HEREDITY OF MENTAL TRAITS 11 



by the force of selection. The marriages of Henry IV. , 

 Louis XIIL, and Louis XIV. were especially disas- 

 trous, since they introduced the Italian and Spanish, 

 Hapsburg psyco-neurosis. Degeneracy and vicious- 

 ness thus introduced did not appear in Elizabeth, 

 eldest daughter of Henry IV., or in Louis Duke of 

 Burgundy, father of Louis XV. There is no good 

 evidence that the two youngest daughters of 

 Louis XV. were otherwise than normal, and in the 

 last generation Louis XVIII. and his sisters, Princess 

 Adelaide and Princess Elizabeth, seem to have en- 

 tirely escaped the family blight, which in one form or 

 another had affected certain individuals among their 

 ancestors since the days of Joanna " the Mad," who 

 died in 1555. 



The Regent Philip of Orleans was notorious for 

 his vices, and his daughters have left a bad name ; 

 but it must not be forgotten that Louis his son and 

 Philippine the youngest of the daughters were as 

 remarkable for their virtues as Marie, Charlotte, and 

 Elizabeth were for their depravities. The mother, 

 Frances Marie de Blois, was a good character, and the 

 explanation from alternative heredity, of course, is 

 that, in morality, some resembled the father and some 

 the mother. The later history of -the House of 

 Orleans presents an exception inasmuch as normality 

 was universal in the two generations following the 

 debauched " Egalite." There were eleven children, 

 and one or two might have been expected to repeat 

 the degenerate type. 



In the early history of Spain, at the time of the 



