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 my own private
knowledge of the somewhat abnormal frequency with which eccentricity,
or other mental unsoundness, occurs in the families of very able
scientific men. Lombroso, as is well known, strongly asserted the
truth of this fact, but more strongly, as it seems to myself, than
the evidence warrants.

It is, therefore, not in the highest examples of human genius that
heredity can be most profitably studied, men of high, but not of the
highest, ability being more suitable. The only objection to their use
is that their names are, for the most part, unfamiliar to the public.

The vastness of the social world is very imperfectly grasped by its
several members, the large majority of the numerous persons who have
been eminent above their far more numerous fellows, each in his own
special department, being unknown to the generality. The merits of
such men can be justly appreciated only by reference to records of
their achievements. Let no reader be so conceited as to believe his
present ignorance of a particular person to be a proof that the
person in question does not merit the title of noteworthy.

I said what I have to say about the modern use of the word "genius"
in the preface to the second edition of my "Hereditary Genius." It
has only latterly lost its old and usual meaning, which is preserved