To study children
for these purposes would be waste of time.
The second observation I regard as axiomatic. It is this. You will
nowhere find an adult offspring which reproduces in any marked degree
the physical features of one parent displaying in any marked degree the
mental features of the other. That man whose external build and
complexion is entirely modelled upon that of his hard materialistic
father and who yet possesses all the artistic idealism of his maternal
parent - such creatures do not exist in nature, though you may encounter
them as often as you please in the pages of novelists.
Let me insert another parenthesis to observe that I am speaking of the
broad mass, the average, in a general way. For it stands to reason that
the offspring may be vaguely intermediate between two parents, may
resemble one or both in certain particulars and not in others, may hark
back to ancestral types or bear no appreciable likeness to any one
discoverable. It is a theme admitting of endless combinations and
permutations. Or again, in reference to the first proposition, it would
be easy for any traveller in this country to point out, for example, a
woman who portrays the qualities of her father in the clearest manner. I
know a dozen such cases. Hundreds of them would not make them otherwise
than what I think they are - rarer here than in England.
Granting that both these propositions are correct, what should we expect
to find?
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