HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 339 



bodily dispositions, is a very common though not a uni- 

 form phenomenon among animals and in man. 



Transmission by descent of individual peculiarities in 

 the order of intellect or the affections, and heredity in 

 predisposition to some one or other moral or speculative 

 activity, are also phenomena sometimes remarked, but not 

 so commonly as the foregoing ones. When we review the 

 series of instances and proofs collected and appealed to by 

 some authors, we are struck, it is true, by the seeming 

 strength of these arguments, and we are ready to concede 

 to heredity a very large share in the development of the 

 intellect and character in the genesis of the thinking indi- 

 vidual. We fail to see, or we forget, the prodigious num- 

 ber of facts that bear witness the contrary way. The illu- 

 sions of that mirage have not been without their use, in 

 the sense that they have induced very interesting re- 

 searches, but they would be a source of danger did they 

 lead the public to put faith in the conclusions drawn 

 by some authors from these investigations. We will 

 briefly point out the real advantage to be gained from 

 these researches, and will attempt to disprove the infer- 

 ences. 



According to Galton, the faculty of memory in the 

 family of Richard Porson, the famous Greek scholar, was 

 so wonderful that it had passed into a byword " the Por- 

 son memory." Lady Esther Stanhope, who led so advent- 

 urous a life, notes, among many points of likeness between 

 herself and her grandfather, that of the memory. " I have 

 mv grandfather's gray eyes and his memory for places," she 

 says. "If he saw a stone on the road, he recollected it, 

 and I do the same ; his eyes, dull and without expression 

 at ordinary times, blazed with a startling light as mine -do 

 when sudden emotion seized him." The creative and im- 

 aginative faculties, which take a dominant part in poetry 

 and the arts, sometimes pass down from father to son. 



