Mr. Buckle s Fallacies. 159 



chemistry are much more advanced, we can know noth- 

 ing about it deductively. These considerations ought 

 to prevent us from receiving statements which posi- 

 tively affirm the existence of hereditary madness and 

 hereditary suicide ; and the same remark applies to he- 

 reditary disease, and with still greater force does it 

 apply to hereditary vices and hereditary virtues ; inas- 

 much as ethical phenomena have not been registered as 

 carefully as physiological ones, and therefore our con- 

 clusions respecting them are even more precarious. 1 



All this sounds very fine ; but we do not think 

 that our ignorance of this subject is so hopeless 

 as Mr. Buckle supposes. Although we are at 

 present unable to explain all the phenomena of 

 the case, and account for all the apparent excep- 

 tions that arise, we do, nevertheless, all of us know 

 that oaks always produce oaks, oysters oysters, 

 sharks sharks, dogs dogs, and men men. We 

 should probably deem it somewhat out of the 

 usual course of things if a cow were to give birth 

 to a leopard. We are not accustomed to think of 

 a greyhound as having had for his sire an Arabian 

 steed. We do not expect, on planting a nursery 

 of acorns, to come back and find an orchard of 

 apple-trees. And even the most unexcitable of 

 us would open his eyes at the sight of a barn-door 



l Vol. i. p. 161, note 12. 



