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Hereditary Genius
39
They have overcome their hindrances, and thus start fair with others more
fortunately reared, in the subsequent race of life. A boy who is to be
carefully educated is sent to a good school, where he confessedly acquires
little useful information, but where he is taught the art of learning. The man
of whom I have been speaking, has contrived to acquire the same art in a
school of adversity. Both stand on equal terms, when they have reached
mature life. They compete for the same prizes, measure their strength by
efforts in the same direction, and their relative successes are
thenceforward due to their relative natural gifts. There are many such men
in the “eminent” class, as biographies abundantly show. Now, if the
hindrances to success were very great, we should expect all who
surmounted them, to be prodigies of genius. The hindrances would form a
system of natural selection, by repressing all whose gifts were below a
certain very high level. But what is the case? We find very many who have
risen from the ranks, who are by no means prodigies of genius; many who
have no claim to “eminence,” who have risen easily in spite of all obstacles.
The hindrances undoubtedly form a system of natural selection that
represses mediocre men, and even men of pretty fair powers—in short, the
classes below D; but many of D succeed, a great many of E, and I believe
a very large majority of those above.
If a man is gifted with vast intellectual ability, eagerness to work, and
power of working, I cannot comprehend how such a man should be
repressed. The world is always tormented with difficulties waiting to be
solved—struggling with ideas and feelings, to which it can give no adequate
expression. If, then, there exists a man capable of solving those difficulties,
or of giving a voice to those pent-up feelings, he is sure to be welcomed
with universal acclamation. We may almost say that he has only to put his
pen to paper, and the thing is done. I am here speaking
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