288 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE 



the mind which may be a very repugnant and even 

 painful process. On my part, however, I felt little 

 difficulty in connection with the Origin of Species ', but 

 devoured its contents and assimilated them as fast 

 as they were devoured, a fact which perhaps may be 

 ascribed to an hereditary bent of mind that both its 

 illustrious author and myself have inherited from our 

 common grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin. 



I was encouraged by the new views to pursue 

 many inquiries which had long interested me, and 

 which clustered round the central topics of Heredity 

 and the possible improvement of the Human Race. 

 The current views on Heredity were at that time so 

 vague and contradictory that it is difficult to summar- 

 ise them briefly. Speaking generally, most authors 

 agreed that all bodily and some mental qualities were 

 inherited by brutes, but they refused to believe the 

 same of man. Moreover, theologians made a sharp 

 distinction between the body and mind of man, on 

 purely dogmatic grounds. A few passages may un- 

 doubtedly be found in the works of eminent authors 

 that are exceptions to this broad generalisation, for 

 the subject of human heredity had never been squarely 

 faced, and opinions were lax and contradictory. It 

 seems hardly credible now that even the word heredity 

 was then considered fanciful and unusual. I was chaffed 

 by a cultured friend for adopting it from the French. 



I had been immensely impressed by many obvious 

 cases of heredity among the Cambridge men who 

 were at the University about my own time. The 

 Classical Class List was first established in 1824, 

 consequently the number of "Senior Classics" up to 

 1864 inclusive was 41, that is to say, the names of 



