takes place, mixed marriages also would
most likely take place at the same time. But whatever confusion may
have arisen in later times in language and in blood, no language could
have arisen without speakers, and we mean by Aryas no more than
speakers of Aryan languages, whatever their skulls or their hair may
have been. An Octoroon, and even a Quadroon, may have blonde waving
hair, but if he speaks English he would be classified as Aryan, if
Berber as a Negro. But who is injured by such a classification? Let
blood and skulls and hair and jaws be classified by all means, but let
us speak no longer of Aryan skulls or Semitic blood. We might as well
speak of a prognathic language.

While fully admitting, therefore, the influence which family,
nationality, race, and language exercise on us, it should be clearly
perceived that habits acquired by our parents are not heritable, that
the sons of drunkards need not be drunkards, as little as the sons of
sober people must be sober. But though biographers may agree to this
in general they seem inclined, to hold out very strongly for what are
called _special talents in certain families_. This subject is
decidedly amusing, but it admits of no scientific treatment, as far as
I can see.

The grandfather of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy for instance, though
not a composer, was evidently a man of genius, a philosopher of
considerable intellectual capacity and moral strength. The father of
the composer was a rich banker at Berlin, and he used to say: "When I
was young I was the son of the great Mendelssohn, now that I am old, I
am the father of the great Mendelssohn; then what am I?" Even a poor
man to become a rich banker must be a kind of genius, and so far the
son may be said to have come of a good stock. But the great musical
talent that was developed in the third generation both in Felix and
his sisters, failed entirely in his brother, who, to save his life,
could never have sung "God save the Queen." In the little theatrical
performances of the whole family for which Felix composed the music,
and his sister Fanny (Hensel) some of the songs, the unmusical
brother--was it not Paul?--had generally to be provided with some such
part as that of a night watchman, and he managed to get through his
song with as much credit as the _Nachtwaechter_ in the little town of
Germany, where he sang or repeated, as I well remember, in his cracked
voice:

"Hoert, ihr Herren, und lasst euch sa