whole of non‐Mohammedan Asia, thus among more than half of the whole human race, as the firmest conviction, and with an incredibly strong practical influence. It was also the belief of the Egyptians (Herod., ii. 123), from whom it was received with enthusiasm by Orpheus. Pythagoras, and Plato: the Pythagoreans, however, specially retained it. That it was also taught in the mysteries of the Greeks undeniably follows from the ninth book of Plato’s “Laws” (pp. 38 and 42, ed. Bip.) Nemesius indeed (_De nat. hom._, c. 2) says: “Κοινη μεν οὐν παντες Ἑλληνες, οἱ την ψυχην αθανατον αποφηναμενοι, την μετενσωματωσιν δογματιζουσι.” (_Communiter igitur omnes Græci, qui animam immortalem statuerunt, eam de uno corpore in aliud transferri censuerunt._) The “Edda” also, especially in the “Völuspá,” teaches metempsychosis. Not less was it the foundation of the religion of the Druids (_Cæs. de bello Gall._, vi.; _A. Pictet, Le mystère des Bardes de l’ile de Bretagne_, 1856). Even a Mohammedan sect in Hindostan, the Bohrahs, of which Colebrooke gives a full account in the “Asiatic Researches,” vol. vii. p. 336 _sqq._, believes in metempsychosis, and accordingly refrains from all animal food. Also among American Indians and negro tribes, nay, even among the natives of Australia, traces of this belief are found, as appears from a minute description given in the _Times_ of 29th January 1841 of the execution of two Australian savages for arson and murder. It is said there: “The younger of the two prisoners met his end with a dogged and a determined spirit, as it appeared, of revenge; the only intelligible expressions made use of conveyed an impression that he would rise up a ‘white fellow,’ which it was considered strengthened his resolution.” Also in a book by Ungewitter, “_Der Welttheil Australien_,” it is related that the Papuas in Australia regarded the whites as their own relations who had returned to the world.
According to all this, the belief in metempsychosis presents itself as the natural conviction of man, whenever he reflects at all in an unprejudiced manner. It would really be that which Kant falsely asserts of his three pretended Ideas of the reason, a philosopheme natural to human reason, which proceeds from its forms; and when it is not found it must have been displaced by positive religious doctrines coming from a different source.
I have also remarked that it is at once obvious to every one who hears of it for the first time. Let any one only observe how earnestly Lessing defends it in the last seven paragraphs of his “_Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts_.” Lichtenberg also says in his “_Selbstcharacteristik_:” “I cannot get rid of the thought that I died before I was born.” Even the excessively empirical Hume says in his sceptical essay on immortality, p. 23: “The metempsychosis is therefore the only system of this kind that philosophy can hearken to.”(31) What resists this belief, which is spread over the whole human race and commends itself alike to the wise and to the vulgar, is Judaism, together with the two religions which have sprung from it, because they teach the creation of man out of nothing, and he has then the hard task of linking on to this the belief in an endless existence _a parte post_. They certainly have succeeded, with fire and sword, in driving out of Europe and part of Asia that consoling primitive belief of mankind; it is still doubtful for how long. Yet how difficult this was is shown by the oldest Church histories. Most of the heretics were attached to this primitive belief; for example, Simonists, Basilidians, Valentinians, Marcionists, Gnostics, and Manichæans. The Jews themselves have in part fallen into it, as Tertullian and Justinus (in his dialogues) inform us. In the Talmud it is related that Abel’s soul passed into the body of Seth, and then into that of Moses. Even the passage of the Bible, Matt. xvi. 13‐15, only obtains a rational meaning if we understand it as spoken under the assumption of the dogma of metempsychosis. Luke, it is true, who also has the passage (ix. 18‐20), adds the words ὁτι προφητης τις των αρχαιων ανεστῃ, and thus attributes to the Jews the assumption that such an ancient prophet can rise again body and all, which, since they know that he has already lain between six and seven hundred years in his grave, and consequently has long since turned to dust, would be a palpable absurdity.
In Christianity, however, the doctrine of original sin, _i.e._, the doctrine of punishment for the sins of another individual, has taken the place of the transmigration of souls and the expiation in this way of all the sins committed in an earlier life. Both identify, and that with a moral tendency, the existing man with one who has existed before; the transmigration of souls does so directly, original sin indirectly.
Death is the great reprimand which the will to live, or more especially the egoism, which is essential to this, receives through the course of nature; and it may be conceived as a punishment for our existence.(32) It is the painful loosing of the knot which the act of generation had tied with sensual pleasure, the violent destruction coming from without of the fundamental error of our nature: the great disillusion. We are at bottom something that ought not to be: therefore we cease to be. Egoism consists really in the fact that man limits all reality to his own person, in that he imagines that he lives in this alone and not in others. Death teaches him better, for it destroys this person, so that the true nature of man, which is his will, will henceforth live only in other individuals; while his intellect, which itself belonged only to the phenomenon, _i.e._, to the world as idea, and was merely the form of the external world, also continues to exist in the condition of being idea, _i.e._, in the _objective_ being of things as such, thus also only in the existence of what was hitherto the external world. His whole ego thus lives from this time forth only in that which he had hitherto regarded as non‐ego: for the difference between external and internal ceases. We call to mind here that the better man is he who makes the least difference between himself and others, does not regard them as absolute non‐ego, while for the bad man this difference is great, nay, absolute. I have worked this out in my prize essay on the foundation of morals. According to what was said above, the degree in which death can be regarded as the annihilation of the man is in proportion to this difference. But if we start from the fact that the distinction of outside me and in me, as a spatial distinction, is only founded in the phenomenon, not in the thing in itself, thus is no absolutely real distinction, then we shall see in the losing of our own individuality only the loss of a phenomenon, thus only an apparent loss.
However much reality that distinction has in the empirical consciousness, yet from the metaphysical standpoint the propositions, “I perish, but the world endures,” and “The world perishes but I endure,” are at bottom not really different.
But, besides all this, death is the great opportunity no longer to be I;—to him who uses it. During life the will of man is without freedom: his action takes place with necessity upon the basis of his unalterable character in the chain of motives. But every one remembers much that he has done, and on account of which he is by no means satisfied with himself. If now he were to go on living, he would go on acting in the same way, on account of the unalterable nature of his character. Accordingly he must cease to be what he is in order to be able to arise out of the germ of his nature as a new and different being. Therefore death looses these bonds; the will again becomes free; for freedom lies in the _Esse_, not in the _Operari_. “_Finditur nodus cordis, dissolvuntur omnes dubitationes, ejusque opera evanescunt_,” is a very celebrated saying of the Vedas, which all Vedantic writers frequently repeat.(33) Death is the moment of that deliverance from the one‐sidedness of an individuality which does not constitute the inmost kernel of our being, but is rather to be thought of as a kind of aberration of it. The true original freedom re‐enters at this moment, which, in the sense indicated, may be regarded as a _restitutio in integrum_. The peace and quietness upon the countenance of most dead persons seems to have its origin in this. Quiet and easy is, as a rule, the death of every good man: but to die willingly, to die gladly, to die joyfully, is the prerogative of the resigned, of him who surrenders and denies the will to live. For only he wills to die _really_, and not merely _apparently_, and consequently he needs and desires no continuance of his person. The existence which we know he willingly gives up: what he gets instead of it is in our eyes _nothing_, because our existence is, with reference to that, _nothing_. The Buddhist faith calls it Nirvana,(34) _i.e._, extinction.
Chapter XLII. The Life Of The Species.
In the preceding chapter it was called to mind that the (Platonic) Ideas of the different grades of beings, which are the adequate objectification of the will to live, exhibit themselves in the knowledge of the individual, which is bound to the form of time, as the _species_, _i.e._, as the successive individuals of one kind connected by the bond of generation, and that therefore the species is the Idea (εἰδος, _species_) broken up in time. Accordingly the true nature of every living thing lies primarily in its species: yet the species again has its existence only in the individuals. Now, although the will only attains to self‐consciousness in the individual, thus knows itself immediately only as the individual, yet the deep‐seated consciousness that it is really the species in which his true nature objectifies itself appears in the fact that for the individual the concerns of the species as such, thus the relations of the sexes, the production and nourishment of the offspring, are of incomparably greater importance and consequence than everything else.
Hence, then, arises in the case of the brutes, heat or rut (an excellent description of the vehemence of which will be found in Burdach’s “Physiology,” vol. i. §§ 247, 257), and, in the case of man, the careful and capricious selection of the other individual for the satisfaction of the sexual impulse, which can rise to the height of passionate love, to the fuller investigation of which I shall devote a special chapter: hence also, finally the excessive love of parents for their offspring.
In the supplements to the second book the will was compared to the root and the intellect to the crown of the tree; and this is the case inwardly or psychologically. But outwardly or physiologically the genitals are the root and the head the crown. The nourishing part is certainly not the genitals, but the villi of the intestines: yet not the latter but the former are the root; because through them the individual is connected with the species in which it is rooted. For physically the individual is a production of the species, metaphysically a more or less perfect picture of the Idea, which, in the form of time, exhibits itself as species. In agreement with the relation expressed here, the greatest vitality, and also the decrepitude of the brain and the genital organs, is simultaneous and stands in connection. The sexual impulse is to be regarded as the inner life of the tree (the species) upon which the life of the individual grows, like a leaf that is nourished by the tree, and assists in nourishing the tree; this is why that impulse is so strong, and springs from the depths of our nature. To castrate an individual means to cut him off from the tree of the species upon which he grows, and thus severed, leave him to wither: hence the degradation of his mental and physical powers. That the service of the species, _i.e._, fecundation, is followed in the case of every animal individual by momentary exhaustion and debility of all the powers, and in the case of most insects indeed by speedy death, on account of which Celsus said, “_Seminis emissio est partis animæ jactura_;” that in the case of man the extinction of the generative power shows that the individual approaches death; that excessive use of this power at every age shortens life, while, on the other hand, temperance in this respect increases all the powers, and especially the muscular powers, on which account it was part of the training of the Greek athletes; that the same restraint lengthens the life of the insect even to the following spring; all this points to the fact that the life of the individual is at bottom only borrowed from the species, and that all vital force is, as it were, force of the species restricted by being dammed up. But this is to be explained from the fact that the metaphysical substratum of life reveals itself directly in the species and only by means of this in the individual. Accordingly the Lingam with the Yoni, as the symbol of the species and its immortality, is worshipped in India, and, as the counterpoise of death, is ascribed as an attribute to the very divinity who presides over death, Siva.
But without myth or symbol, the vehemence of the sexual impulse, the keen intentness and profound seriousness with which every animal, including man, pursues its concerns, shows that it is through the function which serves it that the animal belongs to that in which really and principally its true being lies, the _species_; while all other functions and organs directly serve only the individual, whose existence is at bottom merely secondary. In the vehemence of that impulse, which is the concentration of the whole animal nature, the consciousness further expresses itself that the individual does not endure, and therefore all must be staked on the maintenance of the species, in which its true existence lies.
To illustrate what has been said, let us now imagine a brute in rut, and in the act of generation. We see a seriousness and intentness never known in it at any other time. Now what goes on in it? Does it know that it must die, and that through its present occupation a new individual, which yet entirely resembles itself, will arise in order to take its place? Of all this it knows nothing, for it does not think. But it is as intently careful for the continuance of the species in time as if it knew all that.
For it is conscious that it desires to live and exist, and it expresses the highest degree of this volition in the act of generation; this is all that then takes place in its consciousness. This is also quite sufficient for the permanence of the kind; just because the will is the radical and knowledge the adventitious. On this account the will does not require to be guided by knowledge throughout; but whenever in its primitive originality it has resolved, this volition will objectify itself of its own accord in the world of the idea. If now in this way it is that definite animal form which we have thought of that wills life and existence, it does not will life and existence in general, but in this particular form. Therefore it is the sight of its form in the female of its species that stimulates the will of the brute to the act of generation. This volition of the brute, when regarded from without and under the form of time, presents itself as such an animal form maintained through an infinite time by the constantly repeated replacement of one individual by another, thus by the alternation of death and reproduction, which so regarded appear only as the pulse‐beats of that form (ιδεα, εἰδος, _species_) which endures through all time. They may be compared to the forces of attraction and repulsion in which matter consists. That which is shown here in the brute holds good also of man; for although in him the act of generation is accompanied by complete knowledge of its final cause, yet it is not guided by this knowledge, but proceeds directly from the will to live as its concentration. It is accordingly to be reckoned among instinctive actions. For in reproduction the brute is just as little guided by knowledge of the end as in mechanical instincts; in these also the will manifests itself, in the main, without the mediation of knowledge, which here, as there, is only concerned with details.
Reproduction is, to a certain extent, the most marvellous of all instincts, and its work the most astonishing.
These considerations explain why the sexual desire has a very different character from every other; it is not only the strongest, but even specifically of a more powerful kind than any other. It is everywhere tacitly assumed as necessary and inevitable, and is not, like other desires, a matter of taste and disposition. For it is the desire which even constitutes the nature of man. In conflict with it no motive is so strong that it would be certain of victory. It is so pre‐eminently the chief concern that no other pleasures make up for the deprivation of its satisfaction; and, moreover, for its sake both brute and man undertake every danger and every conflict. A very naïve expression of this disposition is the well‐known inscription on the door of the _fornix_ at Pompeii, decorated with the phallus: “_Heic habitat felicitas_:” this was for those going in naïve, for those coming out ironical, and in itself humorous. On the other hand, the excessive power of the sexual passion is seriously and worthily expressed in the inscription which (according to Theon of Smyrna, _De Musica_, c. 47), Osiris had placed upon the column he erected to the eternal gods: “To Eros, the spirit, the heaven, the sun, the moon, the earth, the night, the day, and the father of all that is and that shall be;” also in the beautiful apostrophe with which Lucretius begins his work: “_Æneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas,_ _Alma Venus cet._” To all this corresponds the important _rôle_ which the relation of the sexes plays in the world of men, where it is really the invisible central point of all action and conduct, and peeps out everywhere in spite of all veils thrown over it. It is the cause of war and the end of peace, the basis of what is serious, and the aim of the jest, the inexhaustible source of wit, the key to all allusions, and the meaning of all mysterious hints, of all unspoken offers and all stolen glances, the daily meditation of the young, and often also of the old, the hourly thought of the unchaste, and even against their will the constantly recurring imagination of the chaste, the ever ready material of a joke, just because the profoundest seriousness lies at its foundation. It is, however, the piquant element and the joke of life that the chief concern of all men is secretly pursued and ostensibly ignored as much as possible. But, in fact, we see it every moment seat itself, as the true and hereditary lord of the world, out of the fulness of its own strength, upon the ancestral throne, and looking down from thence with scornful glances, laugh at the preparations which have been made to bind it, imprison it, or at least to limit it and wherever it is possible to keep it concealed, or even so to master it that it shall only appear as a subordinate, secondary concern of life. But all this agrees with the fact that the sexual passion is the kernel of the will to live, and consequently the concentration of all desire; therefore in the text I have called the genital organs the focus of the will. Indeed, one may say man is concrete sexual desire; for his origin is an act of copulation and his wish of wishes is an act of copulation, and this tendency alone perpetuates and holds together his whole phenomenal existence. The will to live manifests itself indeed primarily as an effort to sustain the individual; yet this is only a step to the effort to sustain the species, and the latter endeavour must be more powerful in proportion as the life of the species surpasses that of the individual in duration, extension, and value. Therefore sexual passion is the most perfect manifestation of the will to live, its most distinctly expressed type; and the origin of the individual in it, and its primacy over all other desires of the natural man, are both in complete agreement with this.
One other remark of a physiological nature is in place here, a remark which throws light upon my fundamental doctrine expounded in the second book. As the sexual impulse is the most vehement of desires, the wish of wishes, the concentration of all our volition, and accordingly the satisfaction of it which exactly corresponds to the individual wish of any one, that is, the desire fixed upon a definite individual, is the summit and crown of his happiness, the ultimate goal of his natural endeavours, with the attainment of which everything seems to him to have been attained, and with the frustrating of which everything seems to him to have been lost:—so we find, as its physiological correlative, in the objectified will, thus in the human organism, the sperm or semen as the secretion of secretions, the quintessence of all animal fluids, the last result of all organic functions, and have in it a new proof of the fact that the body is only the objectivity of the will, _i.e._, is the will itself under the form of the idea.
With reproduction is connected the maintenance of the offspring, and with the sexual impulse, parental love; and thus through these the life of the species is carried on. Accordingly the love of the brute for its young has, like the sexual impulse, a strength which far surpasses that of the efforts which merely concerns itself as an individual. This shows itself in the fact that even the mildest animals are ready to undertake for the sake of their young even the most unequal battle for life and death, and with almost all species of animals the mother encounters any danger for the protection of her young, nay, in many cases even faces certain death.
In the case of man this instinctive parental love is guided and directed by reason, _i.e._, by reflection. Sometimes, however, it is also in this way restricted, and with bad characters this may extend to the complete repudiation of it. Therefore we can observe its effects most purely in the lower animals. In itself, however, it is not less strong in man; here also, in particular cases, we see it entirely overcome self‐love, and even extend to the sacrifice of life. Thus, for example, the French newspapers have just announced that at Cahors, in the department of Lot, a father has taken his own life in order that his son, who had been drawn for military service, should be the eldest son of a widow, and therefore exempt (_Galignani’s Messenger_ of 22d June 1843). Yet in the case of the lower animals, since they are capable of no reflection, the instinctive maternal affection (the male is generally ignorant of his paternity) shows itself directly and unsophisticated, and therefore with perfect distinctness and in its whole strength. At bottom it is the expression of the consciousness in the brute that its true being lies more immediately in the species than in the individual, and therefore, when necessary, it sacrifices its life that the species may be maintained in the young. Thus here, as also in the sexual impulse, the will to live becomes to a certain extent transcendent, for its consciousness extends beyond the individual, in which it is inherent, to the species. In order to avoid expressing this second manifestation of the life of the species in a merely abstract manner, and to present it to the reader in its magnitude and reality, I will give a few examples of the extraordinary strength of instinctive maternal affection.
The sea‐otter, when pursued, seizes its young one and dives with it; when it comes up again to take breath, it covers the young one with its body, and receives the harpoon of the hunter while the young one is escaping. A young whale is killed merely to attract the mother, who hurries to it and seldom forsakes it so long as it still lives, even although she is struck with several harpoons (Scoresby’s “Journal of a Whaling Voyage;” from the English of Kreis, p. 196). At Three Kings Island, near New Zealand, there are colossal seals called sea‐elephants (_phoca proboscidea_). They swim round the island in regular herds and feed upon fishes, but yet have certain terrible enemies below water unknown to us, by whom they are often severely wounded; hence their swimming together requires special tactics.
The females bring forth their young upon the shore; while they are suckling them, which lasts from seven to eight weeks, all the males form a circle round them in order to prevent them, driven by hunger, from entering the sea, and if this is attempted they prevent it by biting. Thus they all fast together for between seven and eight weeks, and all become very thin, simply in order that the young may not enter the sea before they are able to swim well and observe the necessary tactics which are then taught them with blows and bites (Freycinet, _Voy. aux terres Australes_, 1826). We also see here how parental affection, like every strong exertion of the will (_cf._ chap. xix. 6), heightens the intelligence. Wild ducks, white‐throats, and many other birds, when the sportsman comes near their nest, fly in front of him with loud cries and flap about as if their wings were injured, in order to attract his attention from their young to themselves. The lark tries to entice the dog away from its nest by exposing itself. In the same way hinds and does induce the hunter to pursue them in order that their young may not be attacked. Swallows have flown into burning houses to rescue their young or perish with them. At Delft, in a great fire, a stork allowed itself to be burnt in its nest rather than forsake its tender young, which could not yet fly (Hadr. Junius, _Descriptio Hollandiæ_). Mountain‐cocks and woodcocks allow themselves to be taken upon the nest when brooding.
_Muscicapa tyrannus_ protects its nest with remarkable courage, and defends itself against eagles. An ant has been cut in two, and the fore half been seen to bring the pupæ to a place of safety. A bitch whose litter had been cut out of her belly crept up to them dying, caressed them, and began to whine violently only when they were taken from her (Burdach, _Physiologie als Erfahrungswissenschaft_, vol. ii. and iii.).
Chapter XLIII. On Heredity.
The most ordinary experience teaches that in generation the combined seed of the parents not only propagates the peculiarities of the species, but also those of the individual, as far as bodily (objective, external) qualities are concerned, and this has also always been recognised— “_Naturæ sequitur semina quisque suæ._” —CATULL.
Now whether this also holds good of mental (subjective, internal) qualities, so that these also are transmitted by the parents to the children, is a question which has already often been raised, and almost always answered in the affirmative. More difficult, however, is the problem whether it is possible to distinguish what belongs to the father and what to the mother, thus what is the mental inheritance which we receive from each of our parents. If now we cast upon this problem the light of our fundamental knowledge that the will is the true being, the kernel, the radical element in man, and the intellect, on the other hand, is what is secondary, adventitious, the accident of that substance; before questioning experience we will assume it as at least probable that the father, as _sexus potior_ and the procreative principle, imparts the basis, the radical element, of the new life, thus the _will_, and the mother, as _sexus sequior_ and merely conceiving principle, imparts the secondary element, the _intellect_; that thus the man inherits his moral nature, his character, his inclinations, his heart, from the father, and, on the other hand, the grade, quality, and tendency of his intelligence from the mother. Now this assumption actually finds its confirmation in experience; only this cannot be decided by a physical experiment upon the table, but results partly from the careful and acute observation of many years, and partly from history.
One’s own experience has the advantage of complete certainty and the greatest speciality, and this outweighs the disadvantage that arises from it, that its sphere is limited and its examples not generally known.
Therefore, primarily, I refer every one to his own experience. First of all let him consider himself, confess to himself his inclinations and passions, his characteristic errors and weaknesses, his vices, and also his excellences and virtues, if he has any. Then let him think of his father, and he cannot fail to recognise all these characteristic traits in him also. On the other hand, he will often find his mother of an entirely different character, and a moral agreement with her will very seldom occur, indeed only through the exceptional accident of a similarity of the character of the two parents. Let him make this examination, for example, with reference to quick temper or patience, avarice or prodigality, inclination to sensuality, or to intemperance, or to gambling, hard‐ heartedness or kindliness, honesty or hypocrisy, pride or condescension, courage or cowardice, peaceableness or quarrelsomeness, placability or resentfulness, &c. Then let him make the same investigation with regard to all those whose characters and whose parents he has accurately known. If he proceeds attentively, with correct judgment, and candidly, the confirmation of our principle will not be lacking. Thus, for example, he will find the special tendency to lie, which belongs to many men, equally present in two brothers, because they have inherited it from the father; on this account also the comedy, “The Liar and his Son,” is psychologically correct. However, two inevitable limitations must here be borne in mind, which only open injustice could interpret as evasions.
First, _pater semper incertus_. Only a decided physical resemblance to the father removes this limitation; a superficial resemblance, on the other hand, is not sufficient to do so; for there is an after‐effect of earlier impregnation by virtue of which the children of the second marriage have sometimes still a slight resemblance to the first husband, and children begotten in adultery to the legitimate father. Such an after‐effect has been still more distinctly observed in the case of brutes. The second limitation is, that in the son the moral character of the father certainly appears, yet under the modification which it has received through another and often very different _intellect_ (the inheritance from the mother), and thus a correction of the observation becomes necessary. This modification may be important or trifling in proportion to that difference, but it can never be so great that the fundamental traits of the paternal character do not always appear under it recognisably enough, like a man who has disguised himself by an entirely different kind of dress, wig, and beard. For example, if by inheritance from the mother a man is pre‐eminently endowed with reason, thus with the power of reflection and deliberation, the passions inherited from his father are partly bridled by this, partly concealed, and accordingly only attain to a methodical, systematic, or secret manifestation, and thus a very different phenomenon from that of the father, who perhaps had only a very limited mind, will then result; and in the same way the converse case may occur.
The inclinations and passions of the mother, on the other hand, do not reappear at all in the children, often indeed their opposite.
Historical examples have the advantage over those of private life of being universally known; but, on the other hand, they are of course impaired by the uncertainty and frequent falsification of all tradition, and especially also by the fact that as a rule they only contain the public, not the private life, and consequently only the political actions, not the finer manifestations of character. However, I wish to support the truth we are speaking of by a few historical examples, to which those who have made a special study of history can no doubt add a far larger number of equally pertinent cases.
It is well known that P. Decius Mus sacrificed his life for his country with heroic nobleness; for, solemnly committing himself and the enemy to the infernal deities, with covered face he plunged into the army of the Latins. About forty years later his son, of the same name, did exactly the same thing in the war against the Gauls (Liv. viii. 6; x. 28). Thus a thorough proof of the Horatian _fortes creantur fortibus et bonis_: the converse of which is thus given by Shakspeare— “Cowards father cowards, and base things sire base.”
—CYMBELINE, iv. 2.
Early Roman history presents to us whole families whose members in long succession distinguished themselves by devoted patriotism and courage; such were the _gens Fabia_ and the _gens Fabricia_. Again, Alexander the Great was fond of power and conquest, like his father Philip. The pedigree of Nero which, with a moral intention, Suetonius (c. 4 _et_ 5) gives at the beginning of his sketch of this monster is very well worth considering. It is the _gens Claudia_ he describes, which flourished in Rome through six centuries, and produced not only capable, but arrogant and cruel men. From it sprang Tiberius, Caligula, and finally Nero. In his grandfather, and still more strongly in his father, all those atrocious qualities show themselves, which could only attain their perfect development in Nero, partly because his higher position afforded them freer scope, partly because he had for his mother the irrational Bacchante, Agrippina, who could impart to him no intellect to bridle his passions. Quite in our sense, therefore, Suetonius relates that at his birth _præsagio fuit etiam Domitii, patris, vox, inter gratulationes amicorum, negantis, quidquam ex se __ et Agrippina, nisi detestabile et malo publico nasci potuisse_. On the other hand, Cimon was the son of Miltiades, and Hannibal of Hamilcar, and the Scipios make up a whole family of heroes and noble defenders of their country. But the son of Pope Alexander VI. was his hideous image, Cæsar Borgia. The son of the notorious Duke of Alba was just as cruel and wicked a man as his father.
The malicious and unjust Philip IV. of France, who is specially known by his cruel torture and execution of the knights templars, had for his daughter Isabella, wife of Edward II. of England, who rebelled against her husband, took him prisoner, and after he had signed his abdication, since