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