NOTES AND LITERATURE 



HEREDITY 



Recent Studies in Human Heredity. — Must the fallacy always 

 persist that all ancient and powerful families are necessarily 

 degenerate? As long ago as 1881, Paul Jacoby wrote a book 1 

 to prove that the assumption of rank and power has always been 

 followed by mental and physical deteriorations ending in sterility 

 and the extinction of the race. By collecting together all evi- 

 dence supporting his preconceived theory, by tracing only the 

 well-known families in which pathological conditions were heredi- 

 tary, by failing to treat of dozens of others whose records would 

 not have supported his thesis, by saying everything he possibly 

 could that was bad about every one (following always the hostile 

 historians), by ignoring everywhere the normal and virtuous 

 members, he was able to present what was to the uninformed an 

 apparently overwhelming array of proof. In regard to the 

 injustice of this one-sided picture I have already had some- 

 thing to say in "Mental and Moral Heredity in Royalty," 2 first 

 published some six years ago. 



A further study based upon Jacoby 's unsound foundations 

 has recently come to my notice." and although a well-made book 

 containing an interesting scries of - J7S portrait illustrations, is 

 necessarily quite as misleading as the older structure on which 

 it rests. The main idea of Dr. Galippe is to show that the great 

 swollen protruding underlip which descended among the Haps- 

 burgs of Austria. Spain and allied houses, and also the protrud- 

 ing underjaw (prognathisme itifericur) , are stigmata of de- 

 generacy, and to demonstrate this he places beside his portraits, 

 quotations from the writings of Jacoby. 



Galippe uses no statistical methods, not even arithmetical 

 counting, and appears to be totally ignorant of English bio- 

 metric writings. His general conclusions about the causes of 

 degeneracy (aristocratic environment, etc.) are quite as mis- 



1 Etudes sur la selection chez rhomme. Paris, 1881, 2d ed.. 1904. 



1 Popular Science Monthly, August, 1902-April, 1903. Also extended in 

 book form, New York, Holt, 1906. 



s V. Galippe. L 'heredite des stigmates de degenerescence et les families 

 souveraines. Paris, 1905. 



685 



