The problems of heredity / by E. Apert.

  • Apert, E. (Eugène), 1868-
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The problems of heredity / by E. Apert. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    have left a record and twenty-nine are mentioned by Gal ton as emi- nent musicians. The Bachs contracted numerous marriages for their daughters with former music masters, organists, and town musicians, as the custom of the body corporate at that time permitted. Those fre- quent marriages among musicians could not help having great in- fluence upon the musical talent of their offspring, and this, says Mr. Ribot, is one of the most beautiful examples of artificial or natural selection that one would find in the human species. We now come to heredity of moral characteristics. Morality is transmitted in families; an honest father and mother have good sons .and daughters. Of course education and good example have their share in it, but so also does heredity. Inversely, bad principles are transmitted in families, and we read in every book on heredity the history of that mendicant who arrived in the English colonies of America in the early days of their colonization, and who, endowed with all vices—a drunkard, a thief, and debauched—had passed half of her long life in prison. She had had numerous children, and in looking over the civil archives of the State and also those of the galleys and prisons we can safely state that among several hundred of her descendants four-fifths were delinquents for misdeeds of various kinds and a dozen had ended their lives on the gallows. Permit me here one digression. It suggests a subject which has been much considered—that of responsibility. Since tendency to crime is inherited, since there are born criminals, are they responsible for their crime, and should they be punished? Are they responsible? The question should be considered from two very different stand- points. There is the philosophical point of view. It is possible that from that view, we might say that responsibility does not exist, for all our acts are determined by causes and that our will is only an illu- sion. I will not discuss this, for centuries since the time of ancient philosophers have not sufficed to settle it, and I have no desire to enter into the controversy of the free will, of the efficient cause, and the determining of our acts. That phase of the question, however, ought by no means prevent us from responding when we consider the practical point of view. On this side the more the delinquent has acted through the fact of tendency due either to heredity, environ- ment, or to education, the greater the need that he fear chastisement, for it is only such fear that restrains the immorally bom person. The accidental delinquent should certainly be punished, but his pun- ishment is not a social necessity; for the punishment of being a born criminal is forced upon him; it is rendering him a service to furnish him the only reason that he has for struggling against his bad instincts. The only irresponsible beings are delinquents who have 44863*’—SM 1913 26