Morbid Psychological Heredity. 119 



they stood with regard to all other men, as by the organic trans- 

 mission of quality. There is one simple fact, insignificant enough 

 in itself, respecting an hereditary taste and talent for music: 'Navar- 

 reins has seen the Campagnets hand down through three or four 

 generations a highly prized violin. No holiday was happily spent 

 where the violin or the flute of the Campagnets did not contribute 

 to the mirth.' l 



CHAPTER IX. 



MORBID PSYCHOLOGICAL HEREDITY. 



AT the commencement of this work, in the introduction 

 devoted to physiological heredity, we showed briefly that diseases 

 are transmissible, like all the characteristics of the external or 

 internal structure, and all the various modes of the organization in 

 a normal state. The same question now arises in the psychologi- 

 cal order. Are the modes of mental life transmissible under their 

 morbid, as they are under their normal form ? Does the study of 

 mental diseases contribute its quota of facts in favour of heredity? 

 The answer must be in the affirmative. The transmission of all 

 kinds of psychological anomalies whether of passions and crimes, 

 of which we have already spoken, or of hallucinations and insanity, 

 of which we are next to speak is so frequent, and evidenced by 

 such striking facts, that the most inattentive observers have been 

 struck by it, and that morbid psychological heredity is admitted 

 even by those who have no suspicion, that this is only one aspect 

 of a law which is far more general. 



In considering hereafter the direct causes of mental heredity, 

 we shall endeavour to establish this important proposition : that 

 in man, to every psychological state whatsoever, corresponds 

 a determinate physiological state, and vice versd. Here this 

 question is presented incidentally, for it has been much debated 

 whether mental diseases have or have not an organic cause. 



> Ibid. i. 41. 



