OCR Rendition - approximate

Hereditary Talent and Character. 319 no account whatever f one-half of the . hereditary influence that form the nature of the child iffy particular method of inquiry lid 'not admit of regard being paid , to the influences transmitted by the mother, whether they had strengthened or weakened those transmitted by the father. Lastly, though, the talent and character of both of the parents might, in any particular case, be of a remarkably noble order, and thoroughly congenial, yet they would necessarily have such mongrel antecedents that it 14vould be absurd to expect their childreri *to invariably equal them in their] natural endowments. The, law of atavism prevents it. When we estimate A its true importance this accumulation of impediments in the way of the sonjof a distinguished father rivalling his parent-the mother being selected, as it were, athaphazar(lwe° cannot but feel amazed at the number, of instances in which a successful rivalship has occurred. Eight per cent. is as large a proportion as could have been expected on. the most stringent hypothesis of hereditary transmi8sion. No one, I think, can doubt, from the facts and analogies 1 have brought forward, that, if talented men were mated with talented women, of the same mental and physical characters as themselves, generation after generation, we might 'produce a highly-bred human race, with no more tendency to revert to meaier ancestral types than is shown by our long-established breeds of race-horses and foxhounds. It may be said that, even granting the validity of my ar be impossible to carr into practical effect. we divided the risin two castes, A and B, selected for natural gi refuse, then, supposi confined within the to which each indivi might be objected that differentiate our race create a good and a should "not improve th I reply that this is b necessary result. Ther I very important law to be brought into play. Any agency, however 'indirect, that would somewhat hasten the nmarriages in caste A, and retard those in caste B, would result in a larger proportion of children being born to A than to B, and would end by wholly eliminating B, and replacing it by A. Let us take a definite case, in order to give precision to our ideas. We Will suppose the population to be, in the first instance, stationary ; A and B to he equal in numbers ; and the children of each married pair who survive to maturity to be rather more than 2i in the case of A, and rather less than 1 ) in the case of B. This no extravagant hypothesis. Half the population of the British Isles are born of mothers under the age of thirty years. The result in the first generation would be that the total population would be unchanged, but that only onethird part of it would consist of the children of B. In the second generation, the descendants of B would be reduced to two-ninths of their original numbers, but, the total population would begin to. increase, owing to the greater preponderance of the prolific caste A. At this point the law of natural selection would powerfully assist in the substitution of caste A for caste B, by pressing heavily on the minority of weakly and incapable men. The customs that affect the direction and date of marriages are already numerous. In many families, marriages between cousins are discouraged and checked. Marriages, in other respects appropriate, are very commonly deferred, through prudential considerations. If it was generally felt that intermarriages between A and B were as unadvisable as they are supposed to be between cousins, and that marriages in A ought to be hastened, on the ground of prudential considerations, while those in B ought to . ho discouraged and retarded, then, I,believe, we should have agencies amply sufficient to eliminate 11 in a few generations. I hence conclude that the improvement of the breed of mankind is no r uments, it would their indications For instance, if generation into of which A was ts, and B was the g marriage ,vas ale of the caste ual belonged,q it we should simply that we should ad caste, but we race as a whole. y no means the remains another 0