Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/77

Rh this need, but might they not be worth while? The history of science, literature and art alike is full of pathetic instances of men who have been to all intents and purposes enslaved at the golden time of their lives, reaching independence and opportunities for freedom only when it was too late to make much use of them.

If we had the will to make the most of what may be called the peak of efficiency, we might at the same time do something to increase its elevation. Nature has doubtless determined its position roughly as corresponding to the time when the growing family needs support and protection. Nature, however, has made no provision for intellectual work which benefits the race at large and in the fullness of time, rather than the individual responsible for it. The very coincidence of circumstances originally favored by natural selection here becomes a stumbling block, and we may only get around it by deliberately planning to do so. That is to say, society must adequately support scientific workers of ability at a sufficiently early age to get the best out of them. No provision for comfortable retirement at sixty-five will be of any particular value in this connection.

Granting the will to make the most of the able originality of our generation, to actively encourage the freedom of those who most deserve it from the standpoint of social utility; can we successfully pick out the right individuals? It is the experience of teachers that originality is a rare product. An eminent teacher of biology told me that he wished to put up in his laboratory the text "many are called, but few are chosen." We are most of us hunting for some genius to grow up under our care and make us famous by reflected light, even as Darwin did Henslow. Why is it that we are, on the whole, so unsuccessful in this quest? Is it that we, old fogies that we are, do not know the thing when we see it? Or is the thing so scarce that we might as well be hunting elephants in Trafalgar Square? Or again, is it that our educational system snuffs out all germs of genius in individuals originally possessing them? Perhaps all these things count in the matter; at the least, the problem is a complex one.

In literature, perhaps more than in science, we often see freedom combined with absurdity. The doctrine that genius and insanity are allied has a certain partial justification in the light of recent work on heredity. It is rare, with our extraordinary tangle of heritable qualities, for any man to have an approximately complete series of characters of the highest grade. Such men, when they occur, become famous, but what we call genius usually depends on one or a few special excellencies. A high quality is like a fine plant, which requires good supporting environment, better than that of common sorts. This should be found, not simply in outside circumstances, but more especially in the other qualities of the man himself. When it is not found there is apt to be a