HEREDITARY TRAITS. 225 



the ancestors of philosophers and literary men ceitain 

 qualities or capabilities, and that such ancestral peculiarities 

 determined the poetic, scientific, or literary genius of the 

 descendant, is in reality to little purpose, for there is prob- 

 ably not a single family possessing claims to culture in any 

 civilised country among the members of which individuals 

 might not be found with qualities thus emphasised so to 

 speak. Such a posteriori reasoning is valueless. If instances 

 could be so classified that after carefully studying them we 

 could make even the roughest approach to a guess respect- 

 ing the cases in which a family might be expected to produce 

 men of any particular qualities, there would be some use in 

 these attempts at generalisation ; at present all that can be 

 said is that some mental qualities and some artistic aptitudes 

 have unquestionably in certain instances been transmitted, 

 and that on the whole men of great distinction in philosophy, 

 literature, science, and art, are rather more likely than 

 others to have among their relations (more or less remote) 

 persons somewhat above the average in mental or artistic 

 qualities. But it is not altogether certain that this superi- 

 ority is even quite so great as it might be expected to be if 

 hereditary transmission played no part at all in the matter. 

 For it cannot be denied that a great mathematician's son 

 has rather a better chance than others of being a n athema- 

 tician, a great author's son of being a writer, a great artist's 

 son of being skilful in art, a great philosopher's son of taking 

 philosophic views of things. Nearly every son looks forward 

 while still young to the time when he shall be doing his 

 father's work ; nearly every father hopes while his children 

 are yet young that some at least among them will follow his 

 pursuits. The fact that so few sons of great men do follow 

 in their fathers' footsteps shows that, despite the strong am- 

 bition of the son and the anxious hope of the father, the son 

 in the majority of instances has not had ability even to take a 

 fairly good position in the work wherein the father has been 

 perhaps pre-eminently distinguished. 



I have said that certain mental qualities have certainly 

 Q 



