THROWING BACK 117 



possibly not a few village Napoleons and fireside 

 Washingtons, condemned, despite their gifts, to a life 

 of obscurity. 



The transmutation of character through heredity 

 is not always of a favourable kind. Maudsley, who 

 regards insanity as a disease largely engendered by 

 the worries of civilised life, observes : " There is no 

 more efficient cause of mental degeneracy than the 

 mean and vulgar life of a tradesman, whose soul is 

 entirely taken up with petty gains, who, under the 

 sanction of the customs of the trade, practises system- 

 atic fraud and theft, and who thinks to outweigh 

 the iniquities of the week by a sanctimonious observ- 

 ance of the Sabbath. The deterioration of nature 

 which he has acquired will, unless a healthier family 

 influence serve to counteract it, be transmitted as a 

 family heritage to his children, and may result in 

 some form of moral or intellectual deficiency, perhaps 

 in extreme duplicity and vice, perhaps in outbreaks 

 of positive insanity." To put the matter concisely, 

 " the absence of moral sense in one generation may 

 be followed by insanity in the next," and vice versd. 

 The existence of all forms of mental power or 

 weakness is probably a question of brain nutrition, 

 which would necessarily depend upon heredity. 



