106 NATURAL INHERITANCE.
[CRA P.
joint effect of all of them is to weaken the original alcoholic strength in a constant ratio.
The law of Regression tells heavily against the full hereditary transmission of any gift. Only a few out of many children would be likely to differ from mediocrity so widely as their Mid-Parent, and still fewer would differ as widely as the more exceptional of the two Parents. The more bountifully the Parent is gifted by nature, the. more rare will be his good fortune if he begets a son who is as richly endowed as himself, and still more so if he has a son who is endowed yet more largely. But the law is even-handed ; it levies an equal succession-tax on the transmission of badness as of goodness. If it discourages the extravagant hopes of a gifted parent that his children will inherit all his powers ; it no less discountenances extravagant fears that they will inherit all his weakness and disease.
It must be clearly understood that there is nothing in these statements to invalidate the general doctrine that the children of a gifted pair are much more likely to be gifted than the children of a mediocre pair. They merely express the fact that the ablest of all, the children of a few gifted pairs is not likely to be as gifted as the ablest of all the children of a very great many mediocre pairs.
The constancy of the ratio of Regression, whatever may be the amount of the Mid-Parental Deviation, is now seen to be a reasonable law which might have been foreseen. It is so simple in its relations that I have
