xix HEREDITY 381 



offspring must on the whole be the more mediocre than 

 the stature of their parents that is to say, more near 

 to the median stature of the general population." "Each 

 peculiarity in a man -is shared by his kinsmen, but on 

 the average in a less degree. It is reduced to a definite 

 fraction of its amount, quite independently of what its 

 amount might be. The fraction differs in different orders 

 of kinship, becoming smaller as they are more remote." 



Yet it must not be supposed that the value of a good 

 stock is under-estimated by Galton, for he shows how the 

 offspring of two ordinary members of a gifted stock will 

 not regress like the offspring of a couple equal in gifts 

 to the former, but belonging to a poorer stock, above the 

 average of which they have risen. 



Yet the fact of regression tells against the full trans- 

 mission of any signal talent. Children are not likely to 

 differ from mediocrity so widely as their 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 



m/ 



son who is endowed 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 hope 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." 



The study of individual inheritance, as in Galton's 

 Hereditary Genius, may tend to develop an aristocratic 

 and justifiable pride of race when a gifted lineage is 

 verifiable for generations. It may lead to despair if the 

 records of family diseases be subjected to investigation. 



But the study of social inheritance is at once more 

 democratic and less pessimistic. The nation is a vast 

 fraternity, with an average towards which the noble 

 tend, but to which the offspring of the under-average as 

 surely approximate. 



The importance of this consideration may be more 

 readily appreciated if we take an actual case from Professor 

 Karl Pearson's Grammar of Science. 



