MISCELLANEA. 



Proposed Tests for Inheritance of Mental Qualities 

 According to Mendel's Law. 



By A. F. 



While certain cases of human inheritance of physical qualities 

 according to Mendel's law have been worked out {e.g., the colour 

 of eyes and the " Drinkwater " hands), the question arises : — When 

 we desire to investigate the inheritance of mental qualities, what 

 precise mental characteristic would best be selected for such inves- 

 tigation i It is clear that it must be a quality (a) which is distinctly 

 either absent or present ; (&) wjiich can in no case be essentially 

 modified by the environment (including thereunder all forms of 

 training and education.)* 



It is not easy to find qualities which pass both these tests. 

 Facility in languages and music depend too largely on early 

 opportunities and surroundings, while facility in mathematics 

 admits of degree to sucli an extent that it might be equally hard 

 to concede or refuse to attribute it to an individual. Other mental 

 qualities are too complex or too transient in their manifestations, 

 I suggest, however, that there is a test which might easily be 

 applied, viz., the capacity, which in some families seems to be 

 congenital, of dreaming certain kinds or types of dreams. Some 

 people frequently dream that they fly, skimming along the 

 ground — this is not universal, but well known in some families ; 

 so is the dream of insufficient clothing {vide Du Maurier's drawings 

 in Punch) ; or, better still, perhaps the dream (scarcely a dream, 

 rather a sleepy distress) of things growing large and small whicli 

 has been admirably described by Eobert Louis Stevenson. No 

 one who knows the sensation could fail to recognise this descrip- 

 tion ; but there are people to whom it seems to be quite unknown. 

 In fact, in a family with which I am acquainted where the dream 

 is well known among the children, no relation on the mother's 

 side seems to know it, though they are rather vivid dreamers ; 



* It is important to remember that education cannot modify a character 

 which is not present. Or, if present, it cannot modify it much, unless it 

 possesses an innate degree of responsiveness to educational influences. 

 And what our correspondent is now urging is, we take it, the necessity of 

 discriminating between two persons both of the same inherent capacity, but 

 of whom one has had that capacity made the most of by favourable 

 educational influences and the other has not. — [Editor.] 



