f imbecility, especially where both parents
were imbeciles, and had imbecile relatives. One case in particular
forcibly illustrates the disastrous results of the marriage of such
unfortunates. It is taken from the reports of the Connecticut Lunacy
Commission:

In one instance, where a pauper female idiot lived in one town,
the town authorities hired an idiot belonging to another town,
and not then a pauper, to marry her, and the result has been
that the town to which the male idiot belongs has for many
years had to support the pair and the three idiot children.[62]

[Footnote 62: Ibid., p. 99.]

Neuroses may remain latent for a generation and reappear in the
grandchildren of the person affected, or the latent tendency may never
reappear unless some disturbing factor such as scarletina, meningitis
or other acute disease attacks the weak spot. This possibility
suggests that the influence of heredity may be vastly greater than the
etiological tables would indicate. The apparent causes may be only
agents which assist in developing the evil really engendered by an
inheritance of imbecility.

It is not at all certain that there is any well marked boundary line
between genius and some forms of imbecility. Many quite irresponsible
idiots have marvelous verbal memories, and can repeat parrot-like,
page after page of books of which they have no comprehension. Dr. Barr
tells of cases of prodigies, musical, mathematical and mechanical, who
except in their specialty were almost totally deficient mentally.[63]
Many of the world's most brilliant musicians, mathematicians and even
military leaders have been men of one-sided mental development, whose
ability in other lines was so slight that they were little better than
imbeciles, and it is not at all surprising that their children are
sometimes truly idiotic.

[Footnote 63: Barr, op. cit., p. 301 _et seq._]

The best writers of the present day no longer recognize consanguinity
as a cause _per se_, of idiocy. The heredity of neuroses, however, is
so strongly established that few would dispute the proposition that
where the morbidity is inherited through both parents it appears more
frequently and in a more marked degree than where one parent is
entirely free from taint. This is what occurs when a consanguineous
marriage takes place between descendants of a neurotic family. The
percentage of idiotic children would then be somewhat higher from
consanguineous ma