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vi
Hereditary Genius
as a partial justification if I have occasionally been betrayed into speaking
somewhat more confidently than the evidence I have adduced would
warrant.
I trust the reader will pardon a small percentage of error and inaccuracy,
if it be so small as not to affect the general value of my results. No one can
hate inaccuracy more than myself, or can have a higher idea of what an
author owes to his readers, in respect to precision; but, in a subject like this,
it is exceedingly difficult to correct every mistake, and still more so to avoid
omissions. I have often had to run my eyes over many pages of large
biographical dictionaries and volumes of memoirs to arrive at data, destined
to be packed into half a dozen lines, in an appendix to one of my many
chapters.
The theory of hereditary genius, though usually scouted, has been
advocated by a few writers in past as well as in modern times. But I may
claim to be the first to treat the subject in a statistical manner, to arrive at
numerical results, and to introduce the “law of deviation from an average”
into discussions on heredity.
A great many subjects are discussed in the following pages, which go
beyond the primary issue,—whether or no genius be hereditary. I could not
refuse to consider them, because the bearings of the theory I advocate are
too important to be passed over in silence.
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