16 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



mind or body, it will to a certainty leave its mark upon 

 the offspring. 



The fact that physical characters are transmitted no 

 one denies, and the researches of Mr. Galton and others 

 prove conclusively that quality of mind is as frequently 

 and certainly handed down from parent to child as are 

 physical peculiarities. When do we read the biography 

 of a man, and not learn from what ancestor he inherited 

 this particular mental or moral character, and from what 

 other that? As the scrofulous beget the scrofulous, 

 and the gouty the gouty, so do the neurotic beget the 

 neurotic and the insane the insane, the immoral the 

 immoral and the criminal the criminal. The child 

 whose ancestors have been criminals and jail -birds 

 takes as naturally to crime as does the sheep-dog to his 

 duties on the hillside. 



As man's individuality that is, his own peculiar 

 conformation of mind and body is in all cases the 

 outcome of many generations of building up, so it 

 must be in all cases the work of generations to eradi- 

 cate any well-marked character, or otherwise modify 

 the family type. Yet in every case the type can be 

 modified for evil only too easily, for good by wise 

 marriages and scientific medical treatment persisted 

 in. Of course cases are to be found on every hand 

 where reversion to the healthy is impossible, where the 

 individual is so degenerate, so far removed from the 

 normal, that, despite outward appearances, the neces- 

 sarily fatal type has already been reached. In some 

 of these cases, as in the impotent and sterile idiot and 



