74 MARRIAGE AND DISEASE. 



those functions which must precede maternity. For 

 this reason only the offspring of those females in whom 

 the character was latent ever came into being, and so 

 in time this came to be the type of the degeneration, 

 being the only type which it was possible to propagate. 

 Only through the female in whom the character was 

 absent, or latent, could the variety be continued. 



Atavism or Reversional Heredity, although fre- 

 quently met with in the transmission of physical 

 peculiarities, is, perhaps, more often met with where 

 the character is of a moral or mental nature. In what 

 is known as moral insanity it is often met with, while 

 in the ordinary intellectual mental disorders it is very 

 common, the offspring of him or her who is of neurotic 

 family and who has actually been insane frequently 

 escaping the insane temperament, or even occasionally 

 developing high talents, approaching genius perhaps, 

 while in the next generation the children, instead of 

 inheriting the high mental characters of the parent, 

 revert to the insane type once more. I would here 

 remark that the genius springing thus at intervals from 

 the insane stock is not of the highest description, and 

 notwithstanding the opinion of so weighty an autho- 

 rity as Dr. Maudsley, who fears that in forbidding the 

 marriage of those of the insane temperament, we would 

 to a certain extent be stamping out genius in the 

 race, I would venture to express the opinion that the 

 chances of the insane parent enriching the world by 

 begetting the genius, are not sufficiently good to justify 

 the insane in hazarding the experiment. 



