mentality and personality, they may be presumed to carry them in
some organic form, as organic potentialities, just as they carry
size,[1] color, sex, etc. That abnormal mind is inherited is
shown in family insanity in the second, third and fourth
generation cases of mental disease. Certain types of
feeble-mindedness surely are transmitted from generation to
generation, as witness the case of the famous (or infamous) Jukes
family. In this group vagabondage, crime, immorality and other
character abnormalities appeared linked with the
feeble-mindedness. But there is plenty of evidence to show that
normal character qualities are inherited as well as the
abnormal.[2] Galton, the father of eugenics, collected facts from
the history of successful families to prove this. It is true that
he failed to take into account the facts of SOCIAL heredity, in
that a gifted man establishes a place for himself and a tradition
for his family that is of great help to his son. Nevertheless,
musical ability runs in families and races, as does athletic
ability, high temper, passion, etc. In short, at least the
potentialities, the capacities for character, are transmitted
together with other qualities as part of the capital of heredity.

[1] I have collected and published from the records and wards of
the State Hospital at Taunton, Mass., many such cases. The whole
subject is to be reviewed in a following book on the transmission
of mental disease, but no one seriously doubts that there is a
transference of "insane" character from generation to generation.
In fact, I believe that a little too much stress hag been laid on
this aspect of mental disease and not enough on the fact that
sickness may injure a family stock and cause the descendants to
be insane. Any one who has seen a single case of congenital