THE STUDY OF AMERICAN FAMILIES 251 



from obscure origin? For example, Mohammed, Napoleon, 

 Lincoln. First of all, in seeking for an explanation of the 

 origin of such ''sports" of which history is full, we must 

 inquire if the putative paternity is the real one. Not infre- 

 quently a weak woman has had illegitimate children by the 

 wayward scion of a great family. The oft repeated story 

 that Abraham Lincoln was descended on his mother's side 

 from Chief Justice John Marshall of Virginia, whether it 

 has any basis or not, illustrates the possibility of the origin 

 of great traits through two obscure parents. In the second 

 place we have seen that many elements of genius are nega- 

 tive characters and, as such, they may be transmitted with- 

 out influencing the soma of the transmitter. 



Thus two parents without mathematical genius might 

 bring together germ cells whose union would favor a mathe- 

 matical prodigy; and the same is true of many other traits. 

 Indeed, as many of om- pedigrees show, genius frequently, | 

 if not usually, appears in families with mental defects, in-/ 

 sanity, or at least neurotic tendencies. Itis just these sturdy/ 

 stolid communities of which not a few are found in Eastern 

 Pennsylvania that, I am informed, produce few insane per- 

 sons as well as few geniuses. The connection between genius 

 and mental defect or aberration has been often referred to, 

 especially by Lombroso and his followers, and as often scoffed 

 at. But, apart from the significant association of the two 

 conditions in pedigrees, there is no a priori objection to the 

 view that the flights of the imagination, one of the most con- 

 stant features of genius, should be associated with that 

 flightiness that is a symptom of insanity, or that the absence 

 of complete mental development should be associated with 

 the absence of one or more of these inhibitors that marks the 

 man or woman of great talent. 



