REVERSION. 51 



time be given to let the new character gain some 

 fixity. Thus, although we cannot breed a race of 

 actual giants or geniuses, we can in time materially 

 increase or diminish the mental or physical stature, 

 and so long as the modification be not so radical as 

 to be out of harmony with the environment, there ia 

 little increased danger of extinction ; while, if the pro- 

 cess be sufficiently gradual, there will be little danger, 

 after a few generations, of reversion. The truth of 

 this as applied to physical characters is well known. 

 Breeders of animals act upon it constantly, and await 

 the result with perfect confidence. It is not, however, 

 so generally recognised as applicable to the moral and 

 mental characters, and for this reason I shall take an 

 example from the latter class. Let us take the mathe- 

 matical, or, say, the financial quality of mind, which, 

 when strongly developed, constitutes a physiological 

 variation. This variation is often the result of some 

 happy blending of parental characters, mediocre in 

 themselves. In such cases it is a newly acquired 

 character having no fixity. The father or the mother 

 of the great financier has seldom or never displayed 

 the mental character which so strongly marks their 

 child, just as the poet or the orator is seldom the 

 child of a poet or an orator. If, then, the great 

 financier marries a woman, brilliant, it may be, in 

 other ways, but having none of his peculiar quality of 

 mind, the offspring will in all likelihood revert to the 

 normal stock, and display little, perhaps very little, of 

 the father's peculiar ability. Here the new character 



