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viii
Hereditary Genius
for the year 1869 does not continue to be true for 1892. Many of the lines
of inquiry that are suggested or hinted at in this hook have since been
pursued by myself, and the results have been published in various memoirs.
They are for the most part epitomised in three volumes—namely, English
Men of Science (1874), Human Faculty (1883), Natural Inheritance
(1889); also to some small extent in a fourth volume, now about to be
published, on Finger Marks.
The fault in the volume that I chiefly regret is the choice of its title of
Hereditary Genius, but it cannot be remedied now. There was not the
slightest intention on my part to use the word genius in any technical sense,
but merely as expressing an ability that was exceptionally high, and at the
same time inborn. It was intended to be used in the senses ascribed to the
word in Johnson's Dictionary, viz. “Mental power or faculties. Disposition
of nature by which any one is qualified to some peculiar employment.
Nature; disposition.” A person who is a genius is denned as—A man
endowed with superior faculties. This exhausts all that Johnson has to say
on the matter, except as regards the imaginary creature of classical authors
called a Genius, which does not concern us, and which he describes as the
protecting or ruling power of men, places, or things. There is nothing in the
quotations from standard authors with which Johnson illustrates his
definitions, that justifies a strained and technical sense being given to the
word, nor is there anything of the kind in the Latin word ingenium.
Hereditary Genius therefore seemed to be a more expressive and just
title than Hereditary Ability, for ability does not exclude the effects of
education, which
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