Heredity of the Intellect. 65 



MEYERBEER (Jakob Baer) ; 



His two brothers, the one, Wilhelm, an astronomer, noted for his 



lunar chart, the other, Michael, a poet, who died young. 

 MOZART. 



His father, Johann Georg, second Kapellmeister to the Prince- 

 Bishop of Salzburg ; 

 His sister, whose success while yet a child seemed to give 



evidence of talent not realized in maturer years j 

 His son, Carl, was an amateur musician ; 

 His son, Wolfgang, born four months after his father's death, 



gave evidence early in life of a happy turn for music. 

 PALESTRINA. His sons, Angelo, Rodolfo, and Sylla, who all died 

 young, seemed to have inherited some of their father's talent, 

 if we may judge by some of their' compositions which have 

 been preserved. 

 ROSSINI. Hisfat/ier and mother musicians at fairs. 



CHAPTER V. 



HEREDITY OF THE INTELLECT. 

 I. 



THE faculty of knowing may be hypothetically divided into two 

 parts : the one includes perception, memory, and imagination, of 

 which we have now studied the heredity ; there will remain for 

 the other a certain number of faculties which have for their object 

 abstract and general conceptions, which we will here call intellect 

 proper. We have now to consider if these last-named modes of 

 knowing, which are the highest of all, are subject to the law of 

 heredity. 



First, it is evident that these manifestations of thought are 

 indeed the higher forms of the human intellect that is to say, of 

 the highest intellect of which we are cognizant. Man can rise 

 from the concrete and confused sensation to the simplicity of 

 abstract notions ; he can reduce a countless mass of facts to one 

 general idea, and denote it by an arbitrary sign; he can, by ratiocin- 

 ation, arrive at the most remote, or the most complicated conse- 



