Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/77

Rh from the days of Ray onwards; if it had not been for the five years on the Beagle we should scarcely have had a Darwin, and Lyell's work was avowedly founded on his constant foreign tours. In a notable number of cases this element comes in at the earliest period of life, the eminent person having been born abroad and spent his childhood there. The presence of so large a number of our eminent men at a university may be in considerable measure merely the accident of their social position. The persistence with which men of the first order of intellect have sought out and studied unfamiliar aspects of life and nature, or have profited by such aspects when presented by circumstances, indicates a more active and personal factor in the evolution of genius.