Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) | Page 3

the Royal Institution. These, together with the data on which they were founded, were published in the same year in my book "English Men of Science." Readers who desire fuller information as to the antecedents conducive to success that are too briefly described further on should refer to the above book.
The epithet "noteworthy" is applied to achievements in all branches of effort that rank among the members of any profession or calling as equal, at least, to that which an F.R.S. holds among scientific men. This affords a convenient and sufficiently definite standard of merit. I could think of none more appropriate when addressing scientific men, and it seems to have been generally understood in the desired sense. It includes more than a half of those whose names appear in the modern editions of "Who's Who," which are become less discriminate than the earlier ones. "Noteworthiness" is ascribed, without exception, to all whose names appear in the "Dictionary of National Biography," but all of these were dead before the date of the publication of that work and its supplement. Noteworthiness is also ascribed to those whose biographies appear in the "Encyclop?dia Britannica" (which includes many who are now alive), and, in other works, of equivalent authority. As those persons were considered by editors of the last named publications to be worthy of note, I have accepted them, on their authority, as noteworthy.
CHAPTER III.
--HIGHEST ORDER OF ABILITY.
No attempt is made in this book to deal with the transmission of ability of the very highest order, as the data in hand do not furnish the required material, nor will the conclusions be re-examined at length that I published many years ago in "Hereditary Genius." Still, some explanation is desirable to show the complexity of the conditions that are concerned with the hereditary transmission of the highest ability, which, for the moment, will be considered as the same thing as the highest fame.
It has often been remarked that the men who have attained pinnacles of celebrity failed to leave worthy successors, if any. Many concurrent causes aid in producing this result. An obvious one is that such persons are apt to be so immersed in their pursuit, and so wedded to it, that they do not care to be distracted by a wife. Another is the probable connection between severe mental strain and fertility. Women who study hard have, as a class--at least, according to observant caricaturists--fewer of the more obvious feminine characteristics; but whether this should be considered a cause or a consequence, or both, it is difficult to say. A third, and I think the most important, reason why the children of very distinguished persons fall sometimes lamentably short of their parents in ability is that the highest order of mind results from a fortunate mixture of incongruous constituents, and not of such as naturally harmonize. Those constituents are negatively correlated, and therefore the compound is unstable in heredity. This is eminently the case in the typical artistic temperament, which certainly harmonizes with Bohemianism and passion, and is opposed to the useful qualities of regularity, foresight, and level common sense. Where these and certain other incongruous faculties go together in well-adjusted proportions, they are capable of achieving the highest success; but their heritage is most unlikely to be transmitted in its entirety, and ill-balanced compounds of the same constituents are usually of little avail, and sometimes extraordinarily bad. A fourth reason is that the highest imaginative power is dangerously near lunacy. If one of the sanest of poets, Wordsworth, had, as he said, not unfrequently to exert strength, as by shaking a gate-post, to gain assurance that the world around him was a reality, his mind could not at those times have been wholly sane. Sanity is difficult to define, except negatively; but, even though we may be convinced of the truths of the mystic, that nothing is what it seems to be, the above-mentioned conduct suggests temporary insanity. It is sufficient to conclude, as any Philistine would, that whoever has to shake a gate-post to convince himself that it is not a vision is dangerously near madness. Mad people do such things; those who carry on the work of the world as useful and law-abiding citizens do not. I may add that I myself had the privilege of hearing at first hand the narrator's own account of this incident, which was much emphasized by his gestures and tones. Wordsworth's unexpected sally was in reply to a timid question by the late Professor Bonamy Price, then a young man, concerning the exact meaning of the lines in his famous "Ode to Immortality," "not for these I raise the song of praise; but for those obstinate questionings of sense and outward things," etc.
I cannot speak from the present returns, but only from