intrusion of social influences into the course of
physical heredity. Bourget's Cosmopolis is a picture of the influence
of social race characteristics on natural heredity, with the reaction
of natural heredity again upon the new social conditions.

A speech of a character of Balzac's is to the point, as illustrating a
certain appreciation of these social considerations which we all to a
degree entertain. The Duchesse de Carigliano says to Madame de
Sommervieux: "I know the world too well, my dear, to abandon myself to
the discretion of a too superior man. You should know that one may
allow them to court one, but marry them--that is a mistake! Never--no,
no. It is like wanting to find pleasure in inspecting the machinery of
the opera instead of sitting in a box to enjoy its brilliant
illusions." To be sure, we do not generally deliberate in this wise
when we fall in love; but that is not necessary, since our social
environment sets the style by the kind of intangible deliberation
which I have called judgment and fitness. Suppose a large number of
Northern advocates of social equality should migrate to the Southern
United States, and, true to their theory, intermarry with the blacks.
Would it not then be true that a social theory had run athwart the
course of physiological descent, leading to the production of a
legitimate mulatto society? A new race might spring from such a purely
psychological or social initiation.

While not agreeing, therefore, with the theory which makes the genius
independent of the social movement--least of all with the doctrine
that physical heredity is uninfluenced by social conditions--the hero
worshipper is right, nevertheless, in saying that we can not set the
limitations of the genius on the side of variations toward high
intellectual endowment. So if the general position be true that he is
a variation of some kind, we must look elsewhere for the direction of
those peculiar traits whose excess would be his condemnation. This we
can find only in connection with the other demand that we make of the
ordinary man--the demand that he be a man of good judgment. And to
this we may now turn.

_The Judgment of the Genius._--We should bear in mind in approaching
this topic the result which follows from the reciprocal character of
social relationships. No genius ever escapes the requirements laid
down for his learning, his social heredity. Mentally he is a social
outcome, as well as are the fellows