HEREDITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, IN MEDICINE, ETC. 361 
If that were so decisive a cause of degeneracy, its influence 
must have been seen among that multitude of the insane 
and idiotic. 
At any rate, whatever exaggeration there may be 
among those who theorize on heredity, it has an indisput- 
able share in the production of temperament and character, 
and the reality of that fact justifies every practice of a kind 
calculated to aid the transmission of the best tendencies. 
At Rome, the most distinguished and respected women 
sometimes, with their husbands’ consent, contributed to 
some other family the superior qualities of their blood. 
Quintus Hortensius, Cato’s friend and admirer, not succeed- 
ing in gaining his daughter Pereia, asked for his wife, Mar- 
cia, and Cato gave her up to him. ‘The coarseness of such 
usages shocks our sense of delicacy, but it is easily ex- 
plained by the desire always felt by the head of a Roman 
family to make sure in his descendants of the most manly 
vigor and the highest virtues. In our old French society, the 
continuance of masterships, of offices and professions in the 
same families in which they were handed down from father 
to son, originated in and was founded on the unconscious 
remarking of hereditary transmission of aptitudes; and 
Sédillot regrets that the overturnings in modern societies 
have banished that wholesome tradition which held the son 
morally bound, in all degrees of the social scale, to take 
the father’s place. This is another recollection which 
should not be left out of view by races desirous of their own 
improvement. 
Something which should be equally kept in view, and 
which is yet more easy of appreciation, is the system of 
precepts of a watchful and intelligent education. In this 
respect those men who are most concerned for the future 
of France have now but one opinion: the new generations 
must be built up by giving more room for bodily exercises, 
and by loading children less with labors ruinous to their 
