the sons of great men are always dolts, the fact is that intellectual
superiority is inheritable, quite as easily as bodily strength; and that
fact has been established beyond cavil by the laborious inquiries of
Galton, Pearson and the other anthropometricians of the English
school. If such men as Spinoza, Kant, Schopenhauer, Spencer, and
Nietzsche had married and begotten sons, those sons, it is probable,
would have contributed as much to philosophy as the sons and
grandsons of Veit Bach contributed to music, or those of Erasmus
Darwin to biology, or those of Henry Adams to politics, or those of
Hamilcar Barcato the art of war. I have said that Herbert Spencer's
escape from marriage facilitated his life-work, and so served the
immediate good of English philosophy, but in the long run it will
work a detriment, for he left no sons to carry on his labours, and the
remaining Englishmen of his time were unable to supply the lack.
His celibacy, indeed, made English philosophy co-extensive with his
life; since his death the whole body of metaphysical speculation
produced in England has been of little more, practical value to the
world than a drove of bogs. In precisely the same way the celibacy
of Schopenhauer, Kant and Nietzsche has reduced German
philosophy to feebleness.


Even setting aside this direct influence of heredity, there is the
equally potent influence of example and tuition. It is a gigantic
advantage to live on intimate terms with a first-rate, man, and have
his care. Hamilcar not only gave the Carthagenians a great general
in his actual son; he also gave them a great general in his son-in-law,
trained in his camp. But the tendency of the first-rate man to
remain a bachelor is very strong, and Sidney Lee once showed that,
of all the great writers of England since the Renaissance, more than