176 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



hands of the unfortunate children whose inheritance was necessarily 

 mental weakness as the result of such unwise wedlocks. 



Without taking up the characters separately we need only look at 

 the chart to get a clear idea of the predetermined cause which lead 

 to the peculiar characters who were foremost during this epoch and 

 to see how perfectly natural it was that there should have been some 

 exhibiting the most depraved characteristics while others, like Ferdi- 

 nand and Isabella, were fortunate enough to inherit the genius which 

 we see is likewise present in a conspicuous degree. The chart shows 

 that Isabella might be expected to be greater than Ferdinand. She 

 had five elements of genius in her pedigree, being through intermar- 

 riage twice the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lan- 

 caster, one of the great men of his day, and John the Great of Portugal 

 appears twice in the pedigree for the same reason. She was also 

 the granddaughter of Henry III. of Castile, who was a model of all 

 that a king should be. Both Ferdinand and Isabella possessed high 

 ability and character, as can be fully confirmed by consulting any 

 history of the times. They were married through personal choice 

 of the queen, as she appreciated in Ferdinand a man worthy of her 

 love. Nothing could be better for the welfare of the country than 

 that two such able rulers should sit upon the throne at once. But 

 Ferdinand was her second cousin and the descendant of weak or 

 perfidious rulers. 



We now see that the children of this union have two estimable 

 parents but they have a remarkably bad lot of grandparents, and back 

 of this we find the worst weaknesses in some while in others is much 

 ability of a very high sort. We should not expect a child to be 

 ordinary. On the other hand the most extraordinary is only to be 

 expected. The two descendants whom we have here to consider are 

 Joanna and her son, the Emperor Charles Quint. The former got 

 the insanity and imbecility, the latter the genius and a touch of the 

 neurosis as well. Every one in this region of the chart fills in a link 

 in a way to be expected and is readily and perfectly explained. 



The pedigree of Philip the Fair, who married this mad Joanna, 

 contains the great fighting qualities of the old kings, tremendous 

 energy, and great ruling functions without a bit of the insanity and 

 weaknesses shown in Castile and Leon. This was the famous mar- 

 riage that placed the Hapsburgs on the highest pinnacle of power 

 a marriage almost certain to produce genius and as certain to produce 

 some descendants whose heritage would be imbecility or weakness, 

 or whose ambition would only lead them to mad extremes. Both the 

 genius and the insanity appear quite as we should expect, and it is 

 to be noted that the neuroses are now seen to appear for the first 



