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individual. These have been regarded as exceptions to the 

 law of heredity, inasmuch as like in these cases can scarcely 

 be said to produce like, but, as Ribot says, "We are 

 anxious always to keep in view the important truth that 

 there is never a total exception to heredity the exceptions 

 to it never going beyond the individual characteristics ; " so 

 that we may regard these metamorphoses in transmission 

 not so much as exceptions to the law of heredity not so 

 much as differences in kind as differences in degree, charac- 

 terising certain individuals in consequence of the law of 

 variability. To make plain what is meant by these meta- 

 morphoses in transmission, I may state that nervous affections 

 are often so transformed. Those parents who have suffered 

 from convulsions may have the predisposition inherited from 

 them by their children changed into hysteria or epilepsy. 

 A case is recorded where " hyperoesthesia in the father 

 branched out in the grandchildren into the various forms of 

 monomania, mania, hypochondria, hysteria, epilepsy, con- 

 vulsions, spasms," in fact nothing is commoner than " to see 

 simple insanity become suicidal mania, or suicidal mania 

 become simple insanity, alcoholism, or hypochondria." It 

 would be very easy to give numerous examples of these 

 metamorphoses taken from pathology and history, but for a 

 detailed account of these most interesting phenomena I 

 must refer the reader to the Psychologie Morbide of Dr. 

 Moreau, of Tours, from which I have already quoted. He 

 will there find that " the lypemania of parents may become 

 in their children a tendency to suicide, insanity becomes 

 convulsions or epilepsy, scrofula is replaced by rickets, and 

 vice versd." As Ribot continues : " Fixed ideas in the pro- 

 genitors may become in the descendants melancholy, taste 

 ibr meditation, aptitude for the exact sciences, energy of will, 



