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Hereditary Genius
367
manufactory, are uncongenial to the population of a watering-place.
The moral I have in view will be clear to the reader. I wish to show
that because a well-conditioned man marries a well-conditioned
woman, each of pure blood as regards any natural gift, it does not in
the least follow that the hybrid offspring will succeed.
I will continue to employ the same metaphor, to explain the manner
in which apparent sports of nature are produced, such as the sudden
appearance of a man of great abilities in undistinguished families. Mr.
Darwin maintains, in the theory of Pangenesis, that the gemmules of
innumerable qualities, derived from ancestral sources, circulate in the
blood and propagate themselves, generation after generation, still in
the state of gemmules, but fail in developing themselves into cells,
because other antagonistic gemmules are prepotent and overmaster
them, in the struggle for points of attachment. Hence there is a vastly
larger number of capabilities in every living being, than ever find
expression, and for every patent element there are countless latent
ones. The character of a man is wholly formed through those
gemmules that have succeeded in attaching themselves; the
remainder that have been overpowered by their antagonists, count for
nothing; just as the policy of a democracy is formed by that of the
majority of its citizens, or as the parliamentary voice of any place is
determined by the dominant political views of the electors: in both
instances, the dissentient minority is powerless. Let, however, by the
virtue of the more rapid propagation of one class of electors, say of
an Irish population, the numerical strength of the weaker party be
supposed to gradually increase, until the minority becomes the
majority, then there will be a sudden reversal or revolution of the
political equilibrium, and the character of the borough or nation, as
evidenced by its corporate acts, will be entirely
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