MENTAL AND MORAL HEREDITY IN ROYALTY. 457 



sider that opportunities or the times were the chief causes, we must have 

 a wonderful knowledge of all the intricate effects of this medium in 

 order to explain the character in this way. The theory of chances seems 

 here to be in danger, while the theory of chances can be shown to be 

 pretty well satisfied by the laws of heredity. 



The Hapsburg Lip. 



The accompanying illustrations show one of the best known and 

 most conspicuous facial peculiarities among the royal families, the 

 great swollen protruding lip of the Hapsburgs which can be traced with 

 its varying degrees of intensification through no less than eighteen 

 generations, coming out in at least forty-one of the various 

 descendants. 



Its first appearance, according to history, was in Cymburga, who 

 was born in the last part of the fourteeenth century, and became the 

 wife of Ernst, the second patriarch of the House of Hapsburg.* In its 

 latest manifestation it appears at the present day with diminished 

 strength and modified form in the young king of Spain. This is a 

 remarkable instance of the force of heredity in perpetuating a physical 

 trait, and has been thought to be an instance of prepotency, the male 

 line being able to transmit a deeply rooted peculiarity, the features 

 from the maternal side having no influence in counteracting it. 



As an example of prepotency, the Hapsburg lip was cited by 

 Darwin. f To quote his words: 



It would appear that in certain families some one ancestor and after him 

 others in the same family must have had great power in transmitting their 

 likeness through the male line; for we cannot otherwise understand how the 

 same features should so often be transmitted after marriage with various 

 females as has been the case with the Austrian Emperors. 



The same idea is expressed by Strahan, 'Marriage and Disease/ 

 p. 64. As a matter of fact this feature, the big lip, was maintained 

 and transmitted in no more remarkable way than the neurosis was, 

 and for the same reason, namely, intermarriages in their own family, 

 and time and time again the selection of those who exhibited the fea- 

 ture rather than those who did not. 



In almost every generation there were some who showed the 

 peculiar lip and there were always some who did not inherit it 

 in any degree at all, and this is also paralleled by the mental ab- 

 normality. Therefore since there was an increasing number in each 

 successive generation who were free from the peculiarity, the average 

 of all descendants in each generation would give a diminution of the 

 quality in question, and we have no prepotency at all, but merely 



* Coxe, ' Austria,' I., p. 297. 



f Darwin, ' Animals and Plants/ II., p. 65. 



