Heredity of the Sentiments and the Passions. 89 



they call caouac, and when transported as slaves to America they 

 try to procure a similar clay. 



There is scarce need to insist on the heredity of all that is 

 connected with the sexual appetite. This passion is associated 

 with an organ which depends on the law of heredity. A multitude 

 of names famous in history offer themselves in support of our 

 position. Augustus and the two Julias; Agrippina and Nero; 

 Maroziaand Benedict IX. ; Alexander VI. and his children; Louise 

 de Savoie and Francis L, etc. In all classes of society analogous 

 facts may be found, and any one may know families in which this 

 unfortunate disposition is hereditary. 



* I knew,' says Prosper Lucas, ' a very handsome man, of an 

 excellent constitution, but possessed of an unbridled passion for 

 wine and women. He had a son, who, while yet but a lad, carried 

 both these vices to excess. He carried off a mistress from his 

 father, who never forgave the offence to the day of his death. 

 This was the outset of his career ; he was afterwards ruined, and 

 reduced to the utmost penury by harlots. His son died young, 

 but incorrigible, and from the same vices as his father and 

 grandfather.' 



1 But here,' says the same author, ' is a fact perhaps still more 

 instructive. A man-cook, of great talent in his calling, has had all 

 his life, and has still, at the age of sixty years, a passion for 

 women. To this passion he adds unnatural crime. One of his 

 natural sons, living apart from him, does not know even his father, 

 and, though not yet quite nineteen, has from childhood given all 

 the signs of extreme lust, and, strange to say, he, like his father, 

 is equally addicted to either sex.' * 



There are also well-authenticated instances of a heredity of a 

 propensity for ,rape. TheDrct'f (newspaper) states that in 1846, at 



Pontoise, a father, named Alexandre de M , was so unfortunate 



as to have his eldest son, barely sixteen years of age, violate and 

 murder his cousin; and recently his second son attempted to 

 violate a little girl. The punishment of these youths was mitigated, 

 because it was proved at the trial that they were under the in- 

 fluence of hereditary insanity. 2 



1 P. Lucas, i. 479. 2 Ibid. i. 504. 



