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Typos — p. 134: logicans [= logicans]; p. 135: Pericle's [= Pericles']; p. 135: mattters [= matters]; p. 136: pecular [= peculiar]
- p. 133 - XXI Quality in Human Heredity "Nothing is so characteristic of the twentieth century," says Mr. K. G. Collier, "as the critical and questioning attitude with which men in general regard those possessed of higher status than themselves, particularly if it is inherited from the past." (The Social Purposes of Education, Part 1, Chap. III). "Particularly if it is inherited from the past"! — And why is this so very common to-day? — Because everywhere in Europe the mob, high and low, has been indoctrinated with the Liberal heresy that heredity plays no part in human breeding, and that therefore special endowments cannot be transmitted from one generation to another. So often and for so many centuries have the masses seen the offspring of once respected rulers turn out to be in all respects inferior to their forebears that, without the need of any instruction from glib Liberal intellectuals, they have in their own ill-informed and superficial way, come to believe that heredity in human pedigrees may be ignored. Thus a teacher like Professor Ashley Montagu can, without any fear of compromising his scientific reputation in our modern world, publicly proclaim that "the one thing we cannot do is to prove or demonstrate that differences of behaviour and culture have anything to do with inherited or innate qualities." (Man's Most Dangerous Myth, Chap. 15). This remark addressed even to an amateur cattle breeder or poultry farmer, would provoke no more than a laugh. But pronounced before an audience of gullible modern Liberals (and who is not a Liberal to-day?), it is greeted with thundering applause. — Perhaps excusably enough! For it is a doctrine that must bring enormous comfort to the low-bred, with which our world pullulates. I have suggested that the suspicion now felt by countless nobodies that exceptional gifts, whether of mind or body, are all pure accident and bear no relation to antecedent family
To quote Rehoboam, Solomon's son; Goethe's son, August; Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt, or Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius, as confuting this conclusion, is merely to hold up the argument to no purpose. Because the laws of heredity would have been rather invalidated than confirmed had any one of the four sons I have mentioned been a patch on his father. Of the debaters who raise an objection of this kind, how many ever think of asking themselves what sort of persons, Naamah, Christine Vulpius, Marie Louise and the younger Faustina were? Apart from the fact that she belonged to a tribe — the Ammonites who were sufficiently estranged from the people of Judah to offer some resistance to them on more than one occasion, we know little about Naamah, Rehoboam's mother. But we know that Solomon was sufficiently voluptuous not to be too particular about the sort of women with whom he cohabited provided they gratified his lust. Rehoboam's marked inferiority to his father, which was displayed from the first, is and above all in the unwise decision he made which led to the division of the Monarchies of Judah and Israel, may, I suggest, therefore be safely ascribed to the influence of his mother's characteristics in his blood. As to Christine Vulpius, she may have been an admirable ménagère for Goethe. She was devoted to him, patiently suffered many humiliations at the hands of his friends and acquaintances because of her lowly origin, and once even risked her life to save his. But no one would dream of regarding her as Goethe's ideal mate if the object was to obtain the best possible
Were Marie Louise and the younger Faustina worthy mates of then highly endowed husbands? — We know they were nothing of the sort. Marie Louise was an empty-headed, frivolous and unfaithful spouse, whom Madelin, the greatest historian of the period, describes as "a sensualist" of "limited intelligence" (The Consulate and the Empire, 1936, Vol. II, Chap. XXXIV); whilst the younger Faustina, as everyone except her husband knew, was a shameless strumpet, whose debaucheries were the scandal of the Age. How therefore, on similar lines, can we hesitate to assume that the mother, and not a merely unfortunate shuffling of the stock's and the father's qualities, was responsible for Pericle's foolish sons, Paxalos, Xantippos and Clinias; or for Aristoppos's infamous son Lysimachus, and Thucydides' poorly gifted offspring, Milesius and Stephanos? Besides, of the four disappointing sons of great fathers discussed above, the second, was Goethe's only surviving child, so that even if Christine had been entirely worthy of her husband, August's defects would not have provided any conclusive argument against heredity; for on the strength of a vast amount of data we know that the best combinations and permutations of a stock's characters do not necessarily appear in the first-born. And the same may be said of the Duke of Reichstadt and Commodus. But as human heredity is not the only subject on which Liberal sophistry has corrupted popular opinion, we have everywhere to restate as pure novelties truths which wiser generations took for granted. — No wonder R. Ruggles Gates felt entitled to state that "the mental capacity of modern man has not increased during the historical period." (Heredity in Man, 1929, p. 330). Unfortunately, the organs of publicity from which the masses obtain their so-called free and "independent judgments" on all mattters, always soft-pedal when purveying any scrap of knowledge that happens to conflict with the prevalent Liberalism of the "Establishment."
Naturally, all these resuscitated fundamental truths strike a serious blow at that latest Liberal hoax according to which we are supposed to believe that racial differences are quite insignificant and therefore that "Racial Discrimination" is both wrong and superstitious — the pecular fad of Fascists and Nazis. And it is significant that even when acknowledged scientific authorities make statements such as those I have quoted, they do so to-day with timid moderation, as if they were well aware of how heretical they will sound to modern corrupted readers. Dr. G. Revesz, in a detailed survey of the problem, gives us impressive examples of the transmission of great gifts from one generation of men to their progeny. He shows how in music, for instance, such prodigies as Lully, Handel, Schubert, Rossini, Saint-Saens, Berlioz, Liszt and Stravinsky, all came from families highly gifted musically. He also points out that when both parents are musically gifted, 85 per cent of their children are also; when only one parent is so gifted, 58 per cent of their children inherit musical gifts; and when neither parent is musical only 25 per cent are likely to display any musical capacity. Of 74 composers, 22 per cent inherited musical talent from both parents, 25 per cent from father only, and 12 per cent from mother only. In Bach's family eleven important composers appeared in 8 generations. (Talent und Genie, Part III, i, and Part IV, ii). Further important statistics relating to the inheritance of gifts of various kinds are given by Professor Kretschmer in
In short, as Professor J. A. Thomson concluded many years ago, "the fundamental importance of inheritance was long ago demonstrated up to the hilt." (Heredity, 1920, p. 9). And over half a century ago, W. C. D. Whetham and C. D. Whetham, in their book, The Family and the Nation (Chap. V), warned us that "A study of pedigrees in such books of reference as the Dictionary of National Biography, leads irresistibly to the conclusion that continued ability and eminence in a family depends solely on sound marriages. . . . As long as ability marries ability a large proportion of able offspring is a certainty." "A certainty!" — How silly, if not nonsensical, does the passage quoted from Professor Ashley Montagu's 1944 publication appear in the light of all this authoritative testimony! But even if it had been heeded (which is unlikely anyhow), the Whethams' warning came too late to save the aristocracies of the West. If a young woman crossed their path who happened to fire their lust, their requirements were met. What their children would be like, or would be fit for, was irrelevant; for was not heredity a myth in any case? |
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