The Psychological Consequences of Heredity. 333 



'We sometimes see the reappearance, in remote descendants, 

 of ancient race-instincts that for many generations have lain 

 dormant or hidden, but which now come to light as an unac- 

 countable return to the moral type of the ancestors. The higher 

 classes of society furnish us with the most striking instances of this ; 

 as if the leisure and independence which their wealth assures to 

 them, exempting them from the influence of the local environment 

 and the present conditions of the life of their race, set at liberty 

 psychical forces which are held in check among their contem- 

 poraries. Thus an irresistible instinct for theft not only is some- 

 times manifested among the children of cultivated races, in whom 

 it is usually soon corrected by education, but even at times persists 

 in adults, and with irresistible force betrays women belonging to 

 our ancient noble castes into offences hardly excusable by their 

 inability to conquer fate or evidently fatalistic character unhappy 

 heiresses of the old instincts of our barbarous conquerors. 



' So, too, with that passionate love of hunting, which is no longer 

 of use under our present social conditions; which exists more or 

 less as an instinct in every child; which even persists and develops 

 so readily in every adult possessed of the means of indulging it, 

 and inspires all our fashionable youth, and the remnants of our terri- 

 torial nobility ; it can only be explained by the blind and predes- 

 tined heredity of race-instincts that have long survived their utility, 

 in the descendants of peoples for whom these same instincts were 

 long essential conditions of life. Here, then, we have merely 

 phenomena of atavism, which preserves, or bring to light at in- 

 tervals, the psychical characteristics of remote ancestors.' 1 



It would be hard to find a more striking example of the tenacity 

 of savage instincts, and of their tendency to reappear, than is found 

 in the following narrative from a voyage to the Philippine Islands : 



' These savages have ever been distinguished from the other 

 Polynesian races by their unconquerable love of freedom. The 

 repugnance of the Negritos (as the Philippine Islanders are called) 

 to everything that could subjugate them or make them live by rule, 

 will make them always objects of interest to the traveller. Here 

 is an instance of their love of independence : 



1 Origins de FHomme et de SociitSs, far Mme. Royer, ch. iv. 



