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16
Hereditary Genius
tells him that classics, mathematics, and other subjects taught in universities,
are mere scholastic specialities, and no test of the more valuable intellectual
powers. It reminds him of numerous instances of persons who had been
unsuccessful in the. competitions of youth, but who had shown powers in
after-life that made them the foremost men of their age. Accordingly, with
newly furbished hopes, and with all the ambition of twenty-two years of
age, he leaves his University and enters a larger field of competition. The
same kind of experience awaits him here that he has already gone through.
Opportunities occur—they occur to every man—and he finds himself
incapable of grasping them. He tries, and is tried in many things. In a few
years more, unless he is incurably blinded by self-conceit, he learns
precisely of what performances he is capable, and what other enterprises
lie beyond his compass. When he reaches mature life, he is confident only
within certain limits, and knows, or ought to know, himself just as he is
probably judged of by the world, with all his unmistakeable weakness and
all his undeniable strength. He is no longer tormented into hopeless efforts
by the fallacious promptings of overweening vanity, but he limits his
undertakings to matters below the level of his reach, and finds true moral
repose in an honest conviction that he is engaged in as much good work as
his nature has rendered him capable of performing.
There can hardly be a surer evidence of the enormous difference
between the intellectual capacity of men, than the prodigious differences in
the numbers of marks obtained by those who gain mathematical honours at
Cambridge. I therefore crave permission to speak at some length upon this
subject, although the details are dry and of little general interest. There are
between 400 and 450 students who take their degrees in each year, and of
these, about 100 succeed in gaining honours in mathematics, and
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