II.] ON HEREDITY. 



97 



of readily transmitting impulses along the nerve-tracts of the 

 brain, as well as upon the especial development of single parts 

 of the brain. In my opinion, there is absolutely no trustworthy 

 proof that talents have been improved by their exercise 

 through the course of a long series of generations. The Bach 

 family shows that musical talent, and the Bernoulli family that 

 mathematical power, can be transmitted from generation to 

 generation, but this teaches us nothing as to the origin of such 

 talents. In both families the high-water mark of talent lies, 

 not at the end of the series of generations, as it should do if the 

 results of practice are transmitted, but in the middle. Again, 

 talents frequently appear in some single member of a family 

 which has not been previously distinguished. 



Gauss was not the son of a mathematician ; Handel's father 

 was a surgeon, of whose musical powers nothing is known ; 

 Titian was the son and also the nephew of a lawyer, while he 

 and his brother, Francesco Vecellio, were the first painters in 

 a family which produced a succession of seven other artists 

 with diminishing talents. These facts do not, however, prove 

 that the condition of the nerve-tracts and centres of the brain, 

 which determine the specific talent, appeared for the first time 

 in these men : the appropriate condition surely existed pre- 

 viously in their parents, although it did not achieve expression. 

 They prove, as it seems to me, that a high degree of endow- 

 ment in a special direction, which we call talent, cannot have 

 arisen from the experience of previous generations, that is, by 

 the exercise of the brain in the same specific direction. 



It appears to me that talent consists in a happy combination 

 of exceptionally high gifts, developed in one special direction. 

 At present, it is of course impossible to understand the physio- 

 logical conditions which render the origin of such combinations 

 possible, but it is very probable that the crossing of the mental 

 dispositions of the parents plays a great part in it. This has 

 been admirably and concisely expressed by Goethe in describ- 

 ing his own characteristics — 



Vom Vater hab' ich die Statiir 

 Des Lebens ernstes Fuhren, 

 Vom Mutterchen die Frohnatur, 

 Die Lust zum Fabuliren, etc. 



The combination of talents frequently found in one individual, 



H 



