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Hereditary Genius
197
as the gifted children in China, nothing better than a student and
professor of some dead literature.
It is, I believe, owing to the favourable conditions of their early
training, that an unusually large proportion of the sons of the most
gifted men of science become distinguished in the same career. They
have been nurtured in an atmosphere of free inquiry, and observing
as they grow older that myriads of problems lie on every side of
them, simply waiting for some moderately capable person to take the
'trouble of engaging in their solution, they throw themselves with
ardour into a field of labour so peculiarly tempting. It is and has been,
in truth, strangely neglected. There are hundreds of students of books
for one student of nature; -hundreds of commentators for one original
inquirer. The field of real science is in sore want of labourers. The
mass of mankind plods on, with eyes fixed on the footsteps of the
generations that went before, too indifferent or too fearful to raise
their glances to judge for themselves whether the path on which they
are travelling is the best, or to learn the conditions by which they are
surrounded and affected. Hence/as regards the eminent sons of the
scientific men—twenty-six in number— there are only four whose
eminence was not achieved in science. These are the two political
sons of Arago (himself a politician), the son of Haller, and the son of
Napier.
As I said before, the fathers of the ablest men in science have
frequently been unscientific. Those of Cassini and Gmelin were
scientific men; so, in a lesser degree, were those of Huyghens,
Napier, and De Saussure; but the remainder—namely, those of
Bacon, Boyle, De Candolle, Galilei, and Leibnitz—were either
statesmen or literary men.
As regards mathematicians, when we consider how many among
them have been possessed of enormous natural gifts, it might have
been expected that the lists of their eminent
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