THE PHENOMENA OF HEREDITY. 63 



courage at the side of his commander. The young officer had with 

 him his wife, Letitia Ramolino, a woman of Roman beauty, and of a 

 strong and masculine character. Napoleon was conceived in his tent, 

 on the eve of a battle, at the distance of two paces from the batteries 

 which faced the enemy. Robespierre was born in 1758, the year 

 which saw Damiens tortured and dragged about the Place de Greve, 

 a year of war, of famine, and of discontent. His father was an attor- 

 ney, and an insatiable reader of the " Contrat Social" Peter the Cruel, 

 King of Castile, was the son of Alfonso XL, who was ever at variance 

 with his wife. Scandalous scenes of anger, jealousy, and rage, con- 

 tinually disturbed the royal household, and the fruit of the commerce 

 of this wedded pair was Peter the Cruel, a monster of ugliness, physi- 

 cal and moral. History shows to us the parents of Raffaelle both de- 

 voted to the art of painting. The wife, a true Madonna, delighted in 

 subjects where grace and piety prevailed ; the husband, a great dauber, 

 preferred strength for his part. 



M. Ribot, in the remarkable work which he has just written on the 

 subject of heredity, investigates the laws of this mysterious influence, 

 which he regards as a sort of habit, an eternal memory. These laws 

 are little more than a statement of the habitual directions of heredi- 

 tary impulsion. Sometimes heredity passes from the father to the 

 daughter, from the mother to the son ; again the child inherits from 

 both parents. Finally, it often happens that the child, instead of re- 

 sembling his immediate parents, resembles one of his grandparents, 

 or some remote member of a collateral branch of the family. This is 

 called atavism. This fact was well known to the ancients. Mon- 

 taigne regarded it with wonder. " Is it not astonishing," says he, 

 " that this drop of seed from which we are produced should bear the 

 impression not only of the bodily form, but also of the thoughts and 

 the inclinations of our fathers ? Where does this drop of water keep 

 this infinite number of forms ? and how does it bear these likenesses 

 through a progress so hap-hazard and so irregular that the great- 

 grandson shall resemble the great-grandfather, the nephew the uncle ? " 

 Montaigne's wonder has good ground ; nor do we to-day know any 

 better than those of the sixteenth century the causes of these strange 

 transmissions. 



Such are the facts. In vain would we multiply them, or comment 

 upon them, to change their character. Cases of heredity will never be, 

 in the domain of physiology, any thing more than exceptions, as com- 

 pared with the cases which make against heredity. But now, if these 

 are only exceptions, by what right shall any man set up heredity as 

 the general law of the development of intellectual activity, or affirm 

 that heredity is here the law, non-heredity the exception ? Ribot ac- 

 cumulates the subtlest of arguments to strengthen this singular propo- 

 sition, but he is wasting his time, wasting his talent. Explain as you 

 will how the heredity of intellectual aptitudes is almost ever overcome 



