36 HEREDITY 



acts at all as a cause of variations, they are regressive 

 and not progressive : back to the type and not away 

 from it. 



When precise experiments are made, it is found 

 that the mating of different varieties or species 

 always tends towards great reversion — not to the 

 immediate ancestry, but to the remote ancestral 

 form. All the special characters tend to disappear. 

 " The ancestral form common to both varieties, even 

 if it be separated from the crossed descendants by 

 thousands of generations, tends to reappear." Mr. 

 Reid quotes a very large number of instances, animal 

 and vegetable, from Darwin, Cossar Ewart, and other 

 observers. These might be indefinitely multiplied. 



Now Mr. Francis Galton has long ago provided us 

 with evidence and conclusions which nicely consort 

 with the theory of the function of amphimixis which 

 I am trying to expound. Mr. Galton studied inherit- 

 ance in animals, and, very widely, in man ; including 

 in his purview moral and mental as well as physical 

 characters. He was thus able to enounce a well- 

 attested law or principle, which he termed "regres- 

 sion towards mediocrity." [His observations were 

 confined to the higher species, in all of which bi- 

 parental reproduction is universal.] Let us take, 

 then, one or two simple instances derived from the 

 inheritance of mind, which illustrate this principle 

 of regression towards mediocrity. On the average, 

 the children of a genius tend to have something 

 less than their father's power, but yet to be above 

 the mental average of the race. Similarly the chil- 

 dren of the criminal tend to be less vicious than 

 he, though morally inferior to the average man. In 



