Hereditary genius : an inquiry into its laws and consequences / by Francis Galton.

  • Francis Galton
Date:
1892
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hereditary genius : an inquiry into its laws and consequences / by Francis Galton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    genius does. The reader will find a studious abstinence throughout the work from speaking of genius as a special quality. It is freely used as an equivalent for natural ability, in the opening of the chapter on “Comparison of the Two Classifications.” In the only place, so far as I have noticed on reading the book again, where any dis- tinction is made between them, the uncertainty that. still clings to the meaning of the word genius in its technical sense 1s emphatically dwelt upon (p. 320). There is no confusion of ideas in this respect in the book, but its title seems apt to mislead, and if it could be altered now, it should appear as [Hereditary Ability. The relation between genius in its technical sense (whatever its precise definition may be) and insanity, has been much insisted upon by Lombroso and others, whose views of the closeness of the connection between the two are so pronounced, that it would hardly be surprising if one of their more enthusiastic followers were to remark that So-and-So cannot be a _ genius, because he has never been mad nor is there a single lunatic in his family. I cannot go nearly so far as they, nor accept a moiety of their data, on which the connection between ability of a very high order and insanity is supposed to be established. Still, there is a large residuum of evidence which pomts to a painfully close relation between the two, and I must add that my own later observations have tended in the same direction, for I have been surprised at finding how often insanity or idiocy has appeared among the near relatives of excep- tionally able men. ‘Those who are over eager and ex- tremely active in mind must often possess brains that are more excitable and peculiar than is consistent with soundness. They are likely to become crazy at times,
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