THE INBORN POTENTIALITY OF THE CHILD 323 



taint following a family for 350 years, and as Ireland in his work 

 A Blot on the Brain says : "Sometimes passing over a generation 

 and appearing in various forms and intensities as epilepsy, 

 hypochondria, melancholia, mania, and imbecility till at length 

 it extinguished the direct royal line of Spain." The tendency 

 in the blood was, as you see, reinforced by close intermarriages 

 with families of the same stock, and it is worthy of notice that 

 the house of Austria, with which the Spanish line was so often 

 connected by marriage, had few members insane, and in the end 

 threw off the hereditary curse. " Such vigour as was in the first 

 Spanish kings appeared in their illegitimate descendants, 

 whereas those born in wedlock inherited the disease in spite of 

 the known ancestral taint. A match with Spain was much 

 coveted by the royal families of Europe ; as an example we may 

 recall the silly eagerness shown by James I. of England to marry 

 his son Charles with the Infanta Maria. Whoever attends 

 closely to history must know that there is a great deal in birth, 

 but not birth fixed by laws and traced by heralds. A man who 

 is well-made, strong, mentally gifted, and able to do much work 

 and stand much strain must be well born, and a race sodden 

 with epilepsy and insanity and scrofula, whatever its fictitious 

 rank, is necessarily low born and in reality not worth pre- 

 serving." I have already given you many facts which certainly 

 show that the raw material of character which may be good, bad, 

 or indifferent is inherited ; just as some children are born weak 

 and others strong, some energetic and others inherently lazy. 

 It is an undoubted fact that the foundations of moral characters 

 are inborn, but the influence of education, example, environment, 

 and nutrition is more potent for good or evil than is the case in 

 morphological characters. 



Finally, remember the words of Sir Thomas Browne : " Bless 

 not thyself that thou wert born in Athens but among thy 

 multiplied acknowledgments ; lift up one hand to heaven that 

 thou wert born of honest parents, that modesty, veracity, and 

 humility lay in the same egg, and came into the world with 

 thee." 



In the next number the third lecture will be given, which will 

 deal with "The Influence of Nutrition and the Influence of 

 Education in Mental Development." 



