HEREDITY. 
227 
On the other hand, we often learn of great men 
whose ancestors were unknown. This does not dis¬ 
prove that mental traits are regularly inherited. If 
we knew all the facts, we should very likely find that 
the father or mother of Goethe or Shakespeare pos¬ 
sessed keen poetical insight; that the ancestors of 
Gladstone, Newton, Laplace, Harvey, Parkman, were 
thinking men and women and possessed the particu¬ 
lar trait which made their descendants famous, though 
for lack of opportunity it remained undeveloped. 
Frequently it has been observed that the children 
of celebrated men do not appear to possess any of the 
father’s ability. It is possible that in such cases the 
inheritance is present but has been suppressed by en¬ 
vironment. This would seem to be true, inasmuch as 
the same trait asserts itself sometimes in the grand¬ 
children. 
Moral traits are no less inherited than mental. 
In his book entitled The Jukes, Mr. Dugdale traces 
the descendants of an unfortunate, vicious, and neg¬ 
lected girl. It is a line of immoral and criminal in¬ 
heritances not only to the “ third and fourth genera¬ 
tions,” but through six generations. Among the men 
there was nine times as much poverty as among ordi¬ 
nary men, and among the women seven times as much, 
while fifty-two per cent of the latter became out¬ 
casts. This is an extreme case, but instances of in¬ 
herited immoral traits can be found in almost any 
community. 
The inheritance of physical features is even more 
evident. A singular case is that of Andrian and his 
