INBREEDING. 99 



incest being strenuously inhibited, close racial 

 affinities could long be maintained without 

 impairing the power of the race. And yet 

 granting all this, admitting the occasional 

 greatness of Hebrews, their proverbial success 

 in trade, the now rare physical beauty of the 

 women, the Jew is not a dazzling argument in 

 himself, as he now exists, for the practice of in- 

 and-in breeding. 



Next to the Jews the Egyptian royal line of 

 the Ptolemies has done most service in the sup- 

 port of in-and-in breeding from a human stand- 

 point, but Francis Galton, the able investigator 

 of the phenomena of inheritance, handles the 

 Ptolemy claim rather roughly in his work on 

 " Hereditary Genius."* The first of the Ptole- 

 mies was the son of Philip II of Macedon by 

 Arsinoe, and consequently a half-brother of 

 Alexander the Great. Ptolemy Soter I " be- 

 came the first king of Egypt after Alexander's 

 death" and was highly rated by Alexander. 

 " He had all the qualities of an able and judi- 

 cious general. He was also given to literature 

 and patronized learned men. He had twelve 

 descendants who became kings of Egypt and 

 who were called Ptolemy, and who nearly all 

 resembled one another in features, in states- 

 man-like ability, in love of letters and in their 

 voluptuous dispositions. This race of Ptolemies 



* "Hereditary Genius," pp. 150 to 153. 



