82 THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 



The fourth brother, by far the ablest, married a woman 

 of unsound stock with ability in one of her grand- 

 parents. The result was a family of two sound normal 

 members, one unsound, and three with ability, two 

 sound and one unsound. Two of the able members 

 of this family married ability, and the results appear 

 in the family of three able persons shown in V. 14, 15, 

 and 1 6, and in the remarkable family V. 3 to 10, two 

 members of which showed ability of a very high order ; 

 one of them was a most influential person of the time ; 

 three others were able much beyond the average, while 

 the ancestral strain of unsoundness came out in the 

 remaining two. 



This pedigree is also interesting in that it illustrates 

 the fallacy which lies in the common idea that great 

 ability is often associated with unsoundness of mind 

 or body. The truth is that ability and unsoundness 

 usually enter a family from different sources, and are 

 transmitted independently of each other. Sometimes 

 they chance to coincide in the same person, but more 

 often they become separated in different individuals. 



Pedigree II. shows the ancestry of the same family 

 on the paternal side, and its alliances with two other 

 distinguished families, many of whose members are 

 recorded in the Dictionary of National Biography. Here 

 the same definite inheritance of ability is shown, and 

 the same phenomenon of a strain of unsoundness 

 running through one line of descent. From our 

 immediate point of view, it is well to call attention 

 to the two able members in Generation III. of the 

 well-known family represented on the right of the 

 diagram. The man married a " normal " woman, and 



