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Hereditary Genius
21
prodigy of universal genius, did not even remain during the full period in the
examination room: his health was weak, and he had to husband his strength.
The mathematical powers of the last man on the list of honours, which are
so low when compared with those of a senior wrangler, are mediocre, or
even above mediocrity, when compared with the gifts of Englishmen
generally. Though the examination places 100 honour men above him, it
puts no less than 300 “poll men” below him. Even if we go so far as to
allow that 200 out of the 300 refuse to work hard enough to get honours,
there will remain 100 who, even if they worked hard, could not get them.
Every tutor knows how difficult it Is to drive abstract conceptions, even of
the simplest kind, into the brains of most people—how feeble and hesitating
is their mental grasp—how easily their brains are mazed—how incapable
they are of precision and soundness of knowledge. It often occurs to
persons familiar with some scientific subject to hear men and women of
mediocre gifts relate to one another what they have picked up about it from
some lecture—say at the Royal Institution, where they have sat for an hour
listening with delighted attention to an admirably lucid account, illustrated by
experiments of the most perfect and beautiful character, in all of which they
expressed themselves intensely gratified and highly instructed. It is
positively painful to hear what they say. Their recollections seem to be a
mere chaos of mist and misapprehension, to which some sort of shape and
organization has been given by the action of their own pure fancy,
altogether alien to what the lecturer intended to convey. The average
mental grasp even of what is called a well-educated audience, will be found
to be ludicrously small when rigorously tested.
In stating the differences between man and man, let it not be supposed for
a moment that mathematicians are
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