MENTAL AND MORAL HEREDITY IN ROYALTY. 1S1 



cessor in purity of life.' "Spain might still have regained the lofty 

 station she once held in the rank of kingdoms if at the succession 

 of Philip IV. a wise and energetic monarch had ascended the throne."* 

 By his marriage with his niece, Maria Anne, he succeeded in 

 having two degenerates, Prosper, who had convulsive fits from his 

 birth and died young, and Charles II., who became king. 



Charles was the last of the Spanish-Austria line and in him all its weak- 

 nesses were combined. Feeble in mind and body, he was grossly superstitious 

 and so ignorant that he did not know the names of some of his own towns and 

 provinces. | 



By his marriage with Elizabeth, who was a great-granddaughter 

 of Ferdinand I., and consequently partially of the same tainted stock, 

 Philip IV. had one licentious weakling out of three children. This 

 child, Don Balthaza, the subject of the famous Velasquez recently 

 acquired by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, was so dissipated that 

 he brought himself to his grave before he had reached his seventeenth 

 year. % Another of the three, Maria Theresa, who married Louis 

 XIV., was extremely stupid. 



Charles V. did not have any posterity and the war of the Spanish 

 succession deluged Europe with blood, but the Austrian House did not 

 reach its end through any sterility caused by inbreeding, for in spite 

 of the inbreeding it is noteworthy that they had large families, quite 

 as large as elsewhere. Many of the children died in infancy, but 

 the wives were not sterile. It can not be argued that inbreeding was 

 a cause of the large percentages of early deaths, since we have also to 

 deal with the question of insanity and neuroses. All sorts of mental 

 and physical defects, such as are known to be frequently found in 

 families with an insane diathesis, may have been the cause. 



This completes the study of what may be conveniently classified 

 as two groups. First (a) the old Castile, Leon and Aragon, families; 

 second, (b) the Hapsburgs in Spain. Let us first review the char- 

 acteristics of the former. This subgroup (a) contains 97 names. 

 The character and ability of the 97 have been found in 63 cases with 

 sufficient fullness for the purpose in hand. The other 34 must be 

 marked 'obscure.' They are valuable in a negative way. There were 

 about 39 of the total who had very marked ability, evidently con- 

 siderably above the average of kings and queens and such as should 

 place them in grades 7 to 10 of the standard here used. This per- 

 centage of over one in three is a high one, but the most striking fact 

 is that out of the thirty actual sovereigns on the thrones of Castile, 

 Leon and Aragon, no less than twenty-two are of this group. This 



*Dunlop, 'Mem. Spain,' Vol. I., p. 23. 

 f Young, 'Hist. Netherlands,' p. 611. 

 X Dunlop, ' Mems. Spain,' Vol. I., p. 378 



