HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 353 
play them, so deep and instinct with life, that training and 
discipline, instead of aiding them, impede their improve- 
ment. We should discover in the man of genius a self- 
reliant precocity, an adventurous ardor, a powerful con- 
viction of his mission, a pride lifting him above prejudices 
of sect and party ambitions, and attaching him solely to 
the object of his thoughts, which alone gives life a charm 
for him. Even though his daily needs compel him to inter- 
course with men, the world is for him only a peopled desert 
in which his soul dwells apart. 
A part of the materials for such a study exists; it may 
be sought in the biographies prepared by the secretaries 
of the great academies during the last two hundred years, 
and in the autobiographical memoirs left by many famous 
men. <A learned and ingenious Russian writer, Wechnia- 
kof, has lately published several papers, in which he inves- 
tigates from this point of view the anthropological and so- 
ciological peculiarities that have affected the individual 
development of original geniuses. These little works, un- 
fortunately, do not form a complete whole; yet nothing 
could be more curious and useful than a treatise on innate- 
ness. 
The group of all the causes of diversity, heterogeneity, 
and innovation, which are working upon the human race in 
opposition to the principles of simplicity, homogeneity, and 
conservation, may be described in a single word, that of 
evolution or progress. Regarded within the limits of our 
actual observation, blind Nature remains identically ever 
the same. It is to-day, in its totality, what it was in 
Homer’s time,’and what it will assuredly be many ages 
hence. The same skies exist, the same oceans, the same 
mountains, forests, and flowers. Man, on the contrary, is 
ceaselessly changing. Generations follow and do not re- 
semble each other. They are, in relation to their beliefs, 
their arts, their wants, in a state of rapid and constant 
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