Hereditary

“ The hereditary action produces tendencies in a particular direction in the offspring, which renders its development easier in that direction. It is only gradually, through education and the influence of heredity in a different direction, that the original tendency can be removed. But if all the circumstances of life favour its development, the individual, the family, and the nation will certainly display the result of these tendencies in full force. ”

“ Possibly we have here an explanation of some hereditary phenomena in human beings. If there is an unequal division, and more of the male than of the female nucleus, the child might, as a result, inherit more of the father's than of the mother's characteristics, or the reverse. ”

“ I saw it might be taken as a symbol of the part which is played in the general human lot by hereditary conditions in the largest sense, and of the fact that what we call duty is entirely made up of such conditions; for even in cases of just antagonism to the narrow view of hereditary claims, the whole background of the particular struggle is made up of our inherited nature. ”

“ Do we observe certain degrees of the intellectual faculties to be hereditary in certain families? The same observation has been frequently extended to moral qualities. Hence we often find certain virtues and vices as peculiar to families, through all their degrees of consanguinity, and duration, as a peculiarity of voice, complexion, or shape. ”

“ Families in which good and noble qualities of mind and body have become hereditary form a natural aristocracy, and, if such families take pride in recording their pedigrees, marry among themselves, and establish a predominant fertility, they can assure success and position to the majority of their descendants in any political future. ”

“ One of these laws is that of hereditary transmission, by which qualities and states both of body and mind descend from parents to their offspring. The existence of this law is a condition, necessarily attendant upon the great relation of parent and child, by means of which the human race, once created, was to be continued. ”

“ So many factors are at work and there are possible so many combinations of factors that no one can tell; for it is during the period of adolescence that hereditary characteristics show themselves. Up to this time the child is a child of the race; during this period it becomes the offspring of its parents. And the factors of heredity—father, mother, ancestry—are mingling and clashing and combining with the factors of environment, and what the outcome is going to be, nobody knows, in specific cases, in advance. ”

“ It is evident that the institution of such castes originally arose from the notion of the great importance of hereditary distinctions possessed by certain families, which it was presumed would always be transmitted by the parents to the children. ”

“ Because the idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet laureate. ”

“ But now the question arises,—How can we explain the presence of such characters consistently with a belief in the continuity of the germ-plasm, a theory which implies the rejection of the supposition that acquired characters can become hereditary? How can the individuals of any species come to possess various characters which are undoubtedly hereditary, if all changes which are due to the influence of external conditions are transient and disappear with the individual in which they arose? ”

“ As therefore hereditary succession is out of the question, with respect to the first generation, we have next to consider the character in which that generation acts towards the commencing generation and to all succeeding ones. ”

“ Again, assuming the existence of a number of individuals which differ from one another by a few hereditary individual characters, it follows that no individual of the second generation can be identical with any other. ”

“ No one can doubt the law of hereditary transmission. Our inherited and acquired characteristics are sure to be transmitted to our descendants. Indeed, so thoroughly does character permeate one's entire being that it might be said of each drop of blood that in its characteristics it is a miniature of the person in whose body it was secreted. Eminent characters do not emanate from degenerate parents; and neither is the reverse true, except as the result of adequate reversionary influences. ”

“ Whenever, by the laws of hereditary descent, in their application to health and disease, our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren suffer, we may recognize in it the hand of the great Creator; nor do we doubt, often, the wisdom of such laws nor their ultimate tendency to work out final good. ”

“ Yet it would be wrong to conclude that the faculty of speech is acquired, or is absolutely not inherited. Whatever properties of organisms are constantly repeated periodically are called hereditary; whatever endures through many generations is called inherited. ”

“ Why is it that individuals are distinguished by innate characters, as well as by those which I have previously called transient, and how can deep-seated hereditary characters arise at all, if they are not produced by the external influences to which the individual is exposed? ”

“ And in countries where certain colors distinguish certain families, and are hereditary, so to say, it is convenient and pleasant to recognize a coat-of-arms, or a livery, and to know that the representative of a great and famous family is passing by. ”

“ In this hereditary knowledge, and in the proper use of it, (according to the different stations of life in which men subsist in this world,) consists the equality of all mankind in the sight of God, and also in the eye of the law, I mean the common law and rules of natural justice, which are formed upon the self-evident conclusions of human reason, and are the necessary result of the above mentioned hereditary knowledge in man. ”

“ But it is too fruitful a subject, this of hereditary resemblances,—the frequent recurrence of which, in a direct line, is truly unaccountable, when we consider how large an accumulation of ancestry lies behind every man at the distance of one or two centuries. ”

“ To the inheritance of stature each mid-parent (median between the two parents) contributes an influence marked as one half, each individual parent one quarter, and each individual grandparent one sixteenth. A like hereditary relation is found to exist between the man and his ancestors in the matter of eye-sight. ”

“ The Treasury of Human Inheritance, issued in parts from the Galton laboratory, is a monumental record of facts relating to the hereditary transmission of human qualities. The Eugenics Education Society, under the presidency of Major Leonard Darwin, has for its aim the stimulation of public interest in the subject, and the discussion of the problems of heredity. ”

“ As there is a great amount of misconception on this subject some explanation may be advisable. Many well-educated and intelligent persons seem to think that whatever characters or faculties are hereditary are also necessarily cumulative. They hear that mental as well as physical characteristics are hereditary; their own observation tells them that there are musical families as well as tall families. ”

“ Just as the teeth and the beard are not usually innate in man, but come and grow like those of the parents and are already implanted, piece for piece, in the new-born child, and are thus hereditary, so the first ideas of the infant, his first concepts, which arise unconsciously, without volition and without the possibility of inhibition, in every individual in the same way, must be called hereditary. ”

“ As many families become gradually extinct by hereditary diseases, as by scrofula, consumption, epilepsy, mania, it is often hazardous to marry an heiress, as she is not unfrequently the last of a diseased family. ”

“ The person to set up is not hereditary, but selected and appointed; and the generation which sets him up, does not live under an hereditary government, but under a government of its own choice. Were the person to set up, and the generation who sets him up, to live for ever, it never could become hereditary succession, and of consequence, hereditary succession can only follow on the death of the first parties. ”

“ The relative predominance of each element will in all cases decide the particular class of purposes, vocations, professions or other pursuits to which the subject is best adapted, other things being equal. Quality results from a variety of causes. Like all other personal peculiarities, it is, to a certain extent, hereditary. Children are, to a greater or less extent, certain to inherit the quality of their parents and immediate ancestors. But the inherited quality of offspring is subject to great modifications. ”

“ Especially since it is easier to generate human angels than devils incarnate.
7. Hereditary Descent.—This great law of things, "Hereditary Descent," fully proves and illustrates in any required number and variety of cases, showing that progeny inherits the constitutional natures and characters, mental and physical, of parents, including pre-dispositions to consumption, insanity, all sorts of disease, etc., as well as longevity, strength, stature, looks, disposition, talents,—all that is constitutional. ”

“ In some cases the hereditary factor is so clearly deficient as to make it natural and justifiable to regard heredity as the cause; in a much larger number of cases there is good reason to think that social conditions are more particularly to blame, and that the original hereditary outfit was fairly good. ”

“ Therefore, when the attempt is made to prove that defects or points of excellence are hereditary, it is essential that all possibility of a purely environmentally or socially determined repetition of ancestral traits be excluded. ”

“ Strong hereditary dispositions of character may be recognized in early infancy. When the ancestry of a man is well known the roots of his recent phylogeny may be traced to his ancestors. Here we observe the effect of crossing between varieties or different races, or on the contrary that of consanguinity. ”

“ My Ancestry Our history begins before we are born. We represent the hereditary influences of our race, and our ancestors virtually live in us. ”

“ The flocks and herds of the children are the flocks and herds of the father, and the possessions of the parent, which he holds in a representative rather than in a proprietary character, are equally divided at his death among his descendants in the first degree, the eldest son sometimes receiving a double share under the name of birthright, but more generally endowed with no hereditary advantage beyond an honorary precedence. ”

“ But I was right. I think that must be an hereditary quality, for my father says he is scarcely ever wrong. ”

“ The exposition of the doctrine of germinal continuity, (b) More precise investigation of the material basis of inheritance, (c) Suspicions regarding the inheritance of acquired characteristics, (d) Application of statistical methods which have led to the formulation of the law of ancestral heredity." We shall take these up in order.
Exposition of the Doctrine of Germinal Continuity.—From parent to offspring there passes some hereditary substance; although small in amount, it is the only living thread that connects one generation with another. ”

“ Features of all kinds are inherited, as anyone who has ever spent some time in a family portrait gallery where the ancestors were genuine and the paintings reasonably true to life, knows very well. Certain features of European families can be traced for many generations. The tendency to have six toes or to have an extra finger runs in certain families. So small a thing as a patch of white hair in a particular part of the head may be the subject of hereditary transmission. ”

“ Whether or no the importance of the issues at stake comes to be recognized fully by the nation at large, individuals and families have it in their power to act on the knowledge they have acquired.... When once more the importance of good birth comes to be recognized in a new sense, ... it will be understood to be more important to marry into a family with a good hereditary record of physical, mental, and moral qualities than it ever has been considered to be [Pg 238] allied to one with sixteen quarterings. ”

“ There are few girls who can resist the glamor of a title. The hereditary peer can therefore marry almost anyone he likes and if he does not marry one of his own class he can select and (until recently) usually has selected the daughter of some man who by distinguished ability has risen from a lower social or financial position. Thus the hereditary nobilities of Europe have been able to maintain themselves; and a similar process is undoubtedly taking place among the idle rich who occupy an analogous position in the United States. ”

“ The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends the most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possessors of family wealth, and of the distinction which attends hereditary possession, (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission. ”

“ Talent is hereditary; it may be the common possession of a whole family (e.g., the Bach family) ; genius is not transmitted; it is never diffused, but is strictly individual. ”

“ I said, I regretted I was not the head of a clan; however, though not possessed of such an hereditary advantage, I would always endeavour to make my tenants follow me. ”