The next generation rose
in physical development, and reached eighty years of age and more in some
of its members. The fourth generation was of fair average endowment.
The fifth generation, great-great-grandchildren of the slender invalid,
are several of, them of extraordinary bodily and mental power; large in
stature, formidable alike with their brains and their arms, organized on
a more extensive scale than either of their parents.
This brief account illustrates incidentally the fallacy of the
universal-degeneration theory applied to American life; the same on which
one of our countrymen has lately brought some very forcible facts to bear
in a muscular discussion of which we have heard rather more than is good
for us. But the two series, American and English, ascending and
descending, were adduced with the main purpose of showing the immense
difference of vital endowments in different strains of blood; a
difference to which all ordinary medication is in all probability a
matter of comparatively trivial purport. Many affections which art has
to strive against might be easily shown to be vital to the well-being of
society. Hydrocephalus, tabes mesenterica, and other similar maladies,
are natural agencies which cut off the children of races that are sinking
below the decent minimum which nature has established as the condition of
viability, before they reach the age of reproduction.
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