree any better with the pretensions 

 made by the thorough partisans of heredity. 



It is especially among philosophers that spontaneity appears to be 

 supreme. Our authors present no lists of philosophers who have in- 

 herited from their ancestors the talent for speculation. Here we have 

 a series of facts which make against heredity ; these its advocates say 

 nothing about, nor indeed are they made sufficient account of by either 

 party. Metaphysicians, precisely because in them the mental element 

 alone is active, are exempt from all the influences of heredity. In 

 proportion as the characters it tends to transmit are less of a physio- 

 logical and more of a psychological nature, the less is the influence of 

 heredity. But there is nothing more purely psychological, or more 

 free from sense-elements and mechanical factors, than the mind of the 

 speculative philosopher. In point of fact, the great metaphysicians 

 had no progenitors, nor did they leave any posterity. The philosophic 

 genius has ever been absolutely individual, inalienable, and intrans- 

 missible. There is not a single great thinker, in whose line, whether 

 ascending or descending, we discover either the promise or the per- 

 petuation of the high capacities which made him illustrious. Descartes 

 and Newton, Leibnitz and Spinoza, Diderot and Hume, Kant and 

 Maine de Biran, Cousin and Jouffroy, had neither ancestors nor pos- 

 terity. 



Such is spontaneity. To form a precise idea of the part it plays, 

 we should have to determine, in a general way, and also in relation to 

 temperament, education, social and other conditions, etc., the genesis 

 and development of those faculties by which a given man of superior 

 power is distinguished from his progenitors ; we must group together 

 and classify the characteristic elements which make up the very es- 

 sence of the personality and individuality — those marvelous elements 

 of free initiative and of total independence which stamp a man as a 

 genius. It would then be seen that most commonly superior abilities 



