THE HEREDITY OF RICHARD ROE. 127 
are added together and divided by two. Half comes 
from each side in the process of inheritance, but the 
two halves are alike. But the personal peculiarities 
recognisable in the father are different from those seen 
in the mother. The son can not inherit all from both 
sources. Certainly not more than half could come from 
either source, for the new generation could not be built 
of peculiarities alone. The old large, common heritage 
must always have precedence. Galton has made a cal- 
culation (referred to in the note above), based on wide 
observations, that on the average 25 per cent of the 
individual peculiarities are directly inherited from each 
parent. On the average, each parent exerts the same 
force of heredity. Half the characters come from each, 
but in each half it would appear that about one half is 
lost or rendered unrecognisable by other variation or by 
contradictory blendings. The first division of qualities in 
half is necessary and natural, for there are two parents. 
The second division in half is an arbitrary assumption 
which seems to find its warrant in Galton’s studies. We 
might assume without theoretical difficulty a third or a 
fifth as being preserved intact among possible variations 
and combinations. One half, however, seems nearer the 
fact, and to find the fact is the only purpose of theory. 
To the characters received from the parents we must 
add the latent influence of grandparents, great-grand- 
parents, and the long array of dead hands which, how- 
ever impotent, can never wholly let go. As the small- 
est wave must go on, in theory at least, till it crosses 
the ocean, so the influence of every ancestor must go on 
to the end of the generation. Each’ of us must feel in a 
degree the strength or weakness of each one of them. 
To each grandparent Galton assigns 6% per cent. There 
are four grandparents and two stages of generation sepa- 
rate them from Richard Roe. Half the force of each, 
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