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64
Hereditary Genius
they also have very many who are ordinary, or even stupid, and there are
not a few who are either eccentric or downright mad.” I perfectly allow all
this, but it does not in the least affect the cogency of my arguments. If a
man breeds from strong, well-shaped dogs, but of mixed pedigree, the
puppies will be sometimes, but rarely, the equals of their parents. They will
commonly be of a mongrel, nondescript type, because ancestral peculiarities
are apt to crop out in the offspring. Yet notwithstanding all this, it is easy to
develop the desirable characteristics of individual dogs into the assured
heirloom of a new breed. The breeder selects the puppies that most nearly
approach the wished-for type, generation after generation, until they have
no ancestor, within many degrees, that has objectionable peculiarities. So it
is with men and women. Because one or both of a child's parents are able,
it does not in the least follow as a matter of necessity, but only as one of
moderately unfavourable odds, that the child will be able also. He inherits
an extraordinary mixture of qualities displayed in his grandparents, great-
grandparents, and more remote ancestors, as well as from those of his
father and mother. The most illustrious and so-called “well-bred” families of
the human race, are utter mongrels as regards their natural gifts of intellect
and disposition.
What I profess to prove is this: that if two children are taken, of whom
one has a parent exceptionally gifted in a high degree—say as one in 4, 000,
or as one in a million— and the other has not, the former child has an
enormously greater chance of turning out to be gifted in a high degree, than
the other. Also, I argue that, as a new race can be obtained in animals and
plants, and can be raised to so great a degree of purity that it will maintain
itself, with moderate care in preventing the more faulty members of the
flock from breeding, so a race of gifted men might be obtained, under
exactly similar conditions.
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