HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 361 



If that were so decisive a cause of degeneracy, its influence 

 must have been seen among that multitude of the insane 

 and idiotic. 



At any rate, whatever exaggeration there may be 

 among those who theorize on heredity, it has an indisput- 

 able share in the production of temperament and character, 

 and the reality of that fact justifies every practice of a kind 

 calculated to aid the transmission of the best tendencies. 

 At Rome, the most distinguished and respected women 

 sometimes, with their husbands' consent, contributed to 

 some other family the superior qualities of their blood. 

 Quintus Hortensius, Cato's friend and admirer, not succeed- 

 ing in gaining his daughter Pereia, asked for his wife, Mar- 

 cia, and Cato gave her up to him. The coarseness of such 

 usages shocks our sense of delicacy, but it is easily ex- 

 plained by the desire always felt by the head of a Roman 

 family to make sure in his descendants of the most manly 

 vigor and the highest virtues. In our old French society, the 

 continuance of masterships, of offices and professions in the 

 same families in which they were handed down from father 

 to son, originated in and was founded on the unconscious 

 remarking of hereditary transmission of aptitudes; and 

 Sedillot regrets that the overturnings in modern societies 

 have banished that wholesome tradition which held the son 

 morally bound, in all degrees of the social scale, to take 

 the father's place. This is another recollection which 

 should not be left out of view by races desirous of their own 

 improvement. 



Something which should be equally kept in view, and 

 which is yet more easy of appreciation, is the system of 

 precepts of a watchful and intelligent education. In this 

 respect those men who are most concerned for the future 

 of France have now but one opinion : the new generations 

 must be built up by giving more room for bodily exercises, 

 and by loading children less with labors ruinous to their 



