Yet here is a phenomenon which lies
under our very hand and to which is devoted the most passionate study:
what have we learnt of its laws? Be that as it may, there occurred to me
last night a new idea. It consisted in putting together two facts which
have struck me separately on many occasions, but never conjointly. Taken
together, I said to myself, and granted that both are correct, they may
help to elucidate a dark problem of national psychology.
The first one I state rather tentatively, having hardly sufficient
material to go upon. It is this. You will find it more common in Italy
than in England for the male offspring of a family to resemble the
father and the female the mother. I cannot suggest a reason for this. I
have observed the fact - that is all.
Let me say, in parenthesis, that it is well to confine oneself to adults
in such researches. Childhood and youth is a period of changing lights
and half-tones and temperamental interplay. Characteristics of body and
mind are held, as it were, in solution. We think a child takes after its
mother because of this or that feature. If we wait for twenty-five
years, we see the true state of affairs; the hair has grown dark like
the father's, the nose, the most telling item of the face, has also
approximated to his type, likewise the character - in fact the offspring
is clearly built on paternal lines.
