Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/182

176 hands of the unfortunate children whose inheritance was necessarily mental weakness as the result of such unwise wedlocks.

Without taking up the characters separately we need only look at the chart to get a clear idea of the predetermined cause which lead to the peculiar characters who were foremost during this epoch and to see how perfectly natural it was that there should have been some exhibiting the most depraved characteristics while others, like Ferdinand and Isabella, were fortunate enough to inherit the genius which we see is likewise present in a conspicuous degree. The chart shows that Isabella might be expected to be greater than Ferdinand. She had five elements of genius in her pedigree, being through intermarriage twice the great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, one of the great men of his day, and John the Great of Portugal appears twice in the pedigree for the same reason. She was also the granddaughter of Henry III. of Castile, who was a model of all that a king should be. Both Ferdinand and Isabella possessed high ability and character, as can be fully confirmed by consulting any history of the times. They were married through personal choice of the queen, as she appreciated in Ferdinand a man worthy of her love. Nothing could be better for the welfare of the country than that two such able rulers should sit upon the throne at once. But Ferdinand was her second cousin and the descendant of weak or perfidious rulers.

We now see that the children of this union have two estimable parents but they have a remarkably bad lot of grandparents, and back of this we find the worst weaknesses in some while in others is much ability of a very high sort. We should not expect a child to be ordinary. On the other hand the most extraordinary is only to be expected. The two descendants whom we have here to consider are Joanna and her son, the Emperor Charles Quint. The former got the insanity and imbecility, the latter the genius and a touch of the neurosis as well. Every one in this region of the chart fills in a link in a way to be expected and is readily and perfectly explained.

The pedigree of Philip the Fair, who married this mad Joanna, contains the great fighting qualities of the old kings, tremendous energy, and great ruling functions without a bit of the insanity and weaknesses shown in Castile and Leon. This was the famous marriage that placed the Hapsburgs on the highest pinnacle of power a marriage almost certain to produce genius and as certain to produce some descendants whose heritage would be imbecility or weakness, or whose ambition would only lead them to mad extremes. Both the genius and the insanity appear quite as we should expect, and it is to be noted that the neuroses are now seen to appear for the first