176 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



and Lucas quotes an amusing instance of a bull 

 which, upon being brought into the presence of a 

 particular cow, always made for the door of the 

 cowhouse. Maudsley holds that the completest 

 sympathy ought to exist between parents, seeing 

 that " if there be indifference or repulsion, as happens 

 sometimes where interest instead of affection makes 

 a marriage, there cannot be that full and harmonious 

 co-operation of all the conditions necessary to the 

 best propagation." ^ In fact, that writer goes so far 

 as to say that " insanity may be bred by unsuitable 

 unions," among which he specifies the union of 

 " essentially false and hypocritical natures." 



Schopenhauer believed that physical qualities were 

 transmitted by the father and intellect by the mother. 

 This view of heredity has been proved to be errone- 

 ous, it being impossible to draw any such sharp line of 

 demarcation between the respective functions of the 

 parents. But the German philosopher clearly per- 

 ceived the operation of the elective affinities, which 

 he regarded as the efforts of the "genius of the species" 

 {der Geist der Gattung) to promote the interests of the 

 race at the cost, if need be, of the individual.^ For 



^ Maudsley's Pathology of Mind. 

 ' Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 



