Heredity. 161 



not hint at any depreciation of a good stock, for, as 

 Galton shows, the offspring of two ordinary members 

 of a gifted stock will not regress like the offspring of 

 a couple equal in gifts to the former, but belonging to 

 a poorer stock, above the average of which they have 

 risen. 



The fact of regression tells against the full trans- 

 mission of any signal talent. Children are not likely to 

 differ from mediocrity in a given direction so widely 

 as their parents do in the same direction. "The more 

 bountifully a parent is gifted by nature the more rare 

 will be his good fortune if he begets a son who is as 

 richly endowed as himself, and still more so if he has 

 a son who is endowed more largely." But "the law is 

 even-handed; it levies an equal succession-tax on the 

 transmission of badness as of goodness ". 



Thus we reach the conception of the nation as a vast 

 fraternity, with an average towards which the offspring 

 of the extraordinarily gifted tend to sink, but to which 

 the offspring of the under-average tend as surely to rise. 



We have noticed two great modern advances in 

 regard to the problem of heredity the doctrine of the 

 continuity of the germ-plasm and the inquiry Galton . s Law 

 into the transmissibility of acquired charac- of Ancestral 

 ters, both closely associated with Weismann. Inheritance - 

 To these we would add a third Galton's law of ances- 

 tral inheritance. From data based on stature, the 

 colour of Basset hounds, &c., Galton was led to a very 

 important generalization, which he states as follows: 

 " Each parent contributes on an average one quarter, 

 or (o'5) 2 , each grandparent one-sixteenth, or (o'5) 4 , and 

 so on, and that generally the occupier of each ancestral 

 place in the n th degree, whatever be the value of , 

 contributes (o'5) 2n of the heritage". The law has been 

 ably expounded and corroborated by Karl Pearson, who 

 gives it an even more precise form. 



There are still some difficulties to be met, but the 

 formulation of the law is a great step, even if modifica- 

 tions should afterwards be necessary. As Prof. Pear- 

 son says: "the law of ancestral heredity is likely to 

 prove one of the most brilliant of Mr. Galton's dis- 



(M523) i 



