MENTAL AND PHYSICAL RESULTS. 26l 



As compared to philosophical reasoning, art, literature, and 

 music may be considered as less profoundly intellectual, still great 

 intellectual power is essential to eminence in any of these lines. 

 We see this illustrated in the fact that the greatest artists, poets 

 and musicians either themselves have pretty high birth-ranks, or 

 are the sons of men having high birth-ranks. In the case of Byron 

 the high birth-rank belongs to the grandfather, as is also the case 

 of Emerson and Beethoven. With Hawthorne and Swift we find 

 it in both father and grandfather. In any case the intellectual 

 power is first built up by one or more cases of late reproduction, 

 and then the peculiar mental aptitude is produced by the proper 

 conditions. 



MENTAL APTITUDES INFLUENCED BY OPPOSITE SEX. 



Mental power being the result of late development and the 

 product of a series of generations, appears to be transmitted prin- 

 cipally by sex. This does not appear to be the case with mental 

 aptitudes which are the product of single generation, and seem 

 to be largely influenced by the opposite sex. In the case of Burns, 

 Chatterton, Goethe and Schiller we have comparatively old fathers, 

 and mothers about 19 or 20 years of age. In Greece, which was 

 noted for its development of art and literature, we have the same 

 characteristics of old fathers and young mothers. According to 

 traditions, Homer was produced in this way. As it is impossible 

 that all Greek mothers should have been young, it is probable that 

 some of the older ones were the mothers of the Greek philosophers. 

 My statistics in this matter are, however, so meager that I can 

 throw this out only as conjecture. In the case of the philosopher 

 Locke we find the mother nearly ten years older than the father, 

 which is in sharp contrast with the poets previously mentioned. 



