176 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



from this movement, from this striving. It is a protracted drama, 

 where the good genius of liberty contests the throne with the evil 

 genius of brute force, and where, under the eye of God, and with his 

 assistance, is won, slowly and laboriously, the victory of mind, which 

 searches, discovers, invents, creates, loves, adores ! 



III. 



In the first part of this essay we established the facts of heredity, 

 and showed the part it plays in reproducing physiological and psycho- 

 logical characteristics. In the second we pointed out and examined 

 the causes which run counter to the more or less tyrannical impulsions 

 of Nature, and to mechanical necessities. We have now to state some 

 practical conclusions as to the use that may be made of this knowl- 

 edge in perfecting the race. 



The heroic combatants of Homer's epic invoked the names of their 

 fathers and ancestors, and were proud of their noble blood. It was a 

 high instinct, and they who can justly boast of their forefathers will 

 always be in a position to earn for themselves the respect of their 

 children. In short, the phenomena of heredity authorize the belief 

 that parents of well-constituted body and mind are most likely to 

 transmit to their posterity their own likeness. 



What measures are to be taken, then, to bring about happy alli- 

 ances, such as will produce offspring of high excellence in a physical 

 and moral point of view ? This is a very delicate question, and we can 

 give only a summary reply to it, based chiefly on an unpublished work 

 by the eminent surgeon, M. Sedillot, flvho devotes the leisure time of 

 his honorable retirement to studying the means of perfecting the race. 

 First of all, M. Sedillot thinks that we may obtain valuable informa- 

 tion as to an individual's real value by consulting his genealogy : the 

 history of his ascendants for four or five generations, with special 

 reference to intellect, morality, vigor, health, longevity, social status, 

 virtually contains a portion of his own history. Long before Gall the 

 fact was established (nor was it overturned by Gall's exaggerations) 

 that the form of the head is, in some measure, an index of a man's 

 mental calibre. From the remotest antiquity, the popular mind has 

 observed the relation which subsists between great size of head and 

 superior abilities ; and language is full of expressions which witness 

 to the correctness of this relation. Pericles excited the astonishment 

 of the Athenians by the extraordinary volume of his head. Cromwell, 

 Descartes, Leibnitz, Voltaire, Byron, Goethe, Talleyrand, Napoleon, 

 Cuvier, etc., had very large heads. Cuvier's brain weighed 1,829 

 grammes, the average weight of Europeans' brains being, according 

 to Broca, from 1,350 to 1,400 grammes. M. Sedillot regrets that we 

 do not possess measurements of the various cranial dimensions of 

 men distinguished for certain capacities, so that we might ascertain 

 the important relations which subsist between these dimensions and 



