I70 HEREDITY AND EUGENICS 



a church career after his failure to be interested 

 in medicine, and on whom he was economically 

 dependent), and his mating." The necessity for 

 avoiding conflicts in order not to be distracted from 

 his researches was another element in his adjustment. 

 Of course, Darwin's ill-health has been much written 

 about. This brief account is given as a typical 

 example of the psychoanalytic method applied to a 

 man of genius. It w^ould gain greatly in value if it 

 recognised the importance of inheritance as furnishing 

 the potentialities on which environmental influences 

 play. It ought to be obvious that if Darwin had been 

 a person of mediocre abilit}^, neither his mother 

 attachment nor anything else could make of him a 

 great naturahst. It is this fact which the psycholo- 

 gist too often overlooks. 



As regards the inheritance of mental aptitudes, that 

 musical ability " runs in families," and is more 

 frequent in some races than in others, is well known. 

 Not onty is this true of such groups as the Bach 

 family, but also of innumerable other families of less 

 exceptional musical ability. Hurst first suggested 

 that this characteristic w^as a Mendelian recessive. 

 A study of five musical families by Drinkwater (191 6) 

 partly supports this conclusion. A family of organists 

 was traced through several generations, and in every 

 case where both parents were musical all the children 

 showed musical ability. In another branch of this 

 family, where both parents lack musical ability, all 

 the children lack it. These families w^ere united by 

 marriage, but instead of all the children being non- 

 musical, exactly 50 per cent, of them w^ere musical, 

 two being professionals of great abilit}-. It therefore 

 appears that musical ability may be a recessive w^hich 

 may nevertheless appear in some cases in the 

 heteroz^^gous condition. Artistic abilit}^ was also 

 traced through four generations as a recessive 



