The anti-eugenic argument on this point, whenever any argument is brought forward, consists in pointing to all sorts of men of genius and of talent who, it is alleged, were poor citizens, physical degenerates the prey of all manner of constitutional diseases, sometimes candidates for the lunatic asylum which they occasionally reached. The miscellaneous data which may thus be piled up are seldom critically sifted, and often very questionable, for it is difficult enough to obtain any positive biological knowledge concerning great men who died yesterday, and practically impossible in most cases to reach an unquestionable conclusion as regards those who died a century or more ago. Many of the most positive statements commonly made concerning the diseases even of modern genius are without any sure basis. The case of Nietzsche, who was seen by some of the chief specialists of the day, is still really quite obscure. So is that of Guy de Maupassant. Rousseau wrote the fullest and frankest account of his ailments, and the doctors made a _post-mortem_ examination. Yet nearly all the medical experts--and they are many--who have investigated Rousseau's case reach different conclusions. It would be easy to multiply indefinitely the instances of great men of the past concerning whose condition of health or disease we are in hopeless perplexity. This fact is, however, one that, as an argument, works both ways, and the important point is to make clear that it cannot concern us. No eugenic considerations can annihilate the man of genius when he is once born and bred. If eugenics is to stamp out the man of genius it must do so before he is born, by acting on his parents. Nor is it possible to assume that if the man of genius, apart from his genius, is an unfit person to procreate the race, therefore his parents, not possessing any genius, were likewise unfit to propagate. It is easy to find persons of high ability who in other respects are unfit for the ends of life, ill-balanced in mental or physical development, neurasthenic, valetudinarian, the victims in varying degrees of all sorts of diseases. Yet their parents, without any high ability, were, to all appearance, robust, healthy, hard-working, commonplace people who would easily pass any ordinary eugenic tests. We know nothing as to the action of two seemingly ordinary persons on each other in constituting heredity, how hypertrophied intellectual aptitude comes about, what accidents, normal or pathological, may occur to the germ before birth, nor even how strenuous intellectual activity may affect the organism generally. We cannot argue that since these persons, apart from their genius, were not seemingly the best people to carry on the race, therefore a like judgment should be passed on their parents and the germs of genius thus be stamped out.