Darwin's theory of pangenesis is, it is true, an attempt to account
(among other things) for variation. But it occupies its own separate place, and its author no
more invokes the environment when he talks of the adhesions of gemmules than he invokes
these adhesions when he talks of the relations of the whole animal to the environment.
Divide et impera!
It is true that it remodels him, also, to some degree, by its
educative influence, and that this constitutes a considerable difference between the social case
and the zoölogical case. I neglect this aspect of the relation here, for the other is more
important. At the end of the article I will return to it incidentally.
The reader will remember when this was written.
Lectures and Essays,, i, 82.
Mr. Grant Allen himself, in an article from which I shall presently
quote, admits that a set of people who, if they had been exposed ages ago to the geographical
agencies of Timbuctoo, would have developed into negroes might now, after a protracted
exposure to the conditions of Hamburg, never become negroes if transplanted to Timbuctoo.
Study of Sociology, pages 33-35.
No! not even though they were bodily brothers! The geographical
factor utterly vanishes before the ancestral factor. The difference between Hamburg and
Timbuctoo as a cause of ultimate divergence of two races is as nothing to the difference of
constitution of the ancestors of the two races, even though as in twin brothers, this
difference might be invisible to the naked eye. No two couples of the most homogenous race
could possibly be found so identical as, if set in identical environments, to give rise to two
identical lineages. The minute divergence at the start grows broader with each generation,
and ends with entirely dissimilar breeds.
Article ``Nation Making,'' in Gentleman's Magazine,
1878. I quote from the reprint in the Popular Science Monthly Supplement,
December, 1878, pages 121, 123, 126.
Article ``Hellas,'' in Gentleman's Magazine,
1878. I quote from the reprint in the Popular Science Monthly Supplement,
September, 1878.
Vol. cxiii, p. 318 (October, 1871)
I am well aware that in much that follows (though in nothing that
precedes) I seem to be crossing the heavily shotted bows of Mr. Galton, for whose
laborious investigations into heredity of genius I have the greatest respect. Mr. Galton
inclines to think that genius of intellect and passion is bound to express itself, whatever the
outward opportunity, and that within any given race an equal number of geniuses of each grade
must be born in every equal period of time; a subordinate race cannot possibly engender a
large number of high-class geniuses, etc. He would, I suspect, infer the suppositions I go on
to make - of great men fortuitously assembling around a given epoch and making it great, and
of their being fortuitously absent from certain places and times (from Sardinia, from Boston
now, etc.) - to be radically vicious. I hardly think, however, that he does justice to the great
complexity of the conditions of effective greatness, and to the way in which the
physiological averages of production may be masked entirely during long periods, either by the
accidental mortality of geniuses in infancy, or by the fact that the particular geniuses born
happened not to find tasks. I doubt the truth of his assertion that intellectual
genius, like murder, ``will out.'' It is true that certain types are irrepressible. Voltaire,
Shelley, Carlyle, can hardly be conceived leading a dumb and vegetative life in any epoch.
But take Mr. Galton himself, take his cousin Mr. Darwin, and take Mr. Spencer: nothing is to
me more conceivable than that at another epoch all three of these men might have died ``with
all their music in them,'' known only to their friends as persons of strong and original
character and judgement. What has started them on their careers of effective greatness is
simply the accident of each stumbling upon a task vast, brilliant, and congenial enough to call
out the convergence of all his passions and powers. I see no more reason why, in case they
had not fallen in with their several hobbies at propitious periods in their life, they need
necessarily have hit upon other hobbies, and made themselves equally great. Their case
seems similar to that of the Washingtons, Cromwells, and Grants, who simply rose to their
occasions. But apart from these causes of fallacy, I am strongly disposed to think that where
transcendent geniuses are concerned the numbers anyhow are so small that their appearance
will not fit into any scheme of averages. That is, two or three might appear together, just as
the two or three balls nearest the target center might be fired consecutively. Take longer
epochs and more firing, and the great geniuses and near balls would on the whole be more
spread out.
Since this paper was written, President Cleveland has to a certain
extent met the need. But who can doubt that if he had certain other qualities which he has not
yet shown, his influence would have been still more decisive? (1896.)
That is, if a certain general character be rapidly repeated in our
outer experience with a number of strongly contrasted concomitants, it will be sooner
abstracted than if its associates are invariable or monotonous.
Principles of Psychology, i. 460. Se also pp. 463, 464,
500. On page 407 the law is formulated thus: The persistence of the
connection in consciousness is proportionate to the persistence of the
outer connection. Mr. Spencer works most with the law of frequency. Either law, from my
point of view, is false; by Mr. Spencer ought not to think them synonymous.
In his Principles of Science, chapters xi, xii, xxvi.
Part viii, chap. iii.