INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL HEREDITY 43 



Now, great men are more apt than others to 

 marry mediocre or inferior wives. They are 

 attracted by what they do not find in themselves. 

 As a consequence, their children are not their 

 equals ; their greatness has been diluted. The 

 children are not like themselves alone or their an- 

 cestors, but like their wives and the families from 

 which the latter sprang. Still, eliminating that 

 which is usually ascribed to genius, and compar- 

 ing characters, habits, and ways of doing things, 

 children invariably resemble their parents more 

 than they differ from them. 



So far as our knowledge goes at present, 

 after every ancestral allowance has been made, 

 certain lonely great souls still rise above human- 

 ity, as the Alps and Andes above the earth. 

 The genesis of genius is as mysterious as the 

 genesis of life. If there is a law of heredity, 

 the evidence for its operation in the sphere of 

 mind is as clear, as positive, and as complete 

 as the evidence of its operation in the sphere 

 of matter. 



Physical characteristics, we have seen, are trans- 

 mitted, and education and accident often make 

 their impress upon children. Thus far we have 

 been only advancing toward the fact that the 

 moral nature of man is subject to hereditary law. 



