THE INHERITANCE OF MENTAL ABILITY in 



readers will recall in this connection the much quoted lines of 

 Goethe: 



" Vom Vater hab'ich die Statur, 



Des Lebens ernstes Fiihren: 

 Vom Miitterchen die Frohnatur 



Und Lust zu fabuliren. 



Urahnherr war der Schonsten hold, 



Das spukt so hin und wieder. 

 Urahnfrau liebte Schmuck und Gold, 



Das zuckt wohl durch die Glieder. 



Sind nun die Elemente nicht 



An dem Complex zu trennen; 

 Was ist denn an dem ganzen Wicht 



Original zu nennen?" 



A number of investigators have come to the conclusion that 

 superior intellectual ability as well as a number of special talents 

 are transmitted as recessive characters. Hurst considers musical 

 ability recessive, and Davenport from a study of numerous 

 family records draws the same conclusion in regard to artistic 

 ability, literary ability, mechanical skill, calculating ability and 

 memory, all of which are held to be "unit characters that may 

 occur in any combination." 



A careful consideration of the evidence adduced by Hurst and 

 Davenport fails to convince me that the traits mentioned are 

 recessive, and I am very decidedly of the opinion that they 

 cannot be considered as unit characters in the usual sense of 

 this term. It is not denied that Mendel's law holds for the 

 transmission of mental as well as physical characteristics, but it is 

 not proven that mental peculiarities are inherited in accordance 

 with any simple Mendelian ratio. Neither is the evidence satis- 

 factory that superior ability of various kinds is recessive to the 

 normal condition. Such a conclusion is improbable a priori from 

 what we know of the transmission of mental defect. If feeble- 



