What is the doctrine of the heredity of talent based on?

Examples of the preservation of certain physical or mental characteristics in one genus over several generations are quite common. The least artificial explanation of this remarkable phenomenon is that according to which these features appear to be inherited from ancestors. This explanation, even when it relates to the fact of the special talent of a famous family, is accepted in ordinary society without any distrust: “so-and-so was born like his father, his grandfather,” “it’s in their family,” these are the usual common phrases with which people think to explain the reason for the remarkable talent or eccentricity of a famous person. This is not the position of the theory of heredity of talent in the scientific world. Presenting solid scientific foundations for this theory is a very difficult matter: the question of the heredity of talent turns into the question of the innateness of spiritual gifts and, finally, into the dark question of the influence of mental qualities on the composition of the physical organism. It is not surprising, therefore, that the theory of heredity of talent in the scientific world had both defenders and opponents. Recently, a strong defender of this theory has been Francis Galton, who presented in two essays (“The Heredity of Talent” and “Englishmen of science, their nature and nurture”) the results of a long-term and thorough study of the facts relating to the question of the nature of talent. Galton “was the first to try to develop this question statistically, came to conclusions that could be expressed in numbers, and applied the “law of deviation from averages” to the study of heredity. Galton's first essay presents the experience of substantiating the theory of heredity of talent on the basis of statistical data, the second essay, almost more valuable than the first in terms of the number of particular points investigated in it, reveals those moments that influence the birth and upbringing of gifted people. The original method that Galton applied to the study of the question of talent aroused praise, was applied to a study in one of the Russian journals and led to results partly identical to those obtained by Galton. – “The English thinker Galton... so simply opened the doors of the mysterious church of genius that, apparently, he solved his problem without the traditional consciousness of its inaccessibility and without any thought (?) that he was tearing the veil off one of the deepest secrets of human nature” (Heredity of Talent. P. 26). Without hesitation, he puts such a subtle and, one might say, weightless matter as the question of genius on the rough scales of statistics... and as a result of this bold operation, conclusions were obtained worthy of the full attention of the educated world (Family and School. November. Page 189). The first chapters of “The Heredity of Talent” are aimed at eliminating objections, on the one hand, to the very topic of Galton’s work, and on the other, to the method he adopted for developing his subject. It is obvious that the question of the heredity of talent can be raised only when the question of the innateness of talent is resolved in a positive sense, when the fact of the difference between people according to their natural talents is put beyond any doubt. Galton does not consider this fact generally accepted, but nevertheless defends it in the most decisive manner. “I absolutely do not accept the hypothesis, sometimes expressed directly, and even more often implied, mainly in stories written for the edification of children, which claims that everyone is born almost the same, and that the only factors that create the difference between one and another ... person are diligence and moral efforts over oneself. I most certainly reject the assumption of natural equality between people” (Heredity of Talent, p. 15). In these few words, which very aptly outline the most attractive side of the opposing view, a position is expressed that is hardly possible to refute in its entirety. Galton's entire argument aimed at defending this position produces a strange effect. Its logical side is far from impeccable; one can find weaknesses in each of its members; one can only consider as probable everything that is expressed so categorically; 1 but if this probability is assessed not from a strictly logical, but from a life-practical point of view, then in place of doubt there is a need to recognize the real truth of this probability. One can, of course, without a logical error, assume that “the phenomena observed in the nursery, school, university, and especially in various fields of later activity” and representing such obvious evidence of the differences between people in their ability for mental work, do not yet indicate anything about their natural talents, which are not subject to our observation in their pure form, not complicated by external influences; but for practical life these logical subtleties are completely indifferent. The conclusion a posse ad esse and a non esse ad non posse, sophism or paralogism from the point of view of logic, is peculiarly correct from a vital and practical point of view: phenomena and forces for us exist as much as they manifest themselves, and a person - let's say - a phenomenally talented inpotentia, who has not declared his talents in any way, from a practical point of view is as mediocre as an idiot. – From this point of view, it seems very apt to compare Galton’s method with rough scales. A question that is insoluble from a strictly logical point of view, a weightless subject, becomes easily solvable and acquires very noticeable weight when they begin to look at it from a practical point of view. One such real picture of mental experiences that lead a person to a correct determination of his powers, his humble place in the world, which Galton draws (pp. 16–17), provides a very convincing proof of the difference between people according to their natural gifts, although we cannot determine the extent of the difference that exists between the natural abilities of people in the very first moments of their lives. Having recognized the fact that people differ according to their natural gifts, we thereby prejudge the question of the heredity of talent, or, more precisely, talent. If those elements that make up talent are innate to a person, then, obviously, he received them from his parents. One can object to this only under the condition of a different concept of heredity as the succession of those characteristics that were noticeably manifested in the ancestors. If we do not recognize as hereditary the wealth that the son acquired through the development of gold ore on his family estate, the existence of which the father did not even imagine, then, applying the concept of heredity that is expressed in judgments about this fact to the succession of the elements of talent, we have the right to assert that the heredity of talent is far from a universal fact and is observed in cases that can be considered exceptions. In “Englishmenofscience” he provides the following data on the question of the heredity of the talent of modern English men of science: Of the 191, only 59 chose their career based on innate inclination (hence, only 0.3). Of the 91, 56 scientists chose their branch of natural sciences certainly by innate inclination (0.6), 11 - certainly not by innate inclination (0.12), and in 24 cases the innate inclination to this specialty was doubtful (0.26) (Family and School. December. pp. 282–283). If we reduce all these data to one denominator, it turns out that the ratio of cases of hereditary talent to cases in which heredity is doubtful is equal to 0.4(0.5†0.3) 2 or 0.55(0.5†0.6)2. Thus, the figure 0.5, derived by Galton from the statistical data collected in his first work, turns out to be very solid, and deviation from it is very insignificant. And it is hardly possible to recognize as a law determining the succession of talent something that is noticed in only half of the observed facts. This skeptical attitude towards this numerical data is further strengthened by the method by which Galton made this generalization. What is the doctrine of the heredity of talent based on? Galton recognizes the hereditary talent of all those gifted people who have “outstanding” or “famous” relatives. This is not in all cases a reliable criterion for determining the heredity of talent. Since talent can change in its form, passing from ancestors to descendants, proving that a well-known famous person has hereditary talent is in some cases as difficult as proving, for example, that x player made a fortune for himself by betting on a gold coin given by a special person, while he came to the gambling house with gold, which x took, without paying attention to their distinctive features, from persons t, n, y and z. The probability that x got rich “from the lucky hand” of y, in this case, is no more than that that x owes his happiness to the happiness of m, n or z, or all of them together, or, finally, none of them. It is also difficult to prove that Countess Lovelace, “possessed remarkable mathematical abilities” (Heredity of talent. p. 195), had hereditary talent because she was the daughter of the famous Byron, or that Heine had “hereditary talent” because he was related to a man who “was poor at first, but later acquired up to 2,000,000 pounds sterling and donated enormous sums to public institutions” (p. 196). Knowing about Ada, Countess Lovelace, only that she had hereditary talent and was distinguished by mathematical abilities, everyone, of course, will a priori assume that she was the daughter of Newton, Pascal, Laplace, Gauss, but the name of Byron will be remembered after many others, and probably in this form: “is she really the daughter of Byron?” Knowing about Solomon Hein only that he was a man who rose from poverty to the position of a millionaire, one can rather assume that he is a relative of one of those American millionaires who begin their business operations with 1 dollar and leave to their children a capital of 25,000,000 dollars (Aston), or, starting from the position of a laborer who carries wood on barges, acquire the reputation of the first businessman in the United States (Vanderbilt. Son Fatherland. 1874 No. 291), but it is difficult to guess that this relative of Solomon Heine is the impractical poet Heinrich Heine. But even if we assume that a talent preserved in a certain family in the general form of talent should be considered hereditary, then, according to the strict meaning of the concept of “heredity,” the talent of a famous person can be recognized as hereditary only in the case where it is possible, at least only with probability, to indicate the relative from whom the “famous” person in question inherited his talent, and to show that he (the “famous” person) could inherit the talent of his relative. Since the only form in which it is possible to inherit, along with a developed brain, the talent of a famous person is through descent from him, it is clear that to prove the heredity of the talent of a famous person, it is not at all important that he has gifted relatives in general; the whole question is whether this person has gifted relatives in a direct ascending line, ancestors in the proper sense of the word, whose blood, as is usually expressed, flows in the veins of the famous person in question. Since, according to the theory of probability, the causal dependence of descendants on their ancestors regarding their abilities is directly proportional to the amount of blood of their ancestors that flows in the veins of their descendants, then in order to prove the heredity of the mental abilities of a famous person, it is far from indifferent to what degree of kinship his gifted ancestors are with him. The formula presented by Galton on page 287 makes it possible to express in numbers the dependence of descendants on their ancestors in their natural properties, and therefore in some of the cases cited in his work, the heredity of talent may seem doubtful. Husband and wife are marked with =, “gifted” people – *, “mediocre” – x. The Duke of Wellington has the only talented ancestor in "Sir John Trevor, a dishonest judge, cousin and rival of the more talented, but scarcely more dishonest Judge Jeffreys." This gifted ancestor is the great-great-grandfather (ORp, 5th degree of relationship, Gr 5 3259049 3.200.0000,01845...) of the Duke of Wellington. With such a distant relationship between these famous statesmen and their gifted ancestors, it is difficult to assume that the talent of the former is determined by the talent of the latter, when the influence of the Duke of Bedford turned out to be powerless in the three generations closest to him, and the talent of Sir John Trevor was not noticeably reflected even in as many as 4 generations and began to act in those descendants who have less than 2,100 Trevor’s blood in their bodies. As for descending kinship, despite all the importance of statistical data of this kind for the theory of heredity of talent, it cannot be taken into account in those generalizations that determine the percentage of “famous” people with hereditary talent to the total number of “famous” people. The existence of “outstanding” people in the offspring of “famous” people, while representing factual proof that the talent of “famous” individuals can become hereditary in their offspring, cannot in any way serve as evidence that they themselves possessed hereditary talent, just as the mediocre offspring of a brilliant person who has talented ancestors does not yet prove that this gifted representative of his family possessed a non-hereditary genius. Therefore, “famous” people who have “outstanding” relatives only in a direct descending line should be classified as persons who do not have hereditary talent. With all the more justice, those “famous” people who have “outstanding” relatives only in the collateral line should be excluded from the list of hereditarily talented people. The fact that Bernard Jussier (p. 181) had two talented brothers, a “famous” nephew and a nephew’s son, who inherited his father’s talent, excludes, of course, the possibility of the assumption that the talent of the Jussier family is a purely accidental phenomenon, having no basis in the natural properties of the ancestors of the famous brothers, but does not give the right to assert that the talent of Bernard Jussier was hereditary to indicate Jussier’s gifted ancestor, influencing the mental powers of the three brothers is impossible, and the brothers cannot transfer their talents to each other. In this case, there is no doubt at least that the talent of the Jussier brothers, which, moreover, represents a remarkable similarity in its form (all of them are famous botanists), comes from one natural cause, depends on the influence of the same factors, because all Jussiers descend from the same ancestors; but when a "famous" person has only a "distinguished" cousin or even a more distant relative, then it is impossible to say about the origin of their talent, and what little can be said about Jussier's talent. M and N, the sums of the elements of two gifted cousins Mm and Nn, according to Galton’s formula, can be represented in the following form: M (81 a †9b) (100x20)†90β (100x20)†1t 10, N (81 a †9s) (100x20)†90γ (100x20)†1 n 10. Is it possible, based on these formulas, to prove in any logical way that the talent of Mm and Nn depends precisely on the influence of factor a, that is, their paternal grandparents, and not on b and c or β and γ, that is, the personal properties of their fathers or the personal and generic properties of their mothers? This difficulty in proving the relationship between two people in terms of talent increases and approaches positive impossibility as they become more distant in terms of the degree of physical relationship. Strange in the work of such an apparently impartial scientist as Galton, the extremely strained attempt to declare Newton’s genius hereditary and through the influence of kinship with Newton to explain the talent of the Huttons - represents a kind of reductio ad absurdum of the rule adopted by Galton - to recognize as hereditarily gifted anyone who has outstanding relatives in any line and degree of kinship. Newton's mother was not gifted, nor were her father, mother and sister; but two great-great-grandsons or even great-great-great-grandsons of the latter, the Gettons (in the 7th or 8th degree of kinship with Newton), were gifted; although one of the Gettons was born 95 years after Newton and 10 years after his death, however, both Newton and the Gettons are hereditarily gifted: the same blood flows in their veins, although not in equal quantities (0.4... of it in Newton’s body and 0.036... or even 0.016... in the Gettons, whose family connection with Newton is expressed by the ratio 1:0.09 or 1:0.04). The extent to which this incorrect norm for determining the heredity of talent has exaggerated the percentage of hereditarily talented people can be seen from the following comparison: Thus, of the 224 “famous” people recognized by Galton as hereditarily gifted, only 104 can in fact be considered so; of the remaining 120, 62 people are recognized as having hereditary talent because they have talented descendants in the proper sense of the word, and 58 because they have gifted relatives on the collateral line. At the same time, the percentage of hereditarily gifted persons to the sum of “famous” turns out to be exactly half that indicated by Galton: instead of 49.2% - only 24.6%. This percentage is somewhat lower than the actual percentage, since in its calculation the percentage of gifted people from the class of “political figures” is not taken into account, because the chapter “Men of State” is changed in the Russian translation (p. 86) and on the basis of it it is impossible to determine which political figures are mentioned (p. 243) under the general title of “Lord Chancellors, statesmen under George III and premiers.” Meanwhile, the number of hereditarily talented people in this class is very significant - 64%, so the ratio of people with hereditary talent to the number of “famous” people of all classes fluctuates around 0.268. In any case, the theory of the heredity of talent in the strict sense, with its modern scientific formulation, turns out to be insufficiently firm in the most important thing: the majority of facts are against it, and this is extremely important in all questions that are solved statistically; in the absence of other, more compelling reasons than statistical data, it is difficult to agree to recognize as an essential feature of a certain class of phenomena that feature that is observed in approximately 27 out of 100 cases. But perhaps the theory of heredity of talent (in the precise sense) can be defended from a different point of view using a different method. This theory is based on the idea that talent is the fruit of a high degree of brain culture and mental abilities, unattainable for one generation; the progressive development of mental abilities turned out to be possible precisely because the descendants received from their ancestors abilities at a higher degree of development than the one in which they were born to their ancestors. It is difficult to argue against the validity of this thought when applied to facts of various orders; in the form in which, for example, Carpenter defends it, the theory of the continuity of intellectual culture deserves complete confidence. “Who, for example,” he says, “will refuse to recognize as an innate gift the amazing ability to understand numerical relations, discovered without any training in childhood by Georg Bidder and Zerah Colborne? But who, on the other hand, can believe that Bidder or Colborne could suddenly appear among a tribe of wild ones who cannot count beyond five? Or who can fail to notice in the history of Mozart's earliest years the dawn of that glorious genius whose brilliant but short-lived career left an indelible impression on the art which it enriched? But who will have the courage to assert that the child Mozart could be born among that tribe whose only musical instrument would be a tam-tam and the only song would be a monotonous tune? (Russk. V. 1872. T. 100. P. 795). Perhaps this idea is completely true when applied to talented people of the same race. Between “famous” people there is some difference in the strength of their talent: there are “brilliant” people, whose place, in Galton’s terminology, can be between G -X, and there are only “talented” people who occupy a place between F -G. From the Negro race came L'Ouverture, but the Negroes do not have their Pitt, their Kant or their Humboldt. In the same way, from families that have not declared themselves to be talented, perhaps only “talents” come out, but not “geniuses,” so that the talent of “famous” people in its strength is directly proportional to the sum of their gifted predecessors in their family, or, if one can put it that way, to the amount of heredity. How important it is for defenders of the theory of heredity of talent to justify this assumption with facts, this can already be seen from the fact that Galton carefully distinguishes all the statistical data that confirm this assumption 2. However, this assumption is rather refuted than confirmed by facts. The fact that the most gifted people have the greatest number of distinguished relatives is true only of judges, statesmen and generals, but this class of gifted “men of action” represents exceptions. Thus, Lord Broome, whom Galton points out (p. 38) as such a strong talent that “no combination of circumstances could reduce to the level of imperceptible mediocrity,” cannot properly be recognized as hereditarily gifted, because he has only one outstanding relative in the collateral line in the 4th degree, the brother of his maternal grandfather (Or). Among the most gifted of the “statesmen” Fox (R. O), Sheridan (R. R. O. o) and Peel (R. O) have a brilliant genealogy; not to the same extent as they, but Richelieu, Pitt the Younger and Disraeli justify Galton's remark; the influence of gifted ancestors on Wellington, Rossel and Palmerston, due to the remoteness of kinship, may be questionable; but Cecil, the most gifted of the Guises, Cromwell, Colbert, Pitt the elder, Wilberforce and Canning have no distinguished ancestors. Regarding “commanders,” Galton’s remark turns out to be the most fair. True, the list of commanders who do not have famous or outstanding ancestors includes the names of Philip of Macedon, Belisarius, Wallenstein, Prince Eugene, Marlborough and Wellington, but the list of hereditarily gifted ones includes such stars of the first magnitude as the names of Alexander the Great, Hannibal, Caesar and Napoleon (Caesar and Napoleon had only gifted mothers), - the conqueror of Hannibal, Scipio, and “the greatest of the French marshals of pre-Napoleonic times,” Turenne. But Galton’s observation, expressed three times by him, turns out to be true only with respect to the three mentioned classes of “famous” people; on the contrary, “men of thought” - writers and scientists - then poets and “men of art” represent in general such a deviation from the fact noted by Galton that statistical data regarding famous people of these classes provide sufficient grounds for the conclusion that the most gifted person usually has no predecessors in his surname. This conclusion is quite close to the position of Prosper Lucas: “true genius invariably remains lonely” (Heredity of Talent, p. 251) and represents a sufficient counterbalance to Galton’s observation. The high importance of statistics relating to writers, scientists, poets and artists is quite understandable: their field of activity is more open to competition than any other. In order to demonstrate his abilities as a great statesman, an Englishman must first of all become a member of Parliament, and for this, with the often practiced system of bribing voters, a solid fortune was necessary. In order to become a famous commander, you must first become a commander, and getting this important post without patronage, without strong family ties and an aristocratic name is not possible for every talented military man. This explains the strong predominance of the aristocratic element among statesmen, generals and even judges (p. 28). But such obstacles as humble origins and comparatively insufficient material wealth, which could block a gifted person’s access to success in the political and military fields, do not seem strong enough to block access to fame for a writer, scientist or poet. Consequently, if statesmen or generals, the most famous, at the same time have the most brilliant genealogies with famous names, then the question still remains open whether the number of these aristocratic (and in the sense of hereditary talent) names would not be balanced by the same number of plebeian names, if political and military careers were equally available to people with a famous name and high social position, and to “new people” in the Roman sense of the word. And therefore, regarding the testimony of statistics about famous statesmen and commanders, we have less right than regarding statistical data concerning people of thought and art, we can say: “this is a fact proven by numbers, it cannot be otherwise based on the very essence of the matter,” that is, to draw a conclusion a non-esse ad non-posse. Regarding scientists, Galton notes that the most gifted of them had fathers who were often completely uneducated (p. 166). Indeed, the percentage of the most famous scientists in the list of those without outstanding ancestors is very significant. The most brilliant genealogies are found only in Bacon, Darwin and Celsius, who gave his name to the 100-degree thermometer (R.O.), because Cassini can hardly be considered as famous a scientist as the three above-mentioned; the next place in terms of the strength of heredity of talent belongs to Leibniz (O. R.); Aristotle, Galileo, Napier, the inventor of logarithms, have only outstanding fathers and Buffon and D'Alembert - outstanding mothers. Then the famous astronomers have no outstanding relatives at all: Among the “writers” with hereditary talent, the most famous can be considered 5. Macaulay (P.O.), with whom Gallam or Porson (O.O.) can hardly be compared in degree of fame, and John Stuart Mill (O). Obviously, a conclusion about the strength of their talent based on the number of their gifted predecessors may turn out to be completely erroneous. Do not have gifted ancestors: English writers Defoe, Swift, Stern and Bentham, German – Lessing and Fichte, 3 French - Montesquieu, Rabelais, Voltaire, Rousseau, Champollion and Chateaubriand, Bossuet and Fenelon. This predominance of the non-hereditarily gifted is seen even more fully among poets. Neither of them has a prominent father or grandfather; only Cowper has a distinguished grandfather; Goethe alone has an outstanding mother. The most famous hereditary talents can be considered Goethe, Cowper, Milton and Tasso. Thus, among the non-hereditarily gifted are such celebrities as: and Byron - in English literature, Schiller - in German, Ariost, Dante, Petrarch, Alfieri - in Italian, all French poets, for example, Racine, Corneille, Moliere, Beranger, all Spanish poets, not excluding Cervantes, Calderon and Lope de Vega, Camões is the only representative of Portuguese poets in Galton, all Greek and Roman, such as: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, Plautus, Terence, Virgil, Ovid, Horace and Juvenal. If we compare these data with what statistics present regarding Russian scientists, writers and poets, the similarity will be complete. Lensky (Family and School), having studied, using Galton’s method, the family ties of our literary figures, came to the conclusion that only “outstanding” Russian writers have gifted relatives, and not first-class, “famous” ones. “Famous” artists and musicians, by the very nature of their art, must have not only genius, but also highly developed eyesight or hearing, and such development is hardly possible without the work of several generations. Therefore, great artists and musicians, made doubly dependent by the conditions of their art on the development of their ancestors, apparently should be distinguished by the abundance of famous ancestors. However, this is not entirely fair. True, a family richly gifted with musical talents represents a striking example of the vitality of musical talents, but this example is the only one, and, moreover, the question is whether Sebastian Bach, no matter how high his musical genius, can be considered the same among musicians as Raphael is considered among artists, and whether this place does not belong to Mozart or Beethoven. If this last sentence is true, then there appears to be a remarkable resemblance between the greatest geniuses of the two arts. Raphael does not have a long line of distinguished ancestors, he is the son of “a painter worthy of mention” - “who stood, without a doubt, above mediocrity” - and nothing more. Mozart also does not have a long line of distinguished ancestors, but he is the son of a “famous violinist” who “wrote a lot” (about music? or musical plays?) but Galton does not consider her “famous” in the strict sense. Then Correggio (“a rare example of genius”) and Beethoven do not have outstanding ancestors, the father of Haydn, one of the seven most famous musical geniuses, was not “outstanding,” but, however, was an organist, Father Murillo (“few artists can equal this great Spanish painter in the strength and originality of talent”) was not gifted, but two of his maternal uncles were painters, this gives some, albeit rather shaky, basis conclude that Murillo's mother had at least well-developed vision. True, a conclusion about the nature of artistic genius based on such a limited number of facts will be too arbitrary, but if it can be drawn up, it should have the following form: Great geniuses, like Raphael and Mozart, had relatively talented fathers. This is a positive authority. Such geniuses as Allegri and Beethoven did not have outstanding fathers. This is a negative authority. Such a famous composer as Haydn had a father who was not talented, but nevertheless an organist, that is, a person with a fairly developed musical ear. This trait, with all justice, should be attributed to Mozart’s father and, in that modified form, which is assumed by art itself, to Raphael’s father; it is possible in Murillo's mother and not improbable even in the ancestors of Correggio and Beethoven. This, perhaps, is an instantia cruris on the question of the origin of the greatest geniuses of art. It is incredible that Raphael inherited his genius from his father: in order for nature to move from Giovanni Sanzio to Raphael Sanzio, she had to make a leap, had to, in a certain sense, create the genius of Raphael, as she created the genius of Correggio, Beethoven and Haydn, but in relation to the purely physical perfection of the organs of vision and hearing in Raphael, Beethoven and Haydn, nature entered, perhaps, a higher, but at the same time completely consistent degree of development. In any case, it cannot be said about artists, as well as about writers, that the greatest of them at the same time possess talent, the heredity of which is most obvious. Thus, from the statistical data collected by Galton and constituting - in his opinion - the most solid foundation of his theory, two conclusions unfavorable for the theory of heredity of talent (in the strict sense) follow: 1. About 70% of talented people cannot be recognized as hereditarily gifted, therefore nature in the formation of talent mostly makes leaps, rather than natural transitions from the lowest degree of development to the next highest. 2. Those people whose talent turns out to be the most hereditary are not always the most gifted; on the contrary, genius often manifests itself in a family exabrupto, without any previous phases of talent. Consequently, the theory of the heredity of intellectual culture, since it presupposes the idea of ​​a strictly gradual, progressive, straightforward cultural movement, when applied to particular facts from the life of one race, turns out to be not entirely consistent. Therefore, the theory of the heredity of talent, as talent, as a known, holistic manifestation of the human soul, cannot be considered firmly substantiated until a greater number of facts prove that talent is not hereditary in only 20-30 cases out of 100. However, the proposition that every genius is a son of his time and people is considered a generally known truth; The natural abilities of a person, according to the very concept of innate, are borrowed from parents, and since it is ex nihilo nihil fit and it is impossible to isolate something from nothing, we again come to the assumption of the heredity of talent. But so that the logical result does not contradict the fact, the theory of the heredity of talent must take a different form. When a poet, by the power of his creativity, transforms existing reality into an artistic ideal type full of truth, then it cannot be said that the poetic image does not depend on reality. All elements, the matter of the ideal, are a product of a given place and time, which has a strong influence even on the very combination of elements in the artistic type: Hector the “man-killer” inflicts mortal wounds on the heroes with a sword, a spear, perhaps a heavy stone, but Priamid has nothing at his disposal that would bear even a remote resemblance to a mitrailleuse or even a bayonet. When nature produces a diamond, it does not create a completely new substance, but only modifies one of the ready-made, already existing elements, the internal characteristics of which partially predetermine the very form of the new work of nature: from pure carbon it does not form gold, silver, or ivory, but only diamond. Something similar happens with talent. According to the meaning of the theory of “pangenesis”, “temporary” - in the opinion of its creator, Darwin, every personality is composed of many particles (“gemmules”), which are grouped in a wide variety of ways; the individuality of a person, his character and the measure of his talent depend on the form of these groups. It is assumed that all these particles in their elementary form exist in every person, but not in everyone a certain individual particle has the same strength: in individual A, particle a has a dominant position and, with a group of particles b, c, d, naturally related to a, gives direction to all other combinations of particles, facilitating the possibility of rapprochement for elements more or less related to a, and making it difficult for elements opposite - in other words, gives a person a certain type and then or another direction of its activity; in the individual N, particle a with those similar to it is suppressed, pushed into the background by the predominant influence of particle n and those similar to it. Since every person is the son of two individuals and, therefore, inherits the same elements, but in different combinations from two individuals, then for him there are three identical, if we reason a priori, possibilities: 1. to resemble a father or mother, if the groups of elements inherited from one of the parents receive such a predominance in the son that they are relegated to the background or even decomposed into component parts of the groups inherited from the other; 2. to combine in one’s personality more or less fully the typical characteristics of the father and mother, which is achieved in two ways - either through the struggle between groups of two individuals, in which, so to speak, the weakest groups perish, and the strongest are preserved and, due to their similarity, continue their joint existence in a new individual - or through a complete fusion of the groups of father and mother, through which their strength and dominance over other elements increases; this fusion is possible only when no antagonism is noticed between the characters of the father and mother; and finally 3. does not resemble either father or mother; appear as a completely unique type. This happens when the weight and influence of the group father and mother are exactly the same, and the antagonism between them is so great that the inevitable struggle between them ends in their mutual disintegration. Then, in the new individual, those groups that were relegated to the background in the father and mother receive a predominant influence. This explains the numerous cases of “nature’s play”, when a strong genius appears in a race that has not declared itself to be gifted. Galton explains this “atomistic” theory of the formation of talent, of course, more than he proves it, with various, numerous cases from social life. The logical merit of this theory is exactly the same as that of Herbart's mathematical laws, expressing the relation between consciousness and "representations", that is, if the struggle between elements exists, then it must be accompanied by the results provided for by the "atomistic" theory of the formation of talent; from this side she turns out to be wealthy. As a hypothesis, it has an important advantage over the theory of heredity of talent as a talent, which explains the fact of the origin of talented people from families that have not declared themselves to have high mental development - a fact that, from the point of view of this latter theory, should be recognized as a “game of nature”, an exception to the “general” rule (and statistics show how often nature “plays” in this way and how relatively few cases in which it follows the supposed general rule!) But all this does not yet solve the question of the factual reliability of the Darwin-Galton theory. After all, all this struggle of particles occurs outside the boundaries of human consciousness and observation and enters the realm of empirical reality only through its final result, the fact of the appearance of a gifted personality in the light. Further, the very particles, as a result of the happy grouping of which talent appears, essentially constitute only the unknown x: we cannot yet, having read this theory, name in understandable terms those simplest groups of elements from the happy combination of which into more complex ones genius arises; we know just as little about the law that governs the combinations of elements so that sometimes a descendant is superior to all his ancestors. This depends, however, on the fact that we do not know the essence of the elements, which is why we cannot understand their similarities and opposites, which govern their connection and separation. Finally, this whole hypothesis is based on the assumption that each person has the same elementary particles in quantity and quality. This postulate is nothing more than a petitum principium; it may be inevitable in this hypothesis, just as similar unproven provisions are inevitable in all other hypotheses. In any case, in order to accept this hypothesis, it is necessary to translate “particles” unknown to anyone into psychological language, to prove the dependence of talent on such mental elements and facts that can, with the necessary changes, be transmitted hereditarily to children and the existence of which cannot be denied in persons of little development, but who became the fathers of “outstanding” and “famous” people. It doesn't seem impossible. Talent is a very high degree of mental strength. This sign in the concept of talent is so predominant; in all its discoveries, talent manifests itself to such an extent precisely from this side that all other signs of talent remain in the shadows, and some psychologists consider talent precisely as one of the forms of mental ability. Meanwhile, talent has a very complex nature and depends on mental properties that cannot in any way be subsumed under the category of mental abilities; talent is, so to speak, a focus in which the features of not only mental activity, but the entire personality of a person are collected. Galton, clarifying his view of natural talent, defines it not only as a quality of mind, but also as a quality of character, as a certain degree of energy and endurance in work. The question arises: to what extent is the talent of a famous person explainable from the harmonious combination of these last human properties? One might think that the manifestations of a person’s mental life are most strongly dependent on the make-up of his character. All individual characteristics of a person are noticeably divided into two categories: people differ from each other either in their quantitative or qualitative characteristics. A quantitative sign of a human personality is strength in its unnamed, abstract form, manifested as the power of thought, the power of imagination, the power of will, and so on. By this feature, two individuals who are close to each other in character, upbringing and type of activity, differ from each other. This same aspect is also taken into account in all classifications intended to distribute people according to degrees. The other side of human personality, the one that Galton calls character, is the qualitative or formal side. It is not difficult to see that character not only gives the direction of force, determines the type or form of its activity, predetermines to a certain extent the choice of profession, but determines the very measure of the manifestation of strength and, consequently, the degree of success of a person in his chosen field, just as the color of glass determines the degree of intensity of the ray passing through it, or matter, the color and surface of a heated body determines the amount of heat released by it. The mental power that a person displays in his activities and which determines its degree when classifying people according to their talent, is living force, is a part of the total amount of potential force, released by a person to the extent that this is possible with a given amount of potential force and with a given character. Hence, the importance of the addition that Galton made when revealing his view of natural talent is clear: by supplying energy and endurance in work, qualities that are a natural part of the choleric temperament, an indispensable condition for achieving a high reputation, Galton, as it were, excludes from the circle of gifted people persons with other temperaments, and from a practical point of view, he (Galton) is right. Sanguine people, phlegmagic people and melancholic people do not have the natural ability to express their mental abilities to the extent that choleric people do. What the former gets only with intense labor, lively excitability and stubborn persistence in the implementation of their intentions constitute the natural endowment of the choleric person. Paying further attention to the fact that a very significant majority of English scientists possess these additional qualities of talent of the highest degree, we can with all justice believe that they, modern English scientists, owe a lot of their fame precisely to their extraordinary energy and endurance 4 . From this we can draw the conclusion that a change in even such a general basis of character as temperament, which consists in increasing energy and constancy or moderating the harsh features of the choleric temperament, when it takes a narrow, one-sided direction, with an admixture of sanguine and melancholic elements, must be accompanied by an increase in the mental level of “mediocre” people. In fact, judgment about them is made by the amount of their “living” mental strength, while the amount of their potential strength is in the full sense of terraincognita. Lotze does not consider it possible to deny that the weak receptivity to civilization among the peoples of even the so-called low races depends on their tribal character, on “the difficulty of arousing in them a persistent interest in the benefits of our enlightenment much more than from the complete lack of intelligence necessary for understanding them (Microcosm. Part 3. pp. 119–120 and 137 ff. M, 1867).” It would also be unfair to assert that “mediocrities”, with their mental abilities, even with a change in the natural outline of their character, if this were practically possible, are unable to rise above the level of mediocrity. Lotze's remark can also be applied to these people that the rudeness that distinguishes some of them is a sign of their character and not of their mental abilities, that the poverty of their spiritual life depends at least as much on their weak sensitivity to higher mental interests as on their mental limitations. Experience shows that even they, these people without high mental gifts, in emergency situations are capable of rising to the level of “outstanding” people. In an era of social disasters, says Galton, “people become noticeable who until then did not stand out in any way and who again return to their former way of life as soon as the circumstances that called them to activity have passed. But while there was danger, they were real heroes. They were cool in the face of danger, shrewd in deliberations, cheerful in prolonged hardships, humane in their attitude towards the wounded and sick, and supported courage in the faint-hearted” (Page 48). Even if “the lucky characteristic of their people is to have too elastic nerves”; but it means that under these strong, coarse nerves hides a very significant, untold wealth of potential spiritual forces (and including mental forces: in order to be insightful in meetings, it seems that nerves are required not only strong, but also to a certain extent subtle), if in an era of disasters these people are capable of becoming real heroes. Consequently, the most that can be allowed in judging these individuals is that, given the state of their mental abilities and character, they cannot be recognized as talented, because they have little chance of demonstrating their strengths more fully; but this does not prevent the conclusion that the children of these people, if the mother’s influence has a beneficial effect on their temperament, can become not only outstanding, but also famous people, and the possibility of a happy union of the temperaments of father and mother in a son is recognized by almost everyone. Temperament constitutes the outline for the development of character, its natural basis in the strict sense; but character develops under the influence of yet another natural factor, which represents the historical element in man. These are hereditary habits, the result of the often repeated actions of their ancestors, which made corresponding changes in their nervous system and became their second nature. The possibility of hereditary transmission of habits is recognized by many scientists. The importance of hereditary habits for the entire spiritual life of a person is self-evident: every habit, as Ushinsky puts it, is either capital or debt; the habit of order, combined with a happy temperament, represents an environment that is capable of manifesting mental powers in the purest and fullest form, releasing them in the greatest possible quantity. Habit is the form in which most of the hereditary special qualities of a person are transmitted, and the whole success of a person in a certain profession depends on its combination with a proportionate amount of strength. A priori, it can be assumed that the son of a wonderful gymnast inherits his father’s organization even if he does not inherit his strength; Probably he (the son) will not be able, for example, to lift heavy weights, but agility and flexibility will be his natural qualities. The mental qualities of ancestors are transmitted to descendants in the form of mental habit 5 . This quality represents only a very favorable condition for a person’s mental activity, but is not identical with mental talent. The entire significance of mental habit for a person is limited to the fact that mental labor, which places such a heavy burden on a person exclusively devoted to physical labor, becomes a need and a pleasure; such a person will handle logical techniques with greater dexterity, which still does not give reason to conclude that the results of his mental labor will be especially valuable. Mental habit is one of the most stable mental qualities; once developed to a high degree in one individual, it is transmitted to his descendants with remarkable consistency. It seems that there has never been an example (and if there were such examples, it was, of course, very rare) of the son or grandson of a remarkable person returning to the lifestyle of his ancestors and beginning to live exclusively by physical labor. This phenomenon cannot be explained simply by the fact that this life does not provide those external comforts that are available to the middle class: another question is whether a literary worker who lives by his literary work really enjoys more comfort than a wealthy farmer. The most natural explanation is that the innate inclination towards mental work and pleasure manifests itself so strongly in the descendants of literary celebrities that they prefer the quiet, prosperous life of a farmer or small owner to a life of literary work, which, despite all the anxieties associated with it, already represents mental pleasure in itself. Temperament and habits, and in particular mental habits, are constant factors influencing the mental powers of a person in their manifestation, but the talent of descendants does not depend solely on the constant properties of their ancestors. If this were so, then the degree of talent of members of one family would be subject to almost no fluctuations; all brothers would be equally gifted, and the only deviation from the general norm would be that the younger brothers, born at the time of the highest mental maturity of their parents, would be somewhat more gifted than the elders. However, according to Galton’s calculations, it turns out that out of 250 brothers, only 127 are gifted, and moreover, the older brothers (that is, the older half) have almost twice the chance of becoming famous than the younger ones 6) - a clear sign that a person’s talent is strongly dependent on some changing reason. And since no changes in the external world directly affect the child before his birth, it should be concluded that changes in the psychophysical state of the parents are the only reason for fluctuations in the level of abilities of siblings and the only form in which the external world can influence the abilities of the child. And in fact, if the changes in the body, through which the mental qualities of the parents are transmitted to the children, or the supposed combinations of particles serve, at least in any way, as a true and accurate expression of reality, as it is revealed to our consciousness, then we must assume that the influence of the present mental state of the parents at a given period of time on the abilities of their children should be very great. A person lives in alternation and change of his mental states, and the significance of some of them for a person is so great that he looks at himself from the point of view of these selected states: they become the form of his self-consciousness. A person, of course, very rarely recognizes himself as a being with such and such a temperament, with such and such abilities, but usually thinks of himself as a person who is doing and experiencing at the moment such and such. If not all, then the more constant and intense of these states, especially those which, by their influence, completely suppress the opposite states, must be reflected in the body. Only this can explain those not yet refuted facts of the influence of the mother’s imagination on the child’s organization. It can therefore be assumed that if Newton had had a son in that period preceding the great discoveries, when “immersed in thought, Newton did not know what he was doing, became insensitive to external impressions and ordinary life impulses,” when he, “waking up in the morning, often sat half-naked in bed for most of the day” (Whewell), then no matter how high Newton’s genius was, his son would hardly have been a worthy successor to him name. But if the state of the parents’ mental life in a given period can lower the level of the child’s mental abilities, then the opposite conclusion cannot be avoided: the happy mental mood of the parents should raise the level of their child’s talent. It is undeniable that the same person at one time seems more gifted than at another. Under the influence of happy circumstances, the spiritual mood can take on a brighter color, and then a person feels more energetic, more morally strong; his thought and will reach the highest degree of perfection; in a word, thanks to happy excitement, he begins to release a greater amount of potential force than at other times. It is natural to expect that a son born under such favorable circumstances will inherit an energetic, strong character and such an excess of mental strength that, in general, the result will be a nature incomparably more gifted than that of his father or mother. This happy stimulation of their powers in most cases replaces the successive culture of mental abilities that systematically continues over several generations, which is out of the question, as the parents of the majority of gifted people are referring to 7). Closely related to the question of the influence of the spiritual mood of parents on the talent of children is the question of knowledge of the moral element of marriage, namely mutual love between parents, for their children. An a priori theory that addresses this question resolves it in a positive sense. Schopenhauer and Haeckel (Notes of the Fatherland, 1876, January. The Struggle for Individuality) see love, with its distinctive feature - the desire for the opposite, making up for what is lacking in the properties of one individual - as one of the most powerful means by which nature achieves the improvement of species. “Always (inderRegel), says Haeckel, a new individual has a higher organization than the two from whose fusion he arose.” This is also the general opinion regarding this issue; at least, gifted offspring are not expected from arranged marriages. But the statistics collected by Galton provide too little material to resolve this issue. Galton, who studied the statistical relationships of similarity and contrast between the parents of modern English scientists in terms of physique and even hair color, for some reason left open the question of whether there was a connection between the son’s talent and the mutual love of his parents. From everything that has been said about talent, the conclusion follows that it has a complex nature and represents the result of the interaction of such mental elements that (with the exception of mental habit, which is formed as a result of a more or less long-term culture of mental abilities) equally exist both in the soul of a talented person and in the soul of a “mediocre person.” These conclusions completely coincide with the idea about the nature of talent and its origin that Galton’s hypothesis gives. Any solution to the question of the origin of talent in the sense that talent is not determined by chance, but by the influence of natural causes, whatever these reasons may be, logically leads to a conclusion that is very important in its practical significance. Galton began his work with precisely this practical interest in mind, coupled with solving the question of the heredity of talent in a positive sense. “Just as, notwithstanding various limitations, it is not difficult, by careful selection, to obtain a breed of horse or dog in which speed of running is not an accidental, but a constant quality, so it would be quite feasible to produce a highly gifted race of men by suitable marriages in the course of several generations,” says Galton at the very beginning of his work. And indeed, no matter what formulation is given to the question of the heredity of talent, no matter what natural factors its origin is dependent on - unless these factors are accidental, it depends on the will of a person to put himself in such a position that natural causes will produce natural consequences. This is how we can talk a priori about Galton’s project. This project appears in a different light when it is discussed a posteriori, when the question of its practical implementation at the present time is raised. Galton ends a series of his reflections with the following gloomy tirade: “Thus the race gradually declines, becoming with each successive generation less capable of high civilization, although it retains the external form of the latter until the time comes when the whole political and social machine collapses and a more or less sharp return to barbarism appears in society, during which time the race can be renewed again. The reason for this decline of the race is that “thanks to social conditions, in the old civilization there is a counteraction to the fertility of the able classes”: gifted people have no chance of marrying early: people “famous (grades F and G), firstly, are too few in number for their offspring to have a strong influence on the general level of the race, and secondly, if they have descendants, they become infected with the desire to found families through the marriages of their eldest sons with rich heiresses, that is, women with little chance of fertility - and delayed marriages of younger sons; to this is added the evil of concentrating the best forces of the country in large cities, “where marriages are less fertile and children have less chance of living.” As a result of all these conditions, “the improvident and unenterprising element alone contributes chiefly to the increase of population” (Page 278). It must be admitted that the general idea of ​​this tirade - the idea that at the present time it is difficult to hope for an increase in the general mental level of the race - is fair (whether all evil really depends on social conditions alone is, of course, another question). In fact, if the elevation of the race should consist in increasing the percentage of talented people, then it can be achieved in two ways: for this it is necessary either to create gifted people who will appear as homines novi into the world of talents, or to take them from existing aristocratic (in the sense of talent) clans, in other words, it is necessary either to constantly replenish the ranks of gifted people with talents coming from the genus of “mediocrity”, or to maintain fertility in the clans that have declared yourself with talent. The first example is not essentially impossible. Too 70% of famous people are homines novi. But, given the current state of our knowledge, this method is absolutely impracticable - it is impossible to apply it to the case with confidence that even 1% of the published number of experiments will give the desired, brilliant result. It is still impossible to identify with any precision all those elements, those simplest psychological qualities, the interactions of which form talent; the less it is possible to determine - so to speak - the reaction of these elements, so that everything that one individual lacks is filled with the properties of another, that is, to arrange a completely rational, completely appropriate marriage. The chemistry of talent, if it is possible to use such a combination of words, is still in an infantile, not to say embryonic, state, and the only measure that, given the given state of knowledge and with the presumed good consent of all members of real human societies, could be applied to the matter with confidence in success, could be rather negative than positive: it could consist of arranging only such marriages regarding which it cannot be said with a high probability that they will lead to bad consequences. Of course, from this measure one should expect not the emergence of talents or geniuses, but only a slight increase in the general level of abilities, although this result is very important. In general, this (first) method of elevating the race, if only the knowledge of the nature of talent is destined to develop and if the reasons that gave rise to 70% of talented individuals are ever brought into sufficient clarity, has a brighter prospect than the second, and for increasing the contingent of talented people has approximately the same importance as the grafting of fruitful trees for the development of horticulture. The second method of raising the race, the method projected by Galton, seems to have a great advantage over the first. If we agree that the figure 28 correctly means the percentage of undoubtedly hereditarily talented among the “famous” people of each country, then we find 8 that in England a man of 20-60 years of age of classes F – X has the chances of producing a “famous” son, expressed by the ratio 1: 62.32 (28: 1745), while the chances of a man of classes A – E are equal to 1: 4.881.13 (72:3.514.420), that is, a talented Englishman is 78.32 times more likely to become the father of a “famous” person than a “mediocre” one. This statistical indication is supported by the consideration that a gifted person has the opportunity to transmit to his son a mental habit in the highest sense of the word, which most “mediocrities” (classes A, B and even C) cannot develop. But all these bright hopes which the thought of carrying out a second project for the improvement of the race might excite, are dashed by two circumstances. Firstly, Galton is unable to resolve a simple question: is it fair and to what extent is it fair that men and women gifted with unusual genius are sterile (Page 249)? Although, however, he agrees that “there is no doubt that very many talented people did not have offspring.” Meanwhile, some writers solve the question posed in a positive sense and, it seems, not without reason, point out the reason for the infertility of gifted individuals not in external circumstances (for example, the desire to found families), which can be eliminated one way or another, but in the unchangeable law of nature. “The law of balance between the nervous and sexual functions is confirmed by the facts of comparative physiology...” This “universal law of life can be formulated as follows: the degree of fertility changes in inverse proportion to the development of the nervous system, so that animals with more brains are the least, and those with less are the most fertile... Nothing related to the present question has been established with such certainty as the general antagonism between the nervous and reproductive systems. During intense mental activities, which absorb a lot of nervous element, not many germ cells are formed... People who are heavily engaged in mental activity are generally infertile in childbearing... The facts themselves suggest that the suppression of families is closely related to the high development of mental abilities. Of the 15 people who held the presidency in the United States, seven were childless, and the number of all children was up to 20. The same phenomena are repeated everywhere. Napoleon, Washington, the Foxes, the Pitts, and other remarkable men, as if by rule, did not leave behind children to fill the gap left by their death... Commercial activity is equally unfavorable for the continuation of the race, as is scientific and political activity” (Carey, A Guide to Social Science, pp. 567–578). Secondly, Galton bases his project for the elevation of the race on the supposed possibility of strengthening in a certain family the high abilities of an ancestor “by means of corresponding marriages over several generations,” meanwhile, if we, “taking as the basis of calculation the rule that population is renewed 3 times in 100 years” (p. 261), 33 1 3 years - for the highest period of maturity, and the arbitrarily taken year 1600 for starting point of chronology, let us present in chronological order part of the comparative table (p. 239) compiled by Galton, we will find the following: In 1600, a group of 400 men had one very talented person among them. In 1634, 200 men married to 200 women, the sons and daughters of the previous ones, had 8 very talented individuals among them. In 1666, the children of the previous ones, 100 men and 100 women, had 31 gifted members among them. In 1700 there were 250 men, sons of the previous ones, of which 127 were gifted. 1734 100 people, children of the most gifted part of the previous ones, have among themselves 48 gifted individuals. 1766 200 people: 7 of them were gifted. 1800 400 men, descendants of the previous ones, have in their midst - 1 gifted person. Thus, the culture of mental abilities, which lasted two hundred years, gave far from brilliant results. The percentage of gifted men (1/4%) in 1600 and 1800 is exactly the same. Galton explains the increase in percentage until 1700 and the decrease from 1700 by corresponding marriages in the first period and inconsistent marriages in the last period; but the validity of this explanation is subject to strong doubt. There is no doubt that members of this family who lived after 1700, when it produced such a significant contingent of talented and “famous” individuals, had incomparably more chances of entering into appropriate marriages than members who lived before 1700. True, the former could be “infected with the desire to found families” and marry rich heiresses; but 1) this is only a possibility, 2) not all heiress are necessarily infertile, 3) their infertility should adversely affect the number, and not the mental abilities, of children; in order for the latter assumption to remain logical, it must be assumed that the mental abilities of these heiresses were very low if their influence so quickly paralyzed the results of more than 100 years of successively continued intellectual culture, which should significantly strengthen talent of this kind; but is it likely that the descendants of famous people of 1700 were so morally stupid that they could decide on such marriages? The fact becomes incomparably clearer if we begin to look for its causes not in the social “conditions of the old civilization,” but in the very influence of talent on the human body. Both the comparative sterility of gifted people and the amazing decrease in the percentage of gifted people in a race famous for its talent are explained by the same law of conservation of strength. If the soul is a parasite of our body, then of course nowhere is it found on this side so strongly as in people of genius. The amount of juice absorbed by intense mental activity must be quite significant. This waste of energy, which is unproductive in relation to the body, does not always, however, reveal disastrous consequences for the body; Many English scientists present factual proof of the compatibility of a sound mind with a sound body, but there seems to be much more logical truth on the side of those who consider the famous “mens sana in corpore sano” an ideal that is rarely realized in real life 9 . In fact, it is reliably known that some, probably very many, famous people maintained their bodies only through a strictly dietary lifestyle (for example, Pascal, D'Alembert, Laplace), some became victims of their passionate attachment to their subject (for example, Euler, Chladni, Jung, Lagrange, Malus, Huygens, Fresnel 10 ), and finally, some famous people brought their bodies to such exhaustion that their mental strength apparently weakened (Kant, Huygens and Humboldt). All these facts serve as a sign that talent can be accompanied by such a waste of energy that the remainder is barely enough to support the self-existence of brilliant people. It is clear that the son of such a brilliant person has a much greater chance of receiving his father’s talent than a strong, healthy body. Meanwhile, with a strong hereditary inclination towards mental work, the children of gifted people usually develop earlier than their parents, that is, their (children’s) talent begins to deplete their strength before they reach a certain strength, and thus the children of great people often have to choose between two outcomes: either develop mentally, in danger of completely depleting the supply of organic strength, or limit their impulses to mental pursuits, which is not always feasible in practice. The first alternative can lead to two consequences: a gifted person will either have no offspring at all, or his influence on the nature of the children will be too weak and therefore will be suppressed by the influence of their stronger, although less gifted mother, and thus their mental level will decrease. From this it is clear that the analogy between the formation of a highly gifted race and the artificial improvement of animal breeds cannot be called particularly successful. Anyone who sets out to breed a breed, for example, of dogs equally fat and fast, can hardly count on sure success; and he who intends to produce a highly gifted race of men has a task no less difficult. Therefore, those means that people who breed new breeds of animals use with such success do not promise sure success in their application to humans. According to Galton, a marriage is “appropriate” when both husband and wife come from the same race (tribe), 11 have the same physique, even hair color, much less temperament, and are equally talented. This remedy can help ensure that the groups of elements of the father and mother will be similar and therefore, without particularly strong antagonism, will become part of the body of their child; but this measure can also lead to the suppression of the talent of families, because it fans the flame of genius into a destructive fire. In order to preserve talented families, sometimes, and perhaps very often, it is necessary to resort to the opposite measure, that is, to take care only to cover with an admixture of healthy elements the deficit in bodily strength that occurred as a result of the high development of talents in the famous representatives of these families, and such a measure almost inevitably leads to a decrease in the mental level of the members of these families. Thus, the wave-like fluctuation in the level of talent, evidenced by statistics (p. 239), is probably a completely normal phenomenon in families that, through the extraordinary development of talent, have not doomed themselves to extinction. Despite, however, the fact that statistical data do not justify the assumption that talent develops progressively, being transmitted from ancestors to descendants, there is still no reason to assert that the general level of talent of a certain people remains unchanged. Nothing can be said against the validity of the assumption that “ad nihilum nihil fit.” Consequently, it cannot be asserted that the development of mental talents, once achieved, the mental habit once acquired, disappears completely without a trace, while the progressive, rapid development of talent in a famous family causes a lasting reaction. True, only 1/4% of the great-grandchildren of gifted representatives of famous families turn out to be gifted, but one cannot ignore the fact that a whole century separates their glorious ancestors and two whole centuries from their ancestors. Consequently, if the percentage of gifted people in a certain society turns out to be the same in 1600 and 1800, then one cannot conclude with complete confidence that the people of the 18th century are no higher in their talents than the representatives of the 16th century. The only scale available to us is reputation; and this scale does not remain identical, but, on the contrary, itself changes over the centuries, and, perhaps, the one who even in the 16th century. occupied a place in category F in the 18th century. would hardly stand out from the ranks of representatives of the E category. In any case, judging the comparative talent of persons separated by centuries is as difficult as determining the general rise in the level of a large field produced by years. The doctrine of the heredity of talent still cannot be considered firmly based on obvious facts. True, after Galton’s research it is impossible, without going into dialectical subtleties, to answer negatively to the question: is talent hereditary? But the statistical data collected are in any case not sufficient to answer in the affirmative the question of whether talent is hereditary, when this question is posed without any explanation or restrictions. The facts of the obvious heredity of talent stand alone, out of connection with the ordinary course of human life, and are more than balanced by facts of a different nature. But it is not firm enough when the data of experience are recognized as its only basis, the doctrine of the heredity of talent is strong in its logical side, in its connection with the fact of the difference between people according to their natural gifts, when the very doctrine of the heredity of talent is proposed in the form in which Galton sets it out in the final chapter of his first work, and thus enters as a part into the whole into the doctrine of the heredity of mental properties in general. Thus, to recognize reputation as a measure of talent and assume the opposite proposition: “Whoever does not have the reputation of a talented person does not have talent” means to draw the conclusion a non-esse ad non-posse. The position that gifted people certainly achieve fame despite any unfavorable circumstances (Pages 43 and 38) is essentially just an assumption, very close to the conclusion a posse ad esse. On the contrary, it is very likely - at least there is no factual basis in favor of the opposite opinion - that such a strong talent as Newton’s would not have emerged if an accidental insult inflicted on him by a comrade had not awakened his (Newton’s) energy, and would have died out amid unfavorable external circumstances if his uncle had not sent him to the university (Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences. 2 vols. Littrow’s Note. p. 773). Of 191, 11 modern English scientists admit that the motive that determined their career is a happy accident, and 99 are external favorable circumstances (Family and School. December. pp. 282–283. Extract from Englishmen of science, their nature and nurture). The indication that the nephews of the cardinals did not become famous despite external support (Heredity of talent, p. 42) cannot yet serve as an instantia crucis on the question of the significance of external favorable circumstances for the formation of talent: external support and social advantages cannot be a favorable circumstance for all people, not for every temperament. The mathematician Lagrange, the son of a count, considered the reason for his happiness that his father was ruined and he had to work. “If I had a fortune,” he said, I would not like mathematics, perhaps I would not even learn it” (Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences. 2 vols. Page 785). Even the fact that a man, after many vain efforts with a competitor who is supposed to be happier in his natural gifts, himself admits his mental weakness in comparison with his rival, does not exclude the logical possibility of the assumption that this difference is the result of influences not corresponding to the natural characteristics (temperament) of this person, or of the assumption that he is fighting in a different field of mental activity to which he is called. Tredyakovsky declared himself a mediocre scholar, but do we have the right to conclude that, under more favorable circumstances, he would not have been, for example, a gifted philologist or archaeologist? The names of Aristotle, Bacon, Leibniz, Fichte and Mill are the names of the entire philosophical character in Galton's work; We do not find other names, famous in the history of philosophy, in Galton’s work, either in the chapter “Scientists” or in the chapter “Writers”. This seems rather strange: Galton states that it is difficult for him to choose “famous” writers and scientists, that he (Galton), in order to avoid long explanations of the reasons why famous persons were included in his list, chose mainly such “famous” scientists and writers about whom the fame was still well preserved in England. But regarding philosophers (and Galton also included them in his list, p. 137, although this name is applied to Boyle, and Newton, and Franklin, and even Davy), it cannot be said that the choice of the most famous of them could be especially difficult; on the other hand, are the names of Locke and Hume or Auguste Comte so little known in England that they had to be excluded from the list of “famous writers” in order to avoid lengthy explanations? Meanwhile, if Galton’s repertoire of philosophical names had been more complete, then the percentage of “famous” hereditarily gifted writers would undoubtedly have decreased. It is known about Descartes and Hume from Galton’s work itself that they are not among those with hereditary talent. Page 244. Whewell (History of the Inductive Sciences. Vol. 2. p. 238) reports the following interesting fact: “Newton did not notice any difference between himself and other people and saw only his habit of stubborn firmness and constant vigilance. When asked how he made his discoveries, he answered: “by constantly thinking about them”; and another time he expressed that, if he did anything, he owed this solely to mental diligence and patience. “I constantly keep the subject of my research in my mind,” he says, “and patiently wait until the barely dawning morning light gradually and little by little turns into “It is impossible to form a clearer idea of the nature of that mental tension through which he brings into play the fullness of his powers,” explains Whewell, “but these powers of the mind themselves are very different from person to person.” This is fair, but the question is whether such a person will endure the role of waiting until the end and whether he will not mentally fall asleep at his observation post. This term is borrowed from Carpenter, who, however, does not clearly indicate the relationship of mental habit to mental strength or ability. “Acquired habits of mind,” says Carpenter, “are often implanted in the organization of man with sufficient force and constancy that they may be transmitted to posterity as tendencies toward a similar frame of mind. Knowledge, as everyone admits, cannot pass in this way from one generation to another, but an enhanced capacity (?) for acquiring knowledge in general, or some special kind of knowledge, can be inherited." These inclinations and faculties will acquire new strength, extensibility, and constancy in every new generation...” “When any state of mind, by no means innate, has been frequently repeated,” writes Mill, “the mind acquires, as is proved by the faculty of habit, a greatly increased power of coming into that state, and this power must depend on some change in the physical character of the organic activity of the brain... Such an acquired ability to a certain state of brain activity can be transmitted through inheritance” (Russian Bulletin G. 100. pp. 793–794). This last conclusion applies specifically to English scientists (Family and School). “A healthy, active father, a healthy mother with an energetic character, all of whose mental and physical forces are directed towards achieving some high goal - these are for the most part the parents of a genius” (Comb. Family and School. January). The calculation was made on the basis of page 34 of “Heredity of Talent”. K. D. Ushinsky was also a defender of this view. All examples given are selected from Littrow's notes to the History of the Inductive Sciences. All biographical sketches – 17; in 10 there is evidence of the parasitism of talent. Galton, in his second work, showed that the talent of a writer who comes from one race is higher than the talent of one who comes from a mixed race. This seems to be true only for English, Scottish and Irish writers (out of 180 writers, only 3-4 are of mixed blood). This cannot be said about Russian historical figures. Lensky (Family and School) examined the genealogy of 46 of our writers, and among this number there were 13 people of mixed blood (28.26%); Among these latter there are the names of not only minor writers (Kantemir, Kapnist, Khemnitser, Delvig, etc.), but even such celebrities as Fonvizin, Karamzin, Zhukovsky, Pushkin (the last three are not even of a purely Caucasian race), Lermontov and Turgenev. The famous Suvorov should be called Suvara. Even Peter I on his mother’s side is a descendant of the Englishman Hamilton.