Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/508

502 and mean only that here the instances are too few to make them group themselves in perfect harmony.

I was somewhat surprised that the recent royalty should not give a better showing than the more ancient members, but this is because modern royalty, that is, from 1600 up to 1850, has such a large percentage of badly selected Bourbon blood in it. If we took royalty as it exists to-day we should undoubtedly find a much higher tone, but this is to be ascribed to the fact that most of the existing members are derived from Saxe-Coburg and other excellent German families. Up to 1850 France, Spain, Portugal and Italy were full of Bourbon blood, and we have seen that nineteenth century demands or the awful example of predecessors had no effect on it.

Another way of attacking the problem is the study of each country separately. Spain, France and Russia give us most of the moral degenerates. In all these the individuals are closely associated in blood with a marked mental neurosis. This is of itself a coincidence to be explained by those who doubt the inherited nature of morality, and besides this we have to consider the fact that prior to the appearance of the moral depravity and mental unbalance as well, there was a period when these countries were relatively free from such degenerate types.

Why did the three rulers of the Romanhof dynasty who lived before Peter the Great, in whose generation the neurosis first appeared, exhibit such mild and amiable characteristics, although arbitrary rulers of an ignorant people, and living in the rudest epochs? Then suddenly, with the appearance of the epilepsy and imbecility, we find such examples of moral depravity as the Empress Elizabeth. Strangely among the degenerates we find her sister Anne 'serious, cultivated and virtuous.' Some might contend that rude conditions brought out both good and bad, but then they would have to explain why in Germany