longer than the average poor clodpate, or normal man. If he
actually marries early, it is nearly always proof that some intolerable
external pressure has been applied to him, as in Shakespeare's case,
or that his mental sensitiveness approaches downright insanity, as in
Shelley's. This fact, curiously enough, has escaped the observation
of an otherwise extremely astute observer, namely Havelock Ellis.
In his study of British genius he notes the fact that most men of
unusual capacities are the sons of relatively old fathers, but instead
of exhibiting the true cause thereof, he ascribes it to a mysterious
quality whereby a man already in decline is capable of begetting
better offspring than one in full vigour. This is a palpable absurdity,
not only because it goes counter to facts long established by
animal breeders, but also because it tacitly assumes that talent, and
hence the capacity for transmitting it, is an acquired character, and
that this character may be transmitted. Nothing could be more
unsound. Talent is not an acquired character, but a congenital
character, and the man who is born with it has it in early life quite as
well as in later life, though Its manifestation may have to wait.
James Mill was yet a young man when his son, John Stuart Mill,
was born, and not one of his principle books had been written. But
though the"Elements of Political Economy" and the"Analysis of the
Human Mind"were thus but vaguely formulated in his mind, if they
were actually so muchas formulated at all, and it was fifteen years
before he wrote them, he was still quite able to transmit the capacity
to write them to his son, and that capacity showed itself, years
afterward, in the latter's "Principles of Political Economy" and
"Essay on Liberty."


But Ellis' faulty inference is still based upon a sound observation, to