HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 351 



iiig imaginations, extraordinary capacities for the arts, for 

 poetry, for composition, which are not in the slightest de- 

 gree derived from transmission ! We need not look very 

 far for proofs. Lamartine, Alfred de Musset, Meyerbeer, 

 Ingres, Delacroix, Merime'e, Henry Regnault, 1 not to in- 

 stance the living, exhibited talents for which they are not 

 in the least indebted to their forefathers. The history of 

 savants, properly so called, shows us the share of heredity 

 still further reduced. Families of savants are cited. How 

 many of them are there ? A dozen at most. On the other 

 hand, how many famous savants are there among whose 

 forefathers we find either mere commonplace people, or 

 else people noted for talents very different from those that 

 distinguish the savant/ Where are the ancestral influ- 

 ences that have formed a Cuvier, a Biot, a Fresnel, a Magen- 

 die, an Ampere, a Blainville, a Gay-Lussac ? It is plain 

 that in this matter innateness and education have taken the 

 chief part. Neither is the life of literary men at all more 

 accordant with the claims of the thorough partisans of he- 

 redity. 



1 " I believe that the sun which shines on you is not the same as ours," 

 he wrote from Tangiers, " and I am terrified on seeing afar the moment 

 when I must once again in Europe look on the mournful aspect of houses 

 and crowds ; but before returning thither I intend to make the real 

 Moors live once again then Tunis, Egypt, India. I shall soar from en- 

 thusiasm to enthusiasm, I shall be intoxicated with wonders, until, trans- 

 ported and ecstatic, I shall be able to fall back again into our dull and 

 commonplace world, without fearing lest my eyes lose the light they will 

 have drunk in for two or three years. Whenever, once more in Paris, I 

 shall long for clear vision, I shall need only to close my eyes, and then 

 Moriscos, Fellahs, Hindoos, granite colossi, white-marble elephants, fairy 

 palaces, plains of gold and lakes of azure, and diamond cities, the whole 

 East will pass again in procession before me. Oh, what an intoxication 

 is light ! " " Correspondence of Henry Regnault," collected by M. Ar- 

 thur Duparc, 1872. 



Assuredly these thoughts and emotions were not hereditary in Henry 

 Regnault. 



