Where Geniuses Come From.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVI, Issue XXI, 25 May 1901, Page 986

Where Geniuses Come From.

Some surprising researches by Mr Havelock Ellis are summarised in the "Monthly Review” for April. Mr Ellis says that the districts of Great Britain which are the most fertile in intellectual ability are maritime districts. He has compiled great lists of our eminent men and analysed them in almost every possible way, even taking into consideration their ancestors for three or four generations, with their birthplaces. Norfolk “stands clearly at the head of English counties in the production of eminent men. In absolute numerical value it nearly equals Yorkshire, though the latter county is nearly three times its size.” The eastern focus of genius has produced Bacon, Nelson, Gilbert, Chaucer, Newton, and Darwin. Many great statesmen and churchmen, ami nearly half the British musical composers and more than a third of our great painters come from this region. "When we turn to the south-western foeus of English genius we find ourselves among people of different mental texture. They constitute a smaller group numeriealiy, and in positive intellectual achievement also they cannot be compared with the slow and patient people of East Anglia. "They are sailors rather than soldiers, and courtiers, perhaps, rather than statesmen. “Raleigh, on both sides a Devonshire man. is the complete type of these people. "This district has alone furnished a third of the great sailors of Britain, and the most brilliant group, with Drake and Hawkins and Gilbert as well as Raleigh.”