Pitch discrimination
seems to depend on structural factors which are not susceptible of
improvement by practice.[167] The same may be said of various forms of
professional athletic achievement. Color blindness seems to be an
instance of the conspicuous absence of such a unit characteristic."
Again, the knowledge of ancestry is an essential factor in the wise
selection of a husband or wife. Insistence has been laid on this point
in an earlier chapter of this book, and it is not necessary here to
repeat what was there said. But it seems certain that ancestry will
steadily play a larger part in marriage selection in the future; it is
at least necessary to know that one is not marrying into a family that
carries the taint of serious hereditary defect, even if one knows
nothing more. An intelligent study of genealogy will do much, we
believe, to bring about the intelligent selection of the man or woman
with whom one is to fall in love.
In addition to these general considerations, it is evident that
genealogy, properly carried out, would throw light on most of the
specific problems with which eugenics is concerned, or which fall in the
field of genetics. A few examples of these problems may be mentioned, in
addition to those which are discussed in various other chapters of this
book.
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