Heredity of the Sensorial Qualities, 45 



following surprising case. A Scotchman had an irresistible longing 

 for human flesh, which led him to commit several murders. He 

 had a daughter, who, though taken from her parents, who were 

 burned at the stake, before she was a year old, and though she was 

 m brought up among respectable people, still succumbed, like her 

 father, to the inconceivable desire for eating human flesh. 1 



There exists in some families a sort of natural hydrophobia, 

 ' Three members of a family with which we are acquainted the 

 grandmother, the mother, and a daughter eat their food without 

 taking any liquid ; they do not drink at all, we might say. Their 

 repugnance to liquids is so great that they refuse to drink until 

 they fall into a feverish state.' 3 



We have collected sufficient facts enough to show that there is 

 such a thing as heredity of the perceptive faculties, even under the 

 individual form. Thus, if we take an animal, as it is naturally con- 

 stituted, with its sensorial organs, through which it comes in contact 

 with the outer world, we may say that the quantity and quality of 

 its perceptive faculties will be certainly transmitted in their specific 

 form, and very probably too in their individual form ; therefore, 

 heredity is the rule. 



Sensation, however, presents only the raw material of cognition, 

 which the mind's own activity has to transform and elaborate. To 

 the external element supplied by the material world must be added 

 the internal element supplied by ourselves, in order to produce 

 what is properly called cognition, and the development of the 

 mind. Hence it might be said that the heredity of the perceptive 

 faculties, as here considered, is in some manner external, and that 

 our having established it is a physiological rather than a psycho- 

 logical result. In our opinion, however, this is not the case, nor 

 would that objection be made if it were borne in mind that per- 



1 We state this case with great reserve, because its authenticity does not 

 appear to be beyond question. It is not, however, more improbable than 

 other cases of heredity. It is notorious that the inclination to cannibalism is 

 extremely lasting. A New Zealander of great intelligence, half-civilized 

 by a protracted sojourn in England, while admitting that it was wrong to eat 

 a fellow- man, still longed for the time to come when he could have that 

 pleasure. Lucas, i. p. 391. 



2 Lucas, ibid. 388. 



