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276
Hereditary Genius
This table shows that the influence of the female line has an
unusually large effect in qualifying a man to become eminent in the
religious world. The only other group in which the influence of the
female line is even comparable in its magnitude, is that of scientific
men; and I believe the reasons laid down when speaking of them, will
apply, mutatis mutandis, to the Divines. It requires unusual
qualifications, and some of them of a feminine cast, to become a
leading theologian. A man must not only have appropriate abilities,
and zeal, and power of work, but the postulates of the creed that he
professes must be so firmly ingrained into his mind, as to be the
equivalents of axioms. The diversities of creeds held by earnest,
good, and conscientious men, show to a candid looker-on, that there
can be no certainty as to any point on which many of such men think
differently. But a divine must not accept this view; he must be
convinced of the absolute security of the groundwork of his peculiar
faith,—a blind conviction which can best be obtained through
maternal teachings in the years of childhood.
I will now endeavour to account for the fact, which I am compelled
to acknowledge, that the children of very religious parents
occasionally turn out extremely badly. It is a fact that has all the
appearance of being a serious violation of the law of heredity, and, as
such, has caused me more hesitation and difficulty than I have felt
about any other part of my inquiry. However, I am perfectly satisfied
that this apparent anomaly is entirely explained by what I am about to
lay before the reader, premising that it obliges me to enter into a more
free and thorough analysis of the religious character than would
otherwise have been suitable to these pages.
The disposition that qualifies a man to attain a place in a collection
like that of the “Biographia Evangelica,” can best be studied by
comparing it with one that, while
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