PROBLEMS OF HEEEDITY APERT. 401 



have left a record and twenty-nine are mentioned by Galton as emi- 

 nent musicians. 



The Bachs contracted numerous marriages for their daughters 

 with former music masters, organists, and town musicians, as the 

 custom of the body corporate at that time permitted. Those fre- 

 quent marriages among musicians could not help having great in- 

 fluence upon the musical talent of their offspring, and this, says Mr. 

 Kibot, is one of the most beautiful examples of artificial or natural 

 selection that one would find in the human species. 



We now come to heredity of moral characteristics. Morality is 

 transmitted in families ; an honest father and mother have good sons 

 and daughters. Of course education and good example have their 

 share in it, but so also does heredity. Inversely, bad principles are 

 transmitted in families, and we read in every book on heredity the 

 history of that mendicant who arrived in the English colonies of 

 America in the early days of their colonization, and who, endowed 

 with all vices — a drunkard, a thief, and debauched — had passed half 

 of her long life in prison. She had had numerous children, and in 

 looking over the civil archives of the State and also those of the 

 galleys and prisons we can safely state that among several hundred 

 of her descendants four-fifths were delinquents for misdeeds of 

 various kinds and a dozen had ended their lives on the gallows. 



Permit me here one digression. It suggests a subject which has been 

 much considered — that of responsibility. Since tendency to crime is 

 inherited, since there are born criminals, are they responsible for 

 their crime, and should they be punished? Are they responsible? 

 The question should be considered from two very different stand- 

 points. There is the philosophical point of view. It is possible that 

 from that view, we might say that responsibility does not exist, for 

 all our acts are determined by causes and that our will is only an illu- 

 sion. I will not discuss this, for centuries since the time of ancient 

 philosophers have not sufficed to settle it, and I have no desire to 

 enter into the controversy of the free will, of the efficient cause, and 

 the determining of our acts. That phase of the question, however, 

 ought by no means prevent us from responding when we consider the 

 practical point of view. On this side the more the delinquent has 

 acted through the fact of tendency due either to heredity, environ- 

 ment, or to education, the greater the need that he fear chastisement, 

 for it is only such fear that restrains the immorally born person. 

 The accidental deliaquent should certainly be punished, but his pun- 

 ishment is not a social necessity ; for the punishment of being a born 

 criminal is forced upon him; it is rendering him a service to 

 furnish him the only reason that he has for struggling against his bad 

 instincts. The only irresponsible beings are delinquents who have 



44863°— SM 1913 26 



