HEREDITARY INFLUENCE. 
669 
Moreover, if the hypothesis we are combating be ad- 
mitted — if the father bestows the nervous system — how are 
we to explain the notorious inferiority of the children of 
great men? There is considerable exaggeration afloat on 
this matter, and able men have been called nullities, because 
they have not manifested the great talents of their fathers; 
but allowing for all overstatement, the palpable fact of the 
inferiority of the sons to their fathers is beyond dispute, 
and has helped to foster the idea of all great men owing 
their genius to their mothers, an idea which will not bear 
confrontation with the facts. Many men of genius have 
had remarkable mothers ; and that one such instance could 
be cited is sufficient to prove the error both of the hypo- 
thesis which refers the nervous system to paternal influence, 
and of the hypothesis which only refers the preponderance 
to the paternal influence. If the male preponderates, how 
is it that Pericles, who u carried the weapons of Zeus 
upon his tongue/’ produced nothing better than a Paralus 
and a Xanthippus ? How came the infamous Lysimachus 
from the austere Aristides? How was the weighty intellect 
of Thucycides left to be represented by an idiotic Milesias 
and a stupid Stephanus? Where was the great soul of 
Oliver Cromwell in his son Richard ? Who were the in- 
heritors of Henry IY and Peter the Great? What were 
Shakespeare’s children, and Milton’s daughters? Unless 
the mother preponderated in these and similar instances, 
we are without an explanation ; for it being proved as a law 
of heritage, that the individual does transmit his qualities 
to his offspring, it is only on the supposition of both indi- 
viduals transmitting their organizations, and the one modi- 
fying the other, that such anomalies are conceivable. When 
the paternal influence is not counteracted, we see it trans- 
mitted. Hence the common remark : “ talent runs in 
families.’’ The proverbial phrases, “ l’esprit des Mortemarts,” 
and the “ wit of the Sheridans,” imply this transmission 
from father to son. Bernardo Tasso was a considerable 
poet, and his son Torquato inherited his faculties heightened 
by the influence of the mother. The two Herschels, the 
two Colmans, the Kemble family, and the Coleridges, will 
at once occur to the reader ; but the most striking example 
known to us is that of the family which boasted Jean 
Sebastian Bach as the culminating illustration of a musical 
genius, which, more or less, was distributed over three 
hundred Bachs, the children, of course, of very various 
mothers. 
Here a sceptical reader may be tempted to ask, how a 
