"
Who can suggest any plausible explanation of their conduct, save that
they inherited a certain temperament from their sire? Yet the
inheritance of temperament is one of the things which certain
psychologists most "view with alarm." If it is proved in other animals,
can it be considered wholly impossible in man?
2. _The segregation of mental traits._ When an insane, or epileptic, or
feeble-minded person mates with a normal individual, in whose family no
taint is found, the offspring (generally speaking) will be mentally
sound, even though one parent is not. On the other hand, if two people
from tainted stocks marry, although neither one may be personally
defective, part of their offspring will be affected.
This production of sound children from an unsound parent, in the first
case, and unsound children from two apparently sound parents in the
second case, is exactly the opposite of what one would expect if the
child gets his unsoundness merely by imitation or "contagion." The
difference can not reasonably be explained by any difference in
environment or external stimuli. Heredity offers a satisfactory
explanation, for some forms of feeble-mindedness and epilepsy, and some
of the diseases known as insanity, behave as recessives and segregate in
just the way mentioned.
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