We only arrive at the crucial question when we ask: Have the characters of the parents of men of genius been of such an obviously unfavourable kind that eugenically they would nowadays be dissuaded from propagation, or under a severe _regime_ of compulsory certificates (the desirability of which I am far indeed from assuming) be forbidden to marry? Have the parents of genius belonged to the "unfit"? That is a question which must be answered in the affirmative if this objection to eugenics has any weight. Yet so far as I know, none of those who have brought forward the objection have supported it by any evidence of the kind whatever. Thirty years ago Dr. Maudsley dogmatically wrote: "There is hardly ever a man of genius who has not insanity or nervous disorder of some form in his family." But he never brought forward any evidence in support of that pronouncement. Nor has anyone else, if we put aside the efforts of more or less competent writers--like Lombroso in his _Man of Genius_ and Nisbet in his _Insanity of Genius_--to rake in statements from all quarters regarding the morbidities of genius, often without any attempt to authenticate, criticise, or sift them, and never with any effort to place them in due perspective.[1] It so happens that, some years ago, with no relation to eugenic considerations, I devoted a considerable amount of attention to the biological characters of British men of genius, considered, so far as possible, on an objective and impartial basis.[2] The selection, that is to say, was made, so far as possible, without regard to personal predilections, in accordance with certain rules, from the _Dictionary of National Biography_. In this way one thousand and thirty names were obtained of men and women who represent the flower of British genius during historical times, only excluding those persons who were alive at the end of the last century. What proportion of these were the offspring of parents who were insane or mentally defective to a serious extent? If the view of Maudsley--that there is "hardly ever" a man of genius who is not the product of an insane or nervously-disordered stock--had a basis of truth, we should expect that in one or other parents of the man of genius actual insanity had occurred in a very large proportion of cases; 25 per cent. would be a moderate estimate. But what do we find? In not 1 per cent. can definite insanity be traced among the parents of British men and women of genius. No doubt this result is below the truth; the insanity of the parents must sometimes have escaped the biographer's notice. But even if we double the percentage to escape this source of error, the proportion still remains insignificant.