55 



the physiological conditions necessary for the development 

 of a painter or musician are not necessary to the same 

 extent, at least, for the cultivation of the poetic faculty. 

 Thus the painter must have an innate gift for colour and 

 form, and the musician an innate gift for the appreciation of 

 the most exquisite varieties and combinations of sound ; 

 and thus the talent of the artist or the musician must depend 

 more on the conformation of the organs than that of the 

 poet. The history of art, however, shows unmistakably 

 that this active or creative imagination, whether of poets, 

 painters, musicians, or scientists, is hereditarily transmissible, 

 and it would be an easy task to cite very numerous 

 instances in proof of the assertion. Suffice it to say that as 

 the result of an examination of the families of fifty-one 

 distinguished poets, twenty-two of them have had one or 

 more distinguished relatives. Amongst painters, whilst we 

 have in England the Landseers, and in France the Bonheurs, 

 Galton found, in a list of forty-two painters of the highest 

 rank, Italian, Spanish, and Flemish, that twenty-one had 

 illustrious relatives. Of musicians, the Bach, family is, 

 perhaps, the most distinguished instance of mental heredity 

 on record. In this family alone, of whom Fetis mentions 

 fifty-seven members, twenty-nine are described as eminent 

 musicians. The Bendas, Mendelssohns, and Mozarts afford 

 also numerous instances. These facts put it beyond all 

 doubt that the imaginative faculty is potentially transmissible 

 by heredity. 



Having thus far considered the heredity of perception, 

 memory, and imagination, I must now inquire whether the 

 remaining faculties of the mind which concern themselves 

 with abstract and general conceptions are subject to the 

 same law. "Are the higher," as Ribot asks, "like the 



