466 READINGS IN EVOLUTION,.GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 
manifest itself until past middle life, when they have already married 
and started a family. Moreover, those hybrid individua!s in whom 
the insane tendency is present alongside of the normal determiner 
appear as normal individuals. Frequently they can be detected only 
by an examination of the pedigree. If such individuals mate, one- 
fourth of the offspring would be expected to be insane. 
Early modern European history centers about the doings of a 
few great menand women. Peter the Great of Russia, Ferdinand and 
Isabella and Charles V of Spain, Frederick the Great of Prussia ,Gusta- 
vus Adolphus and Charles XII of Sweden, are among the most brilliant 
of these potent individuals that shaped the destinies of Europe during 
this period. It is interesting to note how their characters are deter- 
mined (and through them national destinies are apparently decided 
in no small measure) by the hereditary concentration of ability due 
to lucky royal matings, and how their genius is dissipated by unwise 
matings. 
Peter the Great of Russia came as a brilliant type from a good 
stock, though with a very evident taint of epilepsy and feeble- 
mindedness. He himself was an epileptic. His father, grandfather, 
and great-grandfather had been men of large ability. They had married 
peasant girls, as was the custom of the czars. Peter’s own brothers 
and sisters were in no way remarkable. His half-sister Sophia was a 
woman of marked ability, although two of her brothers were imbeciles, 
one also an epileptic. As will be seen from the pedigree, the epilepsy, 
inbecility, and mediocrity appear in both Peter’s children and grand- 
children, as well as in those of his imbecile half-brother, Ivan. It is 
interesting to note from the pedigree that the feeble-mindedness and 
epilepsy seem to cling to the males quite persistently. The females 
of the family are much more apt to be brilliant and virtuous. Peter 
the Great’s own son Alexis was a poor dissolute specimen, and although 
he married Charlotte, the angelic daughter of a great line, the house 
of Brunswick, the son of this mating was Peter II, of unstable mind, 
while the daughter Natalia was as sweet as she was energetic. 
Isabella and Ferdinand were both descendants from lines of very 
great individuals, although in each case there is insanity in the family. 
Isabella herself comes from an insane mother and an imbecile father, 
but her grandparents and great-grandparents were well-balanced and 
able. The data for the charts of these royal families were taken 
largely from F. A. Woods’s Mental and Moral Heredity in Royalty, 
supplemented with information from other sources. He grades the 
