THE INHERITANCE OF MENTAL ABILITY III 
readers will recall in this connection the much quoted lines of 
Goethe: 
“Vom Vater hab’ich die Statur, 
Des Lebens ernstes Fiihren: 
Vom Miitterchen die Frohnatur 
Und Lust zu fabuliren. 
Urahnherr war der Schénsten hold, 
Das spukt so hin und wieder. 
Urahnfrau liebte Schmuck und Gold, 
Das zuckt wohl durch die Glieder. 
Sind nun die Elemente nicht 
An dem Complex zu trennen; 
Was ist denn an dem ganzen Wicht 
Original zu nennen?”’ 
A number of investigators have come to the conclusion that 
superior intellectual ability as well as a number of special talents 
are transmitted as recessive characters. Hurst considers musical 
ability recessive, and Davenport from a study of numerous 
family records draws the same conclusion in regard to artistic 
ability, literary ability, mechanical skill, calculating ability and 
memory, all of which are held to be “unit characters that may 
occur in any combination.” 
A careful consideration of the evidence adduced by Hurst and 
Davenport fails to convince me that the traits mentioned are 
recessive, and I am very decidedly of the opinion that they 
cannot be considered as unit characters in the usual sense of 
this term. It is not denied that Mendel’s law holds for the 
transmission of mental as well as physical characteristics, but it is 
not proven that mental peculiarities are inherited in accordance 
with any simple Mendelian ratio. Neither is the evidence satis- 
factory that superior ability of various kinds is recessive to the 
normal condition. Such a conclusion is improbable a priori from 
what we know of the transmission of mertal defect. If feeble- 
