PHENOMENA OF INHERITANCE 205 



these same respects. It is quite futile to argue 

 that exceptional individuals may be found in 

 one race with the mental characteristics of an- 

 other race ; the same could be said of different 

 breeds of dogs, or of the sizes of different races 

 of beans or of Paramecia (Fig. 44) . The fact 

 is that racial characteristics are not determined 

 by exceptional and extreme individuals but by 

 the average or mean qualities of the race; and 

 measured in this way there is no doubt that 

 certain types of mind and disposition are char- 

 acteristic of certain families. 



There is no longer any question that some 

 kinds of feeble-mindedness, epilepsy and in- 

 sanity are inherited, and that there is often an 

 hereditary basis for nervous and phlegmatic 

 temperaments, for emotional, judicial and 

 calculating dispositions. Nor can it be de- 

 nied that strength or weakness of will, a ten- 

 dency to moral obliquity or rectitude, capacity 

 or incapacity for the highest intellectual pur- 

 suits, occur frequently in certain families and 

 appear to be inherited. In spite of certain 

 noteworthy exceptions, which may perhaps be 

 due to remarkable variations, statistics col- 



