Human Physiology. 285 



Throughout the vegetable and animal world the law of heredi- 

 tary descent is clear. It is not less clear it is. indeed, more 

 evident with regard to the human race, but it is only with res- 

 pect to the breeding of men that it is almost entirely disregarded. 



Mr. Darwin, in his work on "The Descent of Man/' has well 

 said : " Man scans with scrupulous care the character and 

 pedigree or his horses, cattle, and dogs before he matches 

 them ; but when he comes to his own marriage he rarely, or 

 never, takes any such care. . . Yet he might, by selection, 

 do something, not only for the bodily constitution and frame of 

 his offspring, but for their intellectual and moral qualities. Both 

 sexes ought to refrain from marriage, if in any marked degree 

 inferior in body or mind. . . When the principles of breed- 

 ing and of inheritance are better understood, we shall not hear 

 ignorant members of our legislature rejecting with scorn a plan 

 for ascertaining by an easy method whether or not consan- 

 guineous marriages are injurious to man." 



The fact that physical, mental, and moral qualities are here- 

 ditary is shown on the large scale in the persistent characteristics, 

 of races and nations. The Jewish and Negro types as they 

 exist to-day are to be seen engraven or painted on the monu- 

 ments of Nineveh and Egypt. The Chinese and Japanese have 

 had the same characteristics for thousands of years. The 

 descendants of the ancient Greeks and Romans may still be 

 recognised in Greece and Italy. We see in old English fami- 

 lies the same form of nose coming down through galleries of 

 family portraits ; and we have everywhere inherited peculiarities 

 of form, feature, and complexion, intellect, disposition, even 

 little tricks of manner, habits, eccentricities, idiosyncrasies, and 

 diseases. It is notorious that the tendency to gout, to con- 

 sumption, or to insanity exists in certain families, and lasts for 

 generations. The peculiar features of the Jewish physiognomy 

 are not more marked than certain traits of character, as indis- 

 position to agriculture, fondness of trade and finance, and the 



