n be effected. The problem is a
complex one, for if we go back only four steps (and these at least enter
into the composition of a child), there are commonly thirty progenitors
to be taken into account. Many curious facts, rarely admitting of proof,
are told us respecting the inheritance of disease or character from a
remote ancestor. We can trace the physical resemblances of parents and
children in the same family--

'Sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferebat';

but scarcely less often the differences which distinguish children both
from their parents and from one another. We are told of similar mental
peculiarities running in families, and again of a tendency, as in
the animals, to revert to a common or original stock. But we have a
difficulty in distinguishing what is a true inheritance of genius or
other qualities, and what is mere imitation or the result of similar
circumstances. Great men and great women have rarely had great fathers
and mothers. Nothing that we know of in the circumstances of their birth
or lineage will explain their appearance. Of the English poets of the
last and two preceding centuries scarcely a descendant remains,--none
have ever been distinguished. So deeply has nature hidden her secret,
and so ridiculous is the fancy which has been entertained by some that
we might in time by suitable marriage arrangements or, as Plato would
have said, 'by an ingenious system of lots,' produce a Shakespeare or
a Milton. Even supposing that we could breed men having the tenacity
of bulldogs, or, like the Spartans, 'lacking the wit to run away
in battle,' would the world be any the better? Many of the noblest
specimens of the human race have been among the weakest physically.
Tyrtaeus or Aesop, or our own Newton, would have been exposed at Sparta;
and some of the fairest and strongest men and women have been among the
wickedest and worst. Not by the Platonic device of uniting the strong
and fair with the strong and fair, regardless of sentiment and morality,
nor yet by his other device of combining dissimilar natures (Statesman),
have mankind gradually passed from the brutality and licentiousness of
primitive marriage to marriage Christian and civilized.

Few persons would deny that we bring into the world an inheritance of
mental and physical qualities derived first from our parents, or through
them from some remoter ancestor, secondly from our race, thirdly from
the general condition of mankind into wh