probabilities, we should form only conditional
judgments. It would be the fate of this problem, as it hath been of many
others, to be resolvable only by the assistance of the calculation of
probabilities."

Helvetius, on the question "whether genius ought to be considered as a
natural gift, or as an effect of education," says:--

"I am going to examine in this discourse what the mind receives from
nature and education; for which purpose it is necessary first, to
determine what is here meant by the word Nature. This word may raise in
our minds a confused idea of a being or a force that has endued us with
all our senses: now the senses are the sources of all our ideas. Being
deprived of our senses, we are deprived of all the ideas relative to
them: a man born blind has for this reason no idea of colors; it is then
evident that, in this signification, genius ought to be considered as
a gift of nature. But, if the word be taken in a different acceptation,
and we suppose that among the men well formed and endued with all their
senses, without any perceivable defect of their organization, nature
has made such a remarkable difference, and formed such an unequal
distribution of the intellectual powers, that one shall be so organized
as to be stupid, and the other be a man of genius, the question will
become more delicate. I confess that, at first, we cannot consider the
great inequality in the minds of men, without admitting that there is
the same difference between them as between bodies, some of which are
weak and delicate, while others are strong and robust. What can
here occasion such variations from the uniform manner wherein nature
operates? This reasoning, it is true, is founded only on analogy. It is
like that of the astronomers who conclude that the moon is inhabited,
because it is composed of nearly the same matter as our earth.--How weak
soever this reasoning may be, it must yet appear demonstrative; for,
say they, to what cause can be attributed the great disproportion of
intellects observable between people who appear to have had the same
education! In order to reply to this objection, it is proper first
to inquire, whether several men can, strictly speaking, have the same
education; and for this purpose to fix the idea included in the word
Education. If by education we merely understand that received in the
same places, and under the same masters; in this sense the education is
the same with an infinite number of