Our conclusion, therefore, is that social and economic
opportunities afford the leisure as well as cultural advantages
for the improvement of talent; that the local environment is of
vital importance, offering as it does the cultural advantages
of cities of certain kinds and of chateaux, and that of the
local environment the educational facilities are of the
supremest importance. Consequently, it appears that Mr. Ward's
estimate of one person of talent to the 500 instead of Mr.
Galton's estimate of one to the 4,000 does not seem strained.
Produce in society generally the opportunities and advantages
which Geneva, Paris and the chateaux possessed and which gave
them their great fecundity in talent, and all regions and
places will yield up their potential or latent genius to
development and the ratio will be obtained.

This position is likely to be criticized, unless it is
remembered that we admit that there is a hereditary difference
at birth, and that all we seek to establish is that, given
these differences, what conditions are likely to mature and
develop the men of born talent. Thus after the appearance of my
"Vocational Education" I received a letter from Professor
Eugene Davenport in which he makes this statement:

'Ward's arguments as here employed seem to show that
environment is a powerful factor in bringing out talent even to
the exclusion of heredity. I doubt if you would care to be
understood to this limit, and yet where you enumerate on page
61 the reasons why certain cities are fecund in respective
talents, you seem to have overlooked the fact that if these
cities have been for many generations centers of talent to such