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324
Hereditary Genius
10.
Modern Drama
Shakespeare, — Calderon, *Corneille, Moliere, *Mozart.
11.
Modern Philosophy
Descartes,—*St. Thomas Aquinas, *Lord Bacon,
*Leibnitz, Hume.
12.
Modern Politics
Frederick The Great,—Louis XI., *William The Silent,
*Richelieu, *Cromwell.
13.
Modern Science
Bichat,—* Galilei, * Newton, Lavoisier, Gall.
It is singularly interesting to observe how strongly the results
obtained from Comte's selection corroborate my own. I am sure,
then, we shall be within the mark if we consider column D in the
table, p. 317, to refer to the eminent kinsmen, not of the large group
of illustrious and eminent men, but of the more select portion of
illustrious men only, and then calculate our column E by dividing the
entries under D by 2.
For example, I reckon the chances of kinsmen of illustrious men
rising, or having risen, to eminence, to be 15.5 to loo in the case of
fathers, 13.5 to 100 in the case of brothers, 24 to 100 in the case of
sons. Or, putting these and the remaining proportions into a more
convenient form, we obtain the following results. In first grade: the
chance of the father is 1 to 6; of each brother, 1 to 7; of each son, 1
to 4. In second grade: of each grandfather, 1 to 25; of each uncle, 1
to 40; of each nephew, 1 to 40; of each grandson, 1 to 29. In the third
grade, the chance of each member is about 1 to 200, excepting in the
case of first cousins, where it is I to 100.
The large number of eminent descendants from illustrious men must
not be looked upon as expressing the results of their marriage with
mediocre women, for the average ability of the wives of such men is
above mediocrity. This is my strong conviction, after reading very
many biographies, although it clashes with a commonly expressed
opinion that clever men marry silly women. It is not easy to prove my
point without a considerable mass of quotations to show the
estimation in which the
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