This state, which may be called the natural hypnotic state, may be artificially modified. 'The power of suggestion over the patient,' says Dr. Garth Wilkinson, 'is excessive. If you say, "What animal is it?" the patient will tell you it is a lamb, or a rabbit, or any other. "Does he see it?" "Yes." "What animal is itnow?" putting depth and gloom into the tone ofnow, and thereby suggesting a difference. "Oh!" with a shudder, "it is a wolf!" "What colour is it?" still glooming the phrase. "Black." "What colour is it now?" giving thenowa cheerful air. "Oh! a beautiful blue!" (rather an unusual colour for a wolf, I would suggest), spoken with the utmost delight (and no wonder! especially if the hypnotic subject were a naturalist). And so you lead the subject through any dreams you please, by variations of questions and of inflections of the voice! andhe sees and feels all as real.'
We have seen how the patient's mind can be influenced by changing the posture of his body. Dr. Wilkinson gives very remarkable evidence on this point. 'Double his fist and pull up his arm, if you dare,' he says, of the subject, 'for you will have the strength of your ribs rudely tested.Put him on his knees and clasp his hands, and the saints and devotees of the artists will pale before the trueness of his devout actings. Raise his head while in prayer, and his lips pour forth exulting glorifications, as he sees heaven opened, and the majesty of God raising him to his place; then in a moment depress the head, and he is in dust and ashes, an unworthy sinner, with the pit of hell yawning at his feet. Or compress the forehead, so as to wrinkle it vertically, and thorny-toothed clouds contract in from the very horizon' (in the subject's imagination, it will be understood); 'and what is remarkable, the smallest pinch and wrinkle, such as will lie between your nipping nails, is sufficient nucleus to crystallise the man into that shape, and to make him all foreboding, as, again, the smallest expansion in a moment brings the opposite state, with a full breathing of delight.'
Some will perhaps think the next instance the most remarkable of all, perfectly natural though one half of the performance may have been. The subject being a young lady, the operator asks whether she or another is the prettier, raising her head as he puts the question. 'Observe,' says Dr. Wilkinson, 'the inexpressible hauteur, and the puff sneers let off from the lips' (see Darwin's treatise on the 'Expression of the Emotions,' plate IV. i, and plate V. i) 'which indicate a conclusion too certain to need utterance. Depress the head, and repeat the question, and mark the self-abasement with which she now says "She is," as hardly worthy to make the comparison.'
In this state, in fact, 'whatever posture of any passion is induced, the passion comes into it at once, and dramatises the body accordingly.'
It might seem that there must of necessity be some degree of exaggeration in this description, simply because the power of adequately expressing any given emotion is not possessed by all. Some can in a moment bring any expression into the face, or even simulate at once the expression and the aspect of another person, while many persons, probably most, possess scarcely any power of thesort, and fail ridiculously even in attempting to reproduce the expressions corresponding to the commonest emotions. But it is abundantly clear that the hypnotised subject possesses for the time being abnormal powers. No doubt this is due to the circumstance that for the time being 'the whole man is given to each perception.' The stories illustrative of this peculiarity of the hypnotised state are so remarkable that they have been rejected as utterly incredible by many who are not acquainted with the amount of evidence we have upon this point.
The instances above cited by Dr. Garth Wilkinson, remarkable though they may be, are surpassed altogether in interest by a case which Dr. Carpenter mentions,—of a factory girl, whose musical powers had received little cultivation, and who could scarcely speak her own language correctly, who nevertheless exactly imitated both the words and the music of vocal performances by Jenny Lind. Dr. Carpenter was assured by witnesses in whom he could place implicit reliance, that this girl, in the hypnotised state, followed the Swedish nightingale's songs in different languages 'so instantaneously and correctly, as to both words and music, that it was difficult to distinguish the two voices. In order to test the powers of the somnambulist to the utmost, Mademoiselle Lind extemporised a long and elaborate chromatic exercise, which the girl imitated with no less precision, though in her waking state she durst not even attempt anything of the sort.'
The exaltation of the senses of hypnotised subjects is an equally wonderful phenomenon. Dr. Carpenter relates many very remarkable instances as occurring within his own experience. He has 'known a youth, in the hypnotised state,' he says, 'to find out, by the sense of smell, the owner of a glove which was placed in his hand, from amongst a party of more than sixty persons, scenting at each of them one after the other until he came to the right individual. In another case, the owner of a ring was unhesitatingly found out from amongst a company of twelve, the ring having beenwithdrawn from the finger before the somnambule was introduced.' The sense of touch has, in other cases, been singularly intensified, insomuch that slight differences of heat, which to ordinary feeling were quite inappreciable, would be at once detected, while such differences as can be but just perceived in the ordinary state would produce intense distress.
In some respects, the increase of muscular power, or rather of the power of special muscles, is even more striking, because it is commonly supposed by most persons that the muscular power depends entirely on the size and quality of the muscles, the state of health, and like conditions, not on the imagination. Of course every one knows that the muscles are capable of greater efforts when the mind is much excited by fear and other emotions. But the general idea is, I think, that whatever the body is capable of doing under circumstances of great excitement, it is in reality capable of doing at all times if only a resolute effort is made. Nor is it commonly supposed that a very wide difference exists between the greatest efforts of the body under excitement and those of which it is ordinarily capable. Now, the condition of the hypnotised subject is certainly not one of excitement. The attempts which he is directed to make are influenced only by the idea that hecando what he is told, not that hemustdo so. When a man pursued by a bull leaps over a wall which under ordinary conditions he would not even think of climbing, we can understand that he only does, because he must, what if he liked he could do at any time. But if a man who had been making his best efforts in jumping, cleared only a height of four feet, and presently being told to jump over an eight-feet wall, cleared that height with apparent ease, we should be disposed to regard the feat as savouring of the miraculous.
Now Dr. Carpenter saw one of Mr. Braid's hypnotised subjects—a man so remarkable for the poverty of his physical development that he had not for many years ventured to lift up a weight of twenty pounds in his ordinary state—take up a quarter of a hundredweight upon his little finger, and swing it round his head with the utmost apparent ease, on being told that it was as light as a feather. 'On another occasion he lifted a half-hundredweight on the last joint of his forefinger as high as his knee.' The personal character of the man placed him above all suspicion of deceit, in the opinion of those who best knew him; and as Dr. Carpenter acutely remarks, 'the impossibility of any trickery in such a case would be evident to the educated eye, since, if he had practised such feats (which very few, even of the strongest men could accomplish without practice), the effect would have made itself visible in his muscular development.' 'Consequently,' he adds, 'when the same individual afterwards declared himself unable, with the greatest effort, to lift a handkerchief from the table, after having been assured that he could not possibly move it, there was no reason for questioning the truth of his conviction, based as this was upon the same kind of suggestion as that by which he had been just before prompted to what seemed an otherwise impossible action.'
The explanation of this and the preceding cases cannot be mistaken by physiologists, and is very important in its bearing on the phenomena of hypnotism generally, at once involving an interpretation of the whole series of phenomena, and suggesting other relations not as yet illustrated experimentally. It is well known that in our ordinary use of any muscles we employ but a small part of the muscle at any given moment. What the muscle is actually capable of is shown in convulsive contractions, in which far more force is put forth than the strongest effort of the will could call into play. We explain, then, the seeming increase of strength in any set of muscles during the hypnotic state as due to the concentration of the subject's will in an abnormal manner, or to an abnormal degree, on that set of muscles. In a similar way, the great increase of certain powers of perception may be explained as due to the concentration of the will upon the corresponding parts of the nervous system.In like manner, the will may be directed so entirely to the operations necessary for the performances of difficult feats, that the hypnotised or somnambulistic subject may be able to accomplish what in his ordinary condition would be impossible or even utterly appalling to him. Thus sleep-walkers (whose condition precisely resembles that of the artificially hypnotised, except that the suggestions they experience come from contact with inanimate objects, instead of being aroused by the actions of another person) 'can clamber walls and roofs, traverse narrow planks, step firmly along high parapets, and perform other feats which they would shrink from attempting in their waking state.' This is simply, as Dr. Carpenter points out, because they arenot distractedby the sense of danger which their vision would call up, from concentrating their exclusive attention on the guidance afforded by their muscular sense.'
But the most remarkable and suggestive of all the facts known respecting hypnotism is the influence which can by its means be brought to bear upon special parts or functions of the body. We know that imagination will hasten or retard certain processes commonly regarded as involuntary (indeed, the influence of imagination is itself in great degree involuntary). We know further that in some cases imagination will do much more than this, as in the familiar cases of the disappearance of warts under the supposed influence of charms, the cure of scrofula at a touch, and hundreds of well-attested cases of so-called miraculous cures. But although the actual cases of the curative influence obtained over hypnotised patients may not be in reality more striking than some of these, yet they are more suggestive at any rate to ordinary minds, because they are known not to be the result of any charm or miraculous interference, but to be due to simply natural processes initiated by natural though unfamiliar means.
Take, for instance, such a case as the following, related by Dr. Carpenter (who has himself witnessed many remarkable cases of hypnotic cure):—'A female relative of Mr.Braid's was the subject of a severe rheumatic fever, during the course of which the left eye became seriously implicated, so that after the inflammatory action had passed away, there was an opacity over more than one half of the cornea, which not only prevented distinct vision, but occasioned an annoying disfigurement. Having placed herself under Mr. Braid's hypnotic treatment for the relief of violent pain in her arm and shoulder, she found, to the surprise alike of herself and Mr. Braid, that her sight began to improve very perceptibly. The operation was therefore continued daily; and in a very short time the cornea became so transparent that close inspection was required to discover any remains of the opacity.' On this, Carpenter remarks that he has known other cases in which secretions that had been morbidly suspended have been reinduced by this process; and is satisfied that, if applied with skill and discrimination, it would take rank as one of the most potent methods of treatment which the physician has at his command. He adds that 'the channel of influence is obviously the system of nerves which regulates the secretions—nerves which, though not under direct subjection to the will, are peculiarly affected by emotional states.'
I may remark, in passing, that nerves which are not ordinarily under the influence of the will, but whose office would be to direct muscular movements if only the will could influence them, may by persistent attention become obedient to the will. When I was last in New York, I met a gentleman who gave me a long and most interesting account of certain experiments which he had made on himself. The account was not forced on me, the reader must understand, but was elicited by questions suggested by one or two remarkable facts which he had casually mentioned as falling within his experience. I had only his own word for much that he told me, and some may perhaps consider that there was very little truth in the narrative. I may pause here to make some remarks by the way, on the traits of truthful and untruthful persons. I believe very slight powersof observation are necessary to detect want of veracity in any man, though absence of veracity in any particular story may not be easily detected or established. I am not one of those who believe every story they hear, and trust in every one they meet. But I have noticed one or two features by which the habitual teller of untruths may be detected very readily, as may also one who, without telling actual falsehoods, tries to heighten the effect of any story he may have to tell, by strengthening all the particulars. My experience in this respect is unlike Dickens's, who believed, and indeed found, that a man whom on first seeing he distrusted, and justly, could explain away the unfavourable impression. 'My first impression,' he says, 'about such people, founded on face and manner alone, was invariably true; my mistake was in suffering them to come nearer to me and explain themselves away.' I have found it otherwise; though of course Dickens was right about his own experience: the matter depends entirely on the idiosyncrasies of the observer. I have often been deceived by face and expression: never, to the best of my belief (and belief in this case is not mere opinion, but is based on results), by manner of speaking. One peculiarity I have never found wanting in habitually mendacious persons—a certain intonation which I cannot describe, but recognise in a moment, suggestive of the weighing of each sentence as it is being uttered, as though to consider how it would tell. Another, is a peculiarity of manner, but it only shows itself during speech; it is a sort of watchfulness often disguised under a careless tone, but perfectly recognisable however disguised. Now, the gentleman who gave me the experience I am about to relate, conveyed to my mind, by every intonation of his voice and every peculiarity and change of manner, the idea of truthfulness. I cannot convey to others the impression thus conveyed to myself: nor do I expect that others will share my own confidence: I simply state the case as I know it, and as far as I know it. It will, however, be seen that a part of the evidence was confirmed on the spot.
The conversation turned on the curability of consumption. My informant, whom I will henceforth call A., said that, though he could not assert from experience that consumption was curable, he believed that in many cases where the tendency to consumption is inherited, and the consumptive constitution indicated so manifestly that under ordinary conditions the person would before long be hopelessly consumptive, an entire change may be made in the condition of the body, and the person become strong and healthy. He said: 'I belong myself to a family many of whose members have died of consumption. My father and mother both died of it, and all my brothers and sisters save one brother; yet I do not look consumptive, do I?' and certainly he did not. He then took from a pocket-book a portrait of his brother, showing a young man manifestly in very bad health, looking worn, weary, and emaciated. From the same pocket-book A. then took another portrait, asking if I recognised it. I saw here again a worn and emaciated face and figure. The picture was utterly unlike the hearty well-built man before me, yet it manifestly represented no other. If I had been at all doubtful, my doubts would have been removed by certain peculiarities to which A. called my attention. I asked how the change in his health had been brought about. He told me a very remarkable story of his treatment of himself, part of which I omit because I am satisfied he was mistaken in attributing to that portion of his self-treatment any part of the good result which he had obtained, and that if many consumptive patients adopted the remedy, a large proportion, if not all, would inevitably succumb very quickly. The other portion of his account is all that concerns us here, being all that illustrates our present subject. He said: 'I determined to exercise every muscle of my body; I set myself in front of a mirror and concentrated my attention and all the power of my will on the muscle or set of muscles I proposed to bring into action. Then I exercised those muscles in every way I could think of, continuing the process till I had used in succession every muscle over which the will has control.While carrying out this system, I noticed that gradually the will acquired power over muscles which before I had been quite unable to move. I may say, indeed, that every set of muscles recognised by anatomists, except those belonging to internal organs, gradually came under the control of my will.' Here I interrupted, asking (not by any means as doubting his veracity, for I did not): 'Can you do what Dundreary said he thought some fellow might be able to do? can you waggle your left ear?' 'Why, certainly,' he replied; and turning the left side of his head towards me, he moved his left ear about; not, it is true, waggling it, but drawing it up and down in a singular way, which was, he said, the only exercise he ever gave it. He said, on this, that there are many other muscles over which the will has ordinarily no control, but may be made to obtain control; and forthwith, drawing the cloth of his trousers rather tight round the right thigh (so that the movement he was about to show might be discernible) he made in succession the three muscles of the front and inner side of the thigh rise about half an inch along some nine or ten inches of their length. Now, though these muscles are among those which are governed by the will, for they are used in a variety of movements, yet not one in ten thousand, perhaps in a million, can move them in the way described.
How far A.'s system of exciting the muscles individually as well as in groups may have operated in improving his health, as he supposed, I am not now inquiring. What I wish specially to notice is the influence which the will may be made to obtain over muscles ordinarily beyond its control. It may be that under the exceptional influence of the imagination, in the hypnotic condition, the will obtains a similar control for a while over even those parts of the nervous system which appertain to the so-called involuntary processes. In other words, the case I have cited may be regarded as occupying a sort of middle position between ordinary cases of muscular action and those perplexing cases in which the hypnotic subject seems able to influence pulsation, circulation, and processes of secretion in the various parts or organs of his body.
It must be noted, however, that the phenomena of hypnotism are due solely to the influence of the imagination. The quasi-scientific explanations which attributed them to magnetism, electricity, some subtle animal fluid, some occult force, and so forth, have been as completely negatived as the supernatural explanation. We have seen that painted wooden tractors were as effectual as the metal tractors of the earlier mesmerists; a small disc of card or wood is as effective as the disc of zinc and copper used by the electro-biologists; and now it appears that the mystical influence, or what was thought such, of the operator is no more essential to success than magnetic or electric apparatus.
Dr. Noble of Manchester made several experiments to determine this point. Some among them seem absolutely decisive.
Thus, a friend of Dr. Noble's had a female servant whom he had frequently thrown into the hypnotic state, trying a variety of experiments, many of which Dr. Noble had witnessed. Dr. Noble was at length told that his friend had succeeded in magnetising her from another room and without her knowledge, with some other stories even more marvellous, circumstantially related by eye-witnesses, 'amongst others by the medical attendant of the family, a most respectable and intelligent friend' of Dr. Noble's own. As he remained unsatisfied, Dr. Noble was invited to come and judge for himself, proposing whatever test he pleased. 'Now had we visited the house,' he says, 'we should have felt dissatisfied with any result,' knowing 'that the presence of a visitor or the occurrence of anything unusual was sure to excite expectation of some mesmeric process.' 'We therefore proposed,' he proceeds, 'that the experiment should be carried on at our own residence; and it was made under the following circumstances:—The gentleman early one evening wrote a note as if on business, directing it to ourselves. He thereupon summoned the female servant (themesmeric subject), requesting her to convey the note to its destination, and to wait for an answer. The gentleman himself, in her hearing, ordered a cab, stating that if anyone called he was going to a place named, but was expected to return by a certain hour. Whilst the female servant was dressing for her errand, the master placed himself in the vehicle and rapidly arrived at our dwelling. In about ten minutes after the note arrived, the gentleman in the meantime being secreted in an adjoining apartment, we requested the young woman who had been shown into our study, to take a seat whilst we wrote the answer; at the same time placing the chair with its back to the door leading into the next room which was left ajar. It had been agreed that after the admission of the girl into the place where we were, the magnetiser, approaching the door in silence on the other side, should commence operations. There, then, was the patient or "subject" placed within two feet of her magnetiser, a door only intervening, and that but partially closed; but she, all the while, perfectly free from all idea of what was going on. We were careful to avoid any unnecessary conversation with the girl, or even to look towards her, lest we should raise some suspicion in her own mind. We wrote our letter (as if in answer) for nearly a quarter of an hour, once or twice only making an indifferent remark, and on leaving the room for a light to seal the supposed letter, we beckoned the operator away. No effect whatever had been produced, although we had been told that two or three minutes were sufficient, even when mesmerising from the drawing-room, through walls and apartments, into the kitchen. In our own experiment the intervening distance had been very much less, and only one solid substance intervened, and that not completely; but here we suspect was the difference—the "subject" was unconscious of the magnetism and expected nothing.'
In another case Dr. Noble tried the converse experiment with equally convincing results. Being in company one evening with a young lady said to be of high mesmeric susceptibility, he requested and received permission to test this quality in her. In one of the usual ways he 'magnetised' her, and having so far satisfied himself, he 'demagnetised' her. He next proceeded to 'hypnotise' her, adopting Mr. Braid's method of directing the stare at a fixed point. 'The result varied in no respect from that which had taken place in the foregoing experiment; the duration of the process was the same, and its intensity of effect neither greater nor less.' 'De-hypnotisation' again restored the young lady to herself. 'And now,' says Dr. Noble, 'we requested our patient to rest quietly at the fire-place, to think of just what she liked, and to look where she pleased, excepting at ourselves, who retreated behind her chair, saying that a new mode was about to be tried, and that her turning round would disturb the process. We very composedly took up a volume which lay upon a table, and amused ourselves with it for about five minutes, when on raising our eyes, we could see by the excited features of other members of the party that the young lady was once moremagnetised. We were informed by those who had attentively watched her during the progress of our little experiment, that all had been in every respect just as before. The lady herself, before she was undeceived, expressed a distinct consciousness of havingfelt our unseen passes streaming down the neck.'
In a similar way, Mr. Bertrand, who was the first (Dr. Carpenter tells us) to undertake a really scientific investigation of the phenomena of mesmerism, proved that the supposed effect of a magnetised letter from him to a female somnambule was entirely the work of her own lively imagination. He magnetised a letter first, which on receipt was placed at his suggestion upon the epigastrium of the patient, who was thrown into the magnetic sleep with all the customary phenomena. He then wrote another letter, which he did not magnetise, and again the same effect was produced. Lastly he set about an experiment which should determine the real state of the case. 'I asked one of my friends,' he says, 'to write a few lines in my place, and tostrive to imitate my writing, so that those who should read the letter should mistake it for mine (I knew he could do so). He did this; our stratagem succeeded, and the sleep was produced just as it would have been by one of my own letters.
It is hardly necessary to say, perhaps, that none of the phenomena of hypnotism require, as indeed none of them, rightly understood, suggest, the action of any such occult forces as spiritualists believe in. On the other hand, I believe that many of the phenomena recorded by spiritualists as having occurred under their actual observation are very readily to be explained as phenomena of hypnotism. Of course I would not for a moment deny that in the great majority of cases much grosser forms of deception are employed. But in others, and especially in those where the concentration of the attention for some time is a necessary preliminary to the exhibition of the phenomena (which suitable 'subjects' only are privileged to see), I consider the resulting self-deception as hypnotic.
We may regard the phenomena of hypnotism in two aspects—first and chiefly as illustrating the influence of imagination on the functions of the body; secondly, as showing under what conditions the imagination may be most readily brought to bear in producing such influence. These phenomena deserve far closer and at the same time far wider attention than they have yet received. Doubt has been thrown upon them because they have been associated with false theories, and in many cases with fraud and delusion. But, rightly viewed, they are at once instructive and valuable. On the one hand they throw light on some of the most interesting problems of mental physiology; on the other they promise to afford valuable means of curing certain ailments, and of influencing in useful ways certain powers and functions of the body. All that is necessary, it should seem, to give hypnotic researches their full value, is that all association of these purely mental phenomena with charlatanry and fraud should be abruptly and definitelybroken off. Those who make practical application of the phenomena of hypnotism should not only divest their own minds of all idea that some occult and as it were extra-natural force is at work, but should encourage no belief in such force in those on whom the hypnotic method is employed. Their influence on the patient will not be lessened, I believe, by the fullest knowledge on the patient's part that all which is to happen to him is purely natural—that, in fact, advantage is simply to be taken of an observed property of the imagination to obtain an influence not otherwise attainable over the body as a whole (as when the so-called magnetic sleep is to be produced), or over special parts of the body. Whether advantage might not be taken of other than the curative influences of hypnotism is a question which will probably have occurred to some who may have followed the curious accounts given in the preceding pages. If special powers may be obtained, even for a short time, by the hypnotised subject, these powers might be systematically used for other purposes than mere experiment. If, again, the repetition of hypnotic curative processes eventually leads to a complete and lasting change in the condition of certain parts or organs of the body, the repetition of the exercise of special powers during the hypnotic state may after a while lead to the definite acquisition of such powers. As it now appears that the hypnotic control may be obtained without any effort on the part of the operator, the effort formerly supposed to be required being purely imaginary and the hypnotic state being in fact readily attainable without any operation whatever, we seem to recognise possibilities which, duly developed, might be found of extreme value to the human race. In fine, it would seem that man possesses a power which has hitherto lain almost entirely dormant, by which, under the influence of properly-guided imagination, the will can be so concentrated on special actions that feats of strength, dexterity, artistic (and even perhaps scientific) skill may be accomplished by persons who, in the ordinary state, are quite incapable of such achievements.
HEREDITARY TRAITS.
In Montaigne's well-known essay on the 'Resemblance of Children to their Fathers,' the philosopher of Périgord remarks that 'there is a certain sort of crafty humility that springs from presumption; as this, for example, that we confess our ignorance in many things, and are so courteous as to acknowledge that there are in works of nature some qualities and conditions that are imperceptible to us, and of which our understanding cannot discern the means and causes; by which honest declaration we hope to obtain that people shall also believe us of those that we say we do understand.' 'We need not trouble ourselves,' he goes on, 'to seek out miracles and strange difficulties; methinks there are such incomprehensible wonders amongst the things that we ordinarily see as surpass all difficulties of miracles.' He applies these remarks to inherited peculiarities of feature, figure, character, constitution, habits, and so forth. And certainly few of the phenomena of nature are more wonderful than these, in the sense of being less obviously referable to any cause which seems competent to produce them. Many of those natural phenomena which are regarded as most striking are in this respect not to be compared with the known phenomena of heredity. The motions of the planets can all be referred to regular laws; chemical changes are systematic, and their sequence at least is understood; the phenomena of heat, light, and electricity are gradually finding interpretation. It is true that all these phenomena become in a sense as miracles when we endeavour to ascertain their real cause. In their case we can ascertain the 'how,' but in no sense the 'why.' Gravity is a mastery of mysteries to the astronomer, and has almost compelled us to believe in that 'action at a distance' which Newton asserted to be unimaginable by anyone with a competent power of reasoning about things philosophical. The ultimate cause of chemical changes is as great a mystery now as it was when the four elements were believed in. And the nature of the ether itself in which the undulations of heat, light, and electricity are transmitted is utterly mysterious even to those students of science who have been most successful in determining the laws according to which those undulations proceed. But the phenomena themselves being at once referable (in our own time at least) to law, have no longer the mysterious and in a sense miraculous character recognised in them before the laws of motion, of chemical affinity, of light and heat and electricity, had been ascertained. It is quite otherwise with the phenomena of heredity. We know nothing even of the proximate cause of any single phenomenon; far less of that ultimate cause in which all these phenomena had their origin. The inheritance of a trait of bodily figure, character, or manner is a mystery as great as that other and cognate mystery, the appearance of some seemingly sudden variation in a race which has for many generations presented an apparently unvarying succession of attributes, bodily, physical, or mental.
It need hardly be said that this would not be the place for the discussion of the problems of heredity and variation, even if in the present position of science we could hope for any profitable result from the investigation of either subject. But some of the curious facts which have been noted by various students of heredity will, I think, be found interesting; and though not suggesting in the remotest degree any solution of the real difficulties of the subject, they may afford some indication of the laws according to whichparental traits are inherited, or seemingly sudden variations introduced.
The commonest, and therefore the least interesting, though perhaps the most instructive of the phenomena of heredity, are those affecting the features and the outward configuration of the body. These have been recognised in all ages and among all nations. A portion of the Jewish system of legislature was based on a recognition of the law that children inherit the bodily qualities of the parents. The Greeks noted the same fact. Among the Spartans, indeed, a system of selection from among new-born children prevailed, which, though probably intended only to eliminate the weaker individuals, corresponded closely to what would be done by a nation having full belief in the efficacy of both natural and artificial selection, and not troubled with any strong scruples as to the method of applying their doctrines on such matters. Among the Romans we find certain families described by their physical characteristics, as theNasonesor Big-nosed, theLabeonesor Thick-lipped, theCapitonesor Big-headed, theBucconesor Swollen-cheeked. In more recent times similar traits have been recognised in various families. The Austrian lip and the Bourbon nose are well-known instances.[15]
Peculiarities of structure have a double interest, as illustrating both variation and persistence. We usually find them introduced without any apparent cause into a family, and afterwards they remain as hereditary traits, first inherited regularly, then intermittently, and eventually, in most cases, dying out or becoming so exceptional that their occurrence is not regarded as an hereditary peculiarity. Montaigne mentions that in the family of Lepidus, at Rome, there were three, not successively but by intervals, that were born with the same eye covered with a cartilage. At Thebes there was a family almost every member of which had the crown of the head pointed like a lance-head; all whose heads werenot so formed being regarded as illegitimate. A better authenticated case is that of the Lambert family. The peculiarity affecting this family appeared first in the person of Edward Lambert, whose whole body, except the face, the palms of the hands, and the soles of the feet, was covered with a sort of shell consisting of horny excrescences. He was the father of six children, all of whom, so soon as they had reached the age of six weeks, presented the same peculiarity. Only one of them lived. He married, and transmitted the peculiarity to all his sons. For five generations all the male members of the Lambert family were distinguished by the horny excrescences which had adorned the body of Edward Lambert.
A remarkable instance of the transmission of anomalous characteristics is found in the case of Andrian Jeftichjew, who, three or four years ago, was exhibited with his son Fedor Jeftichjew in Berlin and Paris. They were called in Parisles hommes-chiens, or dog-men, the father's face being so covered with hair as to present a striking resemblance to the face of a Skye terrier. Andrian was thus described:—'He is about fifty-five years of age, and is said to have been the son of a Russian soldier. In order to escape the derision and the unkind usage of his fellow-villagers, Andrian in early life fled to the woods, where for some time he lived in a cave.
During this period of seclusion he was much given to drunkenness. His mental condition does not seem to have suffered, however, and he is on the whole of a kindly and affectionate disposition. It may be of interest to state that he is an orthodox member of the Russo-Greek Church, and that, degraded as he is intellectually, he has very definite notions about heaven and the hereafter. He hopes to introduce his frightful countenance into the court of heaven, and he devotes all the money he makes, over and above his outlay for creature comforts, to purchasing the prayers of a devout community of monks in his native village, Kostroma, after his mortal career is ended. He is of medium stature, but very strongly built. His excessive capillarydevelopment is not true hair, but simply an abnormal growth of thedownor fine hairs which usually cover nearly the entire surface of the human body. Strictly speaking, he has neither head-hair, beard, moustache, eyebrows, nor eyelashes, their place being taken by this singular growth of long silky down. In colour this is of a dirty yellow; it is about three inches in length all over the face, and feels like the hair of a Newfoundland dog. The very eyelids are covered with this long hair, while flowing locks come out of his nostrils and ears. On his body are isolated patches, strewed but not thickly with hairs one and a half to two inches long.' Dr. Bertillon, of Paris, compared a hair from Andrian's chin with a very fine hair from a man's beard, and found that the latter was three times as thick as the former; and a hair from Andrian's head is only one-half as thick as an average human hair. Professor Virchow, of Berlin, made careful inquiry into the family history of Andrian Jeftichjew. So far as could be learned, Andrian was the first in whom this wonderful hirsuteness had been noticed. Neither his reputed father nor his mother presented any peculiarity of the kind, and a brother and sister of his, who are still living, are in no way remarkable for capillary development. The son Fedor, who was exhibited in company with Andrian, was illegitimate, and about three years of age. Andrian's legitimate children, a son and a daughter, both died young. Nothing is known of the former; but the daughter resembled the father. 'Fedor is a sprightly child,' said the account from which we have already quoted, 'and appears more intelligent than the father.' The growth of down on his face is not so heavy as to conceal his features, but there is no doubt that when the child comes to maturity he will be at least as hirsute as his parent The hairs are as white and as soft as the fur of the Angora cat, and are longest at the outer angles of the eyes. There is a thick tuft between the eyes, and the nose is well covered. The moustache joins the whiskers on each side, after the English fashion, and this circumstance gives to accurate pictures of the child a ludicrous resemblance to a well-fedEnglishman of about fifty. As in the father's case, the inside of Fedor's nostrils and ears has a thick crop of hair.' 'Both father and son are almost toothless, Andrian having only five teeth, one in the upper jaw and four in the lower, while the child has only four teeth, all in the lower jaw. In both cases the four lower teeth are all incisors. To the right of Andrian's one upper tooth there still remains the mark of another which has disappeared. That beyond these six teeth the man never had any others is evident to anyone who feels the gums with the finger.'
The deficiency of teeth, accompanied as it is by what is in reality a deficiency not a redundancy of hair—for Andrian and his son have no real hair—accords well with Darwin's view, that a constant correlation exists between hair and teeth. He mentions as an illustration the deficiency of teeth in hairless dogs. The tusks of the boar, again, are greatly reduced under domestication, and the reduction is accompanied by a corresponding diminution of the bristles. He mentions also the case of Julia Pastrana, a Spanish dancer or opera singer, who had a thick masculine beard and a hairy forehead, while her teeth were so redundant that her mouth projected, and her face had a gorilla-like appearance. It should rather be said that in general those creatures which present an abnormal development in the covering of their skin, whether in the way of redundancy or deficiency, present, generally, perhaps always, an abnormal dental development, as we see in sloths and armadilloes on the one hand, which have the front teeth deficient, and in some branches of the whale family on the other, in which the teeth are redundant either in number or in size. In individual members of the human family it certainly is not always the case that the development of the hair and that of the teeth are directly correlated; for some who are bald when quite young have excellent teeth, and some who have lost most of their teeth while still on the right side of forty have excellent hair to an advanced age.[16]
Another case, somewhat similar to that of Andrian and his son, is found in a Burmese family, living at Ava, and first described by Crawford in 1829. Shwe-Maong, the head of the family, was about thirty years old. His whole body was covered with silky hairs, which attained a length of nearly five inches on the shoulders and spine. He had four daughters, but only one of them resembled him. She was living at Ava in 1855, and, according to the account given by a British officer who saw her there, she had a son who was hairy like his grandfather, Shwe-Maong. The case of this family illustrates rather curiously the relation between the hair and teeth. For Shwe-Maong retained his milk-teeth till he was twenty years old (when he attained puberty), and they were replaced by nine teeth only, five in the upper and four in the lower jaw. Eight of these were incisors, the ninth (in the upper jaw) being a canine tooth.
Sex-digitism, or the possession of hands and feet with six digits each, has occurred in several families as a sudden variation from the normal formation, but after it has appeared has usually been transmitted for several generations. In the case of the Colburn family this peculiarity lasted for four generations without interruption, and still reappears occasionally. In a branch of a well-known Scotch family sex-digitism—after continuing for three or four generations—has apparently disappeared; but it still frequently happens that the edge of the hands on the side of the little finger is partially deformed.
Hare-lip, albinism, halting, and other peculiarities, commonly reappear for four or five generations, and are seldom altogether eradicated in less than ten or twelve.
The tendency to variation shown in the introduction of these peculiarities, even though they may have been eventually eradicated, is worth noticing in its bearing on our views respecting the formation of new and persistent varieties of the human as of other races. It must be noticed that in the case of the human race the conditions not only do not favour the continuance of such varieties, but practically forbid their persistence. It is otherwise with some varieties, at least, of domestic animals, insomuch that varieties which present any noteworthy even though accidentally observed advantage have been made practically persistent; we say practically, because there seems little reason to doubt that in every case which has hitherto been observed the normal type would eventually be reverted to if special pains were not taken to separate the normal from the abnormal form.
An excellent illustration of the difference between the human race and a race of animals under domestication, in this particular respect, is found in the case of the Kelleia family on the one hand, and that of the Ancon or Otter sheep on the other.
The former case is described by Réaumur. A Maltese couple named Kelleia, whose hands and feet were of the ordinary type, had a son Gratio who had six movable fingers on each hand and six somewhat less perfect toes on each foot. Gratio Kelleia married a woman possessing only the ordinary number of fingers and toes. There were four children of this marriage—Salvator, George, André, and Marie. Salvator had six fingers and six toes like the father; George and André had each five fingers and five toes like the mother, but the hands and feet of George were slightly deformed; Marie had five fingers and five toes, but her thumbs were slightly deformed. All four children grew up, and married folk with the ordinary number of fingers and toes. The children of André alone (who were many) were without exception of the normal type, like their father. The children of Salvator, who alone was six-fingered and six-toed like Gratio the grandfather, were four in number; three of themresembled the father, while the other—the youngest—was of the normal type like his mother and grandmother. As these four children were the descendants of four grandparents of whom one only was hexadactylic, we see that the variety had been strong enough in their case to overcome the normal type in threefold greater strength. But the strangest part of the story is that relating to George and Marie. George, who was a pentadactyle, though somewhat deformed about the hands and feet, was the father of four children: first, two girls, both purely hexadactylic; next, a girl hexadactylic on the right side of the body and pentadactylic on the left side; and lastly, a boy, purely pentadactylic. Marie, a pentadactyle with deformed thumbs, gave birth to a boy with six toes, and three normally formed children. It will be seen, however, that the normal type showed itself in greater force than the variety in the third generation from Gratio: for while one child of Salvator's, one of George's, three of Marie's, and all of André's (some seven or eight) were of the normal type—twelve or thirteen in all—only five, viz., three of Salvator's and two of George's, presented the variety purely. Three others were more or less abnormally formed in fingers and toes; but even counting these, the influence of the variety was shown only in eight of the grandchildren of Gratio, whereas twelve or thirteen were of the normal type.
The story of the Ancon or Otter sheep, as narrated by Colonel David Humphreys in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, published in thePhilosophical Transactionsfor 1813, has been thus abridged by Huxley:—'It appears that one Seth Wright, the proprietor of a farm on the banks of the Charles River, in Massachusetts, possessed a flock of fifteen ewes and a ram of the ordinary kind. In the year 1791 one of the ewes presented her owner with a male lamb differing, for no assignable reason, from its parents by a disproportionately long body and short bandy legs; whence it was unable to emulate its relatives in those sportive leaps over the neighbours' fences in which they were in the habit ofindulging, much to the good farmer's vexation. With the "cuteness" characteristic of their nation, the neighbours of the Massachusetts farmer imagined it would be an excellent thing if all his sheep were imbued with the stay-at-home tendencies enforced by Nature upon the newly-arrived ram; and they advised Wright to kill the old patriarch of his fold and instal the new Ancon ram in his place. The result justified their sagacious anticipations.... The young lambs were almost always either pure Ancons or pure ordinary sheep. But when sufficient Ancon sheep were obtained to interbreed with one another, it was found that the offspring were always pure Ancon. Colonel Humphreys, in fact, states that he was acquainted with only "one questionable case of a contrary nature." By taking care to select Ancons of both sexes for breeding from, it thus became easy to establish an exceedingly well-marked race—so peculiar that even when herded with other sheep, it was noted that the Ancons kept together. And there is every reason to believe that the existence of this breed might have been indefinitely protracted: but the introduction of the Merino sheep—which were not only very superior to the Ancons in wool and meat, but quite as quiet and orderly—led to the complete neglect of the new breed, so that in 1813 Colonel Humphreys found it difficult to obtain the specimen whose skeleton was presented to Sir Joseph Banks. We believe that for many years no remnant of it has existed in the United States.'
It is easy, as Huxley remarks, to understand why, whereas Gratio Kelleia did not become the ancestor of a race of six-figured and six-toed men, Seth Wright's Ancon ram became a nation of long-bodied, short-legged sheep. If the purely hexadactylic descendants of Gratio Kelleia, and all the purely hexadactylic members of the Colburn family, in the third and fourth generations, had migrated to some desert island, and had been careful not only to exclude all visitors having the normal number of fingers and toes, but to send away before the age of puberty all children of their own which might depart in any degreefrom the pure hexadactylic type, there can be no doubt that under favourable conditions the colony would have become a nation of six-fingered folk. Among such a nation the duodecimal system of notation would flourish, and some remarkable performers on the pianoforte, flute, and other instruments, might be looked for; but we do not know that they would possess any other advantage over their pentadactylic contemporaries. Seeing that the system of colonising above described is antecedently unlikely, and that no special advantage could be derived from the persistence of any hitherto known abnormal variety of the human race, it is unlikely that for many generations yet to come we shall hear of six-fingered, hairy-faced, horny-skinned, or hare-lipped nations. The only peculiarities which have any chance of becoming permanent are such as, while not very uncommon, stand in the way of intermarriage with persons not similarly affected. A similar remark, as will presently appear, applies to mental and moral characteristics. The law according to which contrast is found attractive and similitude repugnant, though wide in its range, is not universal; and there are cases in which resemblance, if it has not the charm found (under ordinary circumstances) in contrast, is yet a necessary element in matrimonial alliances.
The inheritance of constitutional traits comes next to be considered. It is probably not less frequently observed, and is in several respects more interesting than the inheritance of peculiarities of bodily configuration.
Longevity, which may be regarded as measuring the aggregate constitutional energy, is well known to be hereditary in certain families, as is short duration of life in other families. The best proof that this is the case is found in the action of insurance companies, in ascertaining through their agents the longevity of the ancestors of persons proposing to insure their lives. Instances of longevity during several successive generations are too common to be worth citing. Cases in which, for generation after generation, a certain age, far short of the threescore years and ten, hasnot been passed, even when all the circumstances have favoured longevity, are more interesting. One of the most curious among these is the case of the Turgot family, in which the age of fifty-nine had not been for generations exceeded, to the time when Turgot made the name famous. At the age of fifty, when he was in excellent health, and apparently had promise of many years of life, he expressed to his friends his conviction that the end of his life was near at hand. From that time forward he held himself prepared for death, and, as we know, he died before he had completed his fifty-fourth year.
Fecundity is associated sometimes with longevity, but in other cases it is as significantly associated with short duration of life. Of families in which many children are born but few survive, we naturally have less striking evidence than we have of families in which many children of strong constitutions are born for several successive generations. What may be called the fecundity of the short-lived is a quality commonly leading in no long time to the disappearance of the family in which it makes its appearance. It is the reverse, of course, with fecundity in families whose members show individually great vigour of constitution and high vital power. Ribot mentions several cases of this sort among the families of the old Frenchnoblesse. Thus Anne de Montmorency—who, despite his feminine name, was certainly by no means feminine in character (at the Battle of St. Denis, in his sixty-sixth year, he smashed with his sword the teeth of the Scotch soldier who was giving him his death-blow) was the father of twelve children. Three of his ancestors, Matthew I., Matthew II., and Matthew III., had, in all, eighteen children, of whom fifteen were boys. 'The son and grandson of the great Condé had nineteen between them, and their great-grandfather, who lost his life at Jarnac, had ten. The first four Guises reckoned in all forty-three children, of whom thirty were boys. Achille de Harley had nine children, his father ten, and his great-grandfather eighteen.' In the family of the Herschels inHanover and in England, a similar fecundity has been shown in two generations out of three. Sir W. Herschel was one of a family of twelve children, of whom five were sons. He himself did not marry till his fiftieth year, and had only one son. But Sir John Herschel was the father of eleven children.
Of constitutional peculiarities those affecting the nervous system are most frequently transmitted. We do not, however, consider them at this point, because they are viewed ordinarily rather as they relate to mental and moral characteristics than as affections of the body. The bodily affections most commonly transmitted are those depending on what is called diathesis—a general state or disposition of the constitution predisposing to some special disease. Such are scrofula, cancer, tubercular consumption, gout, arthritis, and some diseases specially affecting the skin. It would not be desirable to discuss here this particular part of our subject, interesting though it undoubtedly is. But it may be worth while to note that we have, in the variety of forms in which the same constitutional bad quality may present itself, evidence that what is actually transmitted is not a peculiarity affecting a particular organ, even though in several successive generations the disease may show itself in the same part of the body, but an affection of the constitution generally. We have here an answer to the question asked by Montaigne in the essay from which we have already quoted. The essay was written soon after he had for the first time experienced the pangs of renal calculus:—''Tis to be believed,' he says, 'that I derived this infirmity from my father, for he died wonderfully tormented' with it; he was 'never sensible of his disease till the sixty-seventh year of his age, and before that had never felt any grudging or symptom of it' ... 'but lived till then in a happy vigorous state of health, little subject to infirmities, and continued seven years after in this disease, and dyed a very painful death. I was born about twenty-five years before his disease seized him, and in the time of his most flourishing and healthful state of body, his third child in order of birth: where could his propension to thismalady lie lurking all that while? And he being so far from the infirmity, how could that small part of his substance carry away so great an impression of its share? And how so concealed that, till five-and-forty years after, I did not begin to be sensible of it? being the only one to this hour, amongst so many brothers and sisters, and all of one mother, that was ever troubled with it. He that can satisfie me in this point, I will believe him in as many other miracles as he pleases, always provided that, as their manner is, he does not give me a doctrine much more intricate and fantastic than the thing itself, for current pay.' When we note, however, that in many cases the children of persons affected like the elder Montaigne are not affected like the parents, but with other infirmities, as the tendency to gout, andvice versâ(a circumstance of which I myself have but too good reason to be cognisant, a parent's tendency to gout having in my case been transmitted in the modified but even more troublesome form of the disease which occasioned Montaigne so much anguish), we perceive that it is not 'some small part of the substance' which transmits its condition to the child, but the general state of the constitution. Moreover, it may be hoped in many cases (which would scarcely be the case if the condition or qualities of some part of the body only were transmitted) that the germs of disease, or rather the predisposition to disease, may be greatly diminished, or even entirely eradicated, by suitable precautions. Thus persons inheriting a tendency to consumption have become, in many cases, vigorous and healthy by passing as much of their time as possible in the open air, by avoiding crowded and over-heated rooms, taking moderate but regular exercise, judicious diet, and so forth. We believe that the disease which troubled the last fifteen years of the life of Montaigne might readily have been prevented, and the tendency to it eradicated, during his youth.
Let us turn, however, from these considerations to others more interesting, though less important, and on the whole perhaps better suited to these pages.
The inheritance of tricks or habits is one of the most perplexing of all the phenomena of heredity. The less striking the habit, the more remarkable, perhaps, is its persistence as an inherited trait. Giron de Buzareingues states that he knew a man who, when he lay on his back, was wont to throw his right leg across the left; one of this person's daughters had the same habit from her birth, constantly assuming that position in the cradle, notwithstanding the resistance offered by the swaddling bands.[17]Darwin mentions another case in hisVariation of Animals and Plants under Domestication:—A child had the odd habit of setting its fingers in rapid motion whenever it was particularly pleased with anything. When greatly excited, the same child would raise the hand on both sides as high as the eyes, with the fingers in rapid motion as before. Even in old age he experienced a difficulty in refraining from these gestures. He had eight children, one of whom, a little girl, when fouryears of age, used to set her fingers going, and to lift up her hands after the manner of her father. A still more remarkable case is described by Galton. A gentleman's wife noticed that when he lay fast asleep on his back in bed he had the curious trick of raising his right arm slowly in front of his face, up to his forehead, and then dropping it with a jerk, so that the wrist fell heavily on the bridge of his nose. The trick did not occur every night, but occasionally, and was independent of any ascertained cause. Sometimes it was repeated incessantly for an hour or more. The gentleman's nose was prominent, and its bridge often became sore from blows which it received. At one time an awkward sore was produced that was long in healing, on account of the recurrence, night after night, of the blows which first caused it. His wife had to remove the button from the wrist of his night-gown, as it made severe scratches, and some means were attempted of tying his arm. Many years after his death, his son married a lady who had never heard of the family incident. She, however, observed precisely the same peculiarity in her husband; but his nose, from not being particularly prominent, has never as yet suffered from the blows. The trick does not occur when he is half asleep, as, for example, when he is dozing in his arm-chair; but the moment he is fast asleep, he is apt to begin. It is, as with his father, intermittent; sometimes ceasing for many nights, and sometimes almost incessant during a part of every night. It is performed, as it was with his father, with his right hand. One of his children, a girl, has inherited the same trick. She performs it, likewise, with the right hand, but in a slightly modified form; for after raising the arm, she does not allow the wrist to drop upon the bridge of the nose, but the palm of her half-closed hand falls over and down the nose, striking it rather rapidly—a decided improvement on the father's and grandfather's method. The trick is intermittent in this girl's case also, sometimes not occurring for periods of several months but sometimes almost incessantly.
Strength in particular limbs or muscles is often transmitted hereditarily. So also is skill in special exercises. Thus in the north country there are families of famous wrestlers. Among professional oarsmen, again, we may note such cases as the Clasper family in the north, the Mackinneys in the south; while among amateur oarsmen we have the case of the Playford family, to which the present amateur champion sculler belongs. In cricket, the Walker family and the Grace family may be cited among amateurs, the Humphreys among professional players. Grace in dancing was transmitted for three generations in the Vestris family. It must, however, be noted that in some of these cases we may fairly consider that example and teaching have had much to do with the result. Take rowing for instance. A good oarsman will impart his style to a whole crew if he rows stroke for them; and even if he only trains them (as Morrison, for instance, trained the Cambridge crew a few years ago), he will make good oarsmen of men suitably framed and possessing ordinary aptitude for rowing. I remember well how a famous stroke-oar at Cambridge (John Hall, of Magdalen,) imparted to one at least of the University crew (a fellow-collegian of his, and therefore rowing with him constantly also in his College boat) so exact an imitation of his style that one rather dusky evening, when the latter was 'stroking' a scratch four past a throng of University men, a dispute arose as to which of the two was really stroke of the four. Anyone who knows how characteristic commonly is the rowing of any first-class stroke, and still more anyone who chances to know how peculiar was the style of the University 'stroke-oar' referred to, will understand how closely his style must have been adopted, when experienced oarsmen, not many yards from the passing four, were unable to decide at once which of the two men were rowing,—even though the evening was dusky enough to prevent the features of the stroke (whose face was not fully in view at the moment) from being discerned. Seeing that a first-rate oarsman can thus communicate his style so perfectly to another, it cannot be regarded as demonstrably a case of hereditarytransmission if the Claspers rowed in the same style as their father, or if the present champion amateur sculler (making allowances for the change introduced by the sliding seat) rows very much like his father and his uncle.
Some peculiarities, such as stammering, lisping, babbling, and the like, are not easily referable to any special class of hereditary traits, because it is not clear how far they are to be regarded as depending on bodily or how far on mental peculiarities. It might seem obvious that stammering was in most cases uncontrollable by the will, and babbling might seem as certainly controllable. Yet there are cases which throw doubt on either conclusion. Thus, Dr. Lucas tells us of a servant-maid whose loquacity was apparently quite uncontrollable. She would talk to people till they were ready to faint; and if there were no human being to listen to her, she would talk to animals and inanimate objects, or would talk aloud to herself. She had to be discharged. 'But,' she said to her master, 'I am not to blame; it all comes from my father. He had the same fault, and it drove my mother to distraction; and his father was just the same.' Stammering has been transmitted through as many as five generations. The same has been noticed of peculiarities of vision. The Montmorency look, a sort of half squint, affected nearly all the members of the Montmorency family. The peculiarity called Daltonism, an inability to distinguish between certain colours of the spectrum, was not so named, as is often asserted, merely because the distinguished chemist Dalton was affected by it, but because three members of the same family were similarly affected. Deafness and blindness are not commonly hereditary where the parents have lost sight or hearing either by accident or through illness, even though the illness or accident occur during infancy; but persons born either blind or deaf frequently if not commonly transmit the defect to some at least among their offspring. Similar remarks apply to deaf-mutism.
The senses of taste and smell must also be included in the list of those which are affected by transmitted peculiarities. If we include the craving for liquor among such peculiarities, we might at once cite a long list of cases; but this craving must be regarded as nervo-psychical, the sense of taste having in reality very little to do with it. It is doubtful how the following hideous instance should be classed. It is related by Dr. Lucas. 'A man in Scotland had an irresistible desire to eat human flesh. He had a daughter; although removed from her father and mother, who were both sent to the stake before she was a year old, and although brought up among respectable people, this girl, like her father, yielded to the horrible craving for human flesh.' He must be an ardent student of physiological science who regrets that at this stage circumstances intervened which prevented the world from ascertaining whether the peculiarity would have descended to the third and fourth generations.
Amongst the strangest cases of hereditary transmissions are those relating to handwriting. Darwin cites several curious instances in hisVariation of Plants and Animals under Domestication. 'On what a curious combination of corporeal structure, mental character, and training,' he remarks, 'must handwriting depend. Yet everyone must have noted the occasional close similarity of the handwriting in father and son, even although the father had not taught the son. A great collector of franks assured me that in his collection there were several franks of father and son hardly distinguishable except by their dates.' Hofacker, in Germany, remarks on the inheritance of handwriting, and it has been even asserted that English boys when taught to write in France naturally cling to their English manner of writing. Dr. Carpenter mentions the following instance as having occurred in his own family, as showing that the character of the handwriting is independent of the special teaching which the right hand receives in this art:—'A gentleman who emigrated to the United States and settled in the back woods, before the end of last century, was accustomed from time to time to write long letters to his sister in England, giving anaccount of his family affairs. Having lost his right arm by an accident, the correspondence was temporarily kept up by one or other of his children; but in the course of a few months he learned to write with his left hand, and before long, the handwriting of the letters thus written came to be indistinguishable from that of his former letters.'
I had occasion two or three years ago to consider in an article on 'Strange Mental Feats,' in myScience Byeways, the question of inherited mental qualities and artistic habits, and would refer the reader for some remarkable instances of transmitted powers to that article.[18]Galton in his work onHereditary Genius, and Ribot in his treatise onHeredity, have collected many facts bearing on this interesting question. Both writers show a decided bias in favour of a view which would give to heredity a rather too important position among the factors of genius. Cases are cited which seem very little to the purpose, and multitudes of instances are omitted which oppose themselves, at a first view at any rate, to the belief that heredity plays the first part in the genesis of great minds. Nearly all the greatest names in philosophy, literature, and science, and a great number of the greatest names in art, stand absolutely alone. We know nothing achieved by the father or grandfather of Shakspeare, or of Goethe, or Schiller, or Evans (George Eliot), or Thackeray, or Dickens, or Huxley. None of Newton's family were in any way distinguished in mathematical or scientific work; nor do we know of a distinguished Laplace, or Lagrange, or Lavoisier, or Harvey, or Dalton, or Volta, or Faraday, besides those who made these names illustrious. As to general literature, page after page might be filled with the mere names of those whose ancestry has been quite undistinguished. To say that among the ancestors of Goethe, Schiller, Byron, and so forth, certain qualities, virtues or vices, passions or insensibilities to passion, may be recognised 'among the ancestors of men of science, certain aptitudes for special subjects or methods of research,' amongthe ancestors of philosophers and literary men certain qualities or capabilities, and that such ancestral peculiarities determined the poetic, scientific, or literary genius of the descendant, is in reality to little purpose, for there is probably not a single family possessing claims to culture in any civilised country among the members of which individuals might not be found with qualities thus emphasised so to speak. Suchà posteriorireasoning is valueless. If instances could be so classified that after carefully studying them we could make even the roughest approach to a guess respecting the cases in which a family might be expected to produce men of any particular qualities, there would be some use in these attempts at generalisation; at present all that can be said is that some mental qualities and some artistic aptitudes have unquestionably in certain instances been transmitted, and that on the whole men of great distinction in philosophy, literature, science, and art, are rather more likely than others to have among their relations (more or less remote) persons somewhat above the average in mental or artistic qualities. But it is not altogether certain that this superiority is even quite so great as it might be expected to be if hereditary transmission played no part at all in the matter. For it cannot be denied that a great mathematician's son has rather a better chance than others of being a mathematician, a great author's son of being a writer, a great artist's son of being skilful in art, a great philosopher's son of taking philosophic views of things. Nearly every son looks forward while still young to the time when he shall be doing his father's work; nearly every father hopes while his children are yet young that some at least among them will follow his pursuits. The fact that so few sons of great men do follow in their fathers' footsteps shows that, despite the strong ambition of the son and the anxious hope of the father, the son in the majority of instances has not had ability even to take a fairly good position in the work wherein the father has been perhaps pre-eminently distinguished.
I have said that certain mental qualities have certainlybeen transmitted in some cases. Galton mentions one noteworthy instance relating to memory. In the family of Porson good memory was so notable a faculty as to give rise to the byword, 'the Porson memory.' Lady Hester Stanhope, says the late F. Papillon, 'she whose life was so full of adventure, gives, as one among many points of resemblance between herself and her grandfather, her retentive memory. "I have my grandfather's grey eyes," said she, "and his memory of places. If he saw a stone on the road, he remembered it; it is the same with myself. His eye, which was ordinarily dull and lustreless, was lighted up, like my own, with a dull gleam whenever he was seized with passion."'
In endeavouring to form an opinion on the law of heredity in its relation to genius, we must remember that a remark somewhat similar to one made by Huxley respecting the origin of new species applies to the origin of a man of genius. Before such a man became celebrated no one cared particularly to inquire about his ancestry or relations; when his fame was established, the time for making the inquiry had passed away. It is quite possible that, if we had exact and full information, in a great number of cases we might find the position taken up by Mr Galton and M. Ribot greatly strengthened; it is, however, also possible that we might find it much weakened, not only by the recognition of a multitude of cases in which the approach of a great man was in no sort indicated by scintillations of brightness along the genealogical track, but by a yet greater number of cases in which families containing numbers of clever, witty, and learned folks have produced none who attained real distinction.