"The upshot of it all," Dr. Woods decides, "is that, as regards intellectual life, environment is a totally inadequate explanation. If it explains certain characters in certain instances, it always fails to explain many more, while heredity not only explains all, or at least 90%, of the intellectual side of character in practically every instance, but does so best when questions of environment are left out of discussion."
Despite the good environment almost uniformly present, the geniuses in royalty are not scattered over the surface of the pedigree chart, but form isolated little groups of closely related individuals. One centers in Frederick the Great, another in Queen Isabella of Spain, a third in William the Silent, and a fourth in Gustavus Adolphus. Furthermore, the royal personages who are conspicuously low in intellect and morality are similarly grouped. Careful study of the circumstances shows nothing in the environment that would produce this grouping of genius, while it is exactly what a knowledge of heredity leads one to expect.
In the next place, do the superior members of royalty have proportionately more superior individuals among their close relatives, as was found to be the case among the Americans in the Hall of Fame? A count shows at once that they do. The first six grades all have about an equal number of eminent relatives, but grade 7 has more while grade 8 has more than grade 7, and the geniuses of grade 10 have the highest proportion of nearer relatives of their own character. Surely it cannot be supposed that a relative of a king in grade 8 has on the average a much less favorable environment than a relative of a king in grade 10. Is it not fair, then, to assume that this relative's greater endowment in the latter case is due to heredity?
Conditions are the same, whether males or females be considered. The royal families of Europe offer a test case because for them the