Jan. 28, 1886] 



NATURE 



297 



anarchy the more perfect is its sway. Let a large sample 

 of chaotic elements be taken and marshaled in order of 

 their magnitudes, and then, however wildly irregular they 

 appeared, an unsuspected and most beautiful form of re- 

 gularity proves to have been present all along. Arrange 

 the statures side by side in order of their magnitudes, and 

 the tops of the marshaled row will form a beautifully 

 flowing curve of invariable proportions ; each man will 

 find, as it were, a preordained niche, just at the right 

 height to fit him, and if the class-places and statures of 

 any two men in the row are known, the stature that will 

 be found at every other class-place, except towards the 

 e.xtreme ends, can be predicted with much precision. 



It will be seen from the large values of the ratios of 

 regression how speedily all peculiarities that are pos- 

 sessed by any single individual to an exceptional extent, 

 and which blend freely together with those of his or her 

 spouse,- tend to disappear. A breed of exceptional 

 animals, rigorously selected and carefully isolated from 

 admixture with others of the same race would become 

 shattered by even a brief period of opportunity to marry 

 freely. It is only those breeds that blend imperfectly 

 with others, and especially such of these as are at the 

 same time prepotent, in the sense of being more frequently 

 transmitted than their competitors, that seem to have a 

 chance of maintaining themselves when marriages are not 

 rigorously controlled — as indeed they never are, except by 

 professional breeders. It is on these grounds that I hail 

 the appearance of every new and valuable type as a 

 fortunate and most necessary occurrence in the forward 

 progress of evolution. The precise way in which a new 

 type comes into existence is untraced, but we may well sup- 

 pose that the different possibilities in the groupings of 

 some such elements as those to which the theory of pan- 

 genesis refers, under the action of a multitude of petty 

 causes that have no teleological significance, may always 

 result in a slightly altered, and sometimes in a distinctly 

 new and fairly stable, position of equilibrium, and which, 

 like every other peculiarity, admits of hereditary trans- 

 mission. The general idea of this process is easy enough 

 to grasp, and is analogous to many that we are familiar 

 with, though the precise procedure is beyond our ken. 

 As a matter of fact, we have experience of frequent in- 

 stances of " sports," useful, harmful, and indifferent, and 

 therefore presumably without teleological intent. They 

 are also of various degrees of heritable stability. These 

 form fresh centres, towards which some at least of the 

 offspring have an evident tendency to revert. By refusing 

 to blend freely with other forms, the most peculiar ''sports" 

 admit of being transmitted almost in their entirety, with 

 no less frequency than if they were not exceptional. Thus 

 a grandchild, as we have seen, regresses on the aver- 

 age one-ninth. Suppose the grandfather's peculiarity 

 refused to blend with those of the other grandparents, 

 then the chance of his grandson inheriting that pecu- 

 liarity in its entirety would be as one to nine ; and, so 

 far as the new type might be prepotent over the other 

 possible heritages, so far would the chance of its reap- 

 pearance be increased. On the other hand, if the pecu- 

 liarity did not refuse to blend, and if it was exceptional 

 in magnitude, the chance of inheriting it to its full extent 

 would be extremely small. The probability (easily to be 

 calculated for any given instance by the " probability 

 integral " tables) might even be many thousand times 

 smaller. I will give for an example a by no means ex- 

 treme case. Suppose a large group of men, all of 6 feet 

 S inches in height, the statures of whose wives are hap- 

 hazard, then it can be shown that out of every thousand 

 of the sons not more than one on an average will rival or 

 surpass the height of his father. This consideration is 

 extremely important in its bearing on the origin of species. 

 I feel the greatest difficulty in accounting for the esta- 

 blishment of a new breed in a state of freedom by slight 

 selective influences, unless there has been one or more 



abrupt changes of type, leading step by step to the new 

 form. 



It will be of interest to trace the connection between 

 what has been said about hereditary stature and its 

 application to hereditary ability. Considerable differ- 

 ences have to be taken into account and allowed for. 

 First, after making large allowances for the occasional 

 glaring cases of inferiority on the part of the wife to her 

 eminent husband, I adhere to the view I expressed long since 

 as the result of much inquiry, historical and otherwise, that 

 able men select those women for their wives who on the 

 average are not mediocre women, and still less inferior 

 women, but those who are decidedly above mediocrity. 

 Therefore, so far as this point is concerned, the average 

 regression in the son of an able man would be less than 

 one-third. Secondly, very gifted men are usually of 

 marked individuality, and consequently of a special type. 

 Whenever this type is a stable one, it does not blend 

 easily, but is transmitted almost unchanged, so that 

 specimens of very distinct intellectual heredity frequently 

 occur. Thirdly, there is the fact that men who leave 

 their mark on the world are very often those who, being 

 gifted and full of nervous power, are at the same time 

 haunted and driven by a dominant idea, and are therefore 

 within a measurable distance of lunacy. This weakness 

 will probably betray itself in disadvantageous forms 

 among their descendants. Some will be eccentric, others 

 feeble-minded, others nervous, and some may be down- 

 right mad. 



It will clear our views about hereditary ability if we 

 apply the knowledge gained by our inquiry to solve some 

 hypothetical problem. It is on that ground that I offer 

 the following one. Suppose that in some new country it 

 is desired to institute an Upper House of Legislature 

 consisting of life-peers, in which the hereditary principle 

 shall be largely represented. The principle of insuring 

 this being that two-thirds of the members shall be elected 

 out of a class who possess specified hereditary qualifica- 

 tions, the question is, What reasonable plan can be 

 suggested of determining what those qualifications should 

 be? 



In framing an answer, we have to keep the following 

 principles steadily in view :— (i) The hereditary qualifi- 

 cations derived from a single ancestor should not be 

 transmitted to an indefinite succession of generations, 

 but should lapse after, say, the grandchildren. (2) All 

 sons and daughters should be considered as standing on 

 an equal footing as regards the transmission of hereditary 

 qualifications. (3) It is not only the sons and grandsons 

 of ennobled persons who should be deemed to have 

 hereditary qualifications, but also their brothers and 

 sisters, and the children of these. (4) Men who earn 

 distinction of a high but subordinate rank to that of the 

 nobility, and whose wives had hereditary qualifications, 

 should transmit those qualifications to their children. I 

 calculate roughly and very doubtfully, because many 

 things have to be considered, that there would be about 

 twelve times as many persons hereditarily qualified to be 

 candidates for election as there would be scats to fill. A 

 considerable proportion of these would be nephews, whom 

 I should be very sorry to omit, as they are twice as 

 near in kinship as grandsons. One in twelve seems a 

 reasonably severe election, quite enough to draft off the 

 eccentric and incompetent, and not too severe to dis- 

 courage the ambition of the rest. I have not the slightest 

 doubt" that such a selection out of a class of men who 

 would be so rich in hereditary gifts of ability, would 

 produce a body of men at least as highly gifted by nature 

 as could be derived by ordinary parliamentary election 

 from the whole of the rest of the nation. They would be 

 reared in family traditions of high public services. Their 

 ambitions, shaped by the conditions under which here- 

 ditary qualifications could be secured, would be such as 

 to encourage alliances with the gifted classes. They 



