hereditariness

Here, as elsewhere in tracing hereditariness in so-called functional nervosities, one should take as the unit character for study the mental traits or trends and exclude definite disease entities applied to ancestral disorders.

The Journal of Abnormal Psychology 1916

Later, in proportion as the progress of civilization makes itself felt, this hereditariness is wont to be confined to the sovereign.

System der volkswirthschaft. English Wilhelm Roscher 1855

Man's power in making races deends, in the first instance, on the stock on which he works being variable; but his labours are modified and limited, as we have seen, by the direct effects of the external conditions, -- by the deficient or imperfect hereditariness of new peculiarities, -- and by the tendency to continual variation and especially to reversion to ancestral forms.

The Foundations of the Origin of Species Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 Charles Darwin 1845

A curious instance of the force of hereditariness is sometimes seen in two little loose hanging horns, quite useless as far as the function of a horn is concerned, which are produced in hornless races of our domestic cattle {498}.

The Foundations of the Origin of Species Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 Charles Darwin 1845

There will always be a struggle between atrophy of an organ rendered useless, and hereditariness {171}.

The Foundations of the Origin of Species Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 Charles Darwin 1845

This hereditariness of specific habits suggests a relation to that form of psychological demonstration usually called instinct; but instinct is only another term for mind, or is mind in a peculiar stage of development; and though the fact were otherwise, it could not affect the postulate, that demonstrations such as have been enumerated are mainly intellectual demonstrations, not to be distinguished as such from those of human beings.

Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation Robert Chambers 1836

The preservation of the stump of the tail, as usually happens when an animal is born tailless, we can only explain by the strength of the hereditary principle and by the period in embryo when affected {503}: but on the theory of disuse gradually obliterating a part, we can see, according to the principles explained in the last chapter (viz. of hereditariness at corresponding periods of life {504}, together with the use and disuse of the part in question not being brought into play in early or embryonic life), that organs or parts would tend not to be utterly obliterated, but to be reduced to that state in which they existed in early embryonic life.

The Foundations of the Origin of Species Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 Charles Darwin 1845

Where an embryonic form has to seek its own food, its structure and adaptation is just as important to the species as that of the full-grown animal; and as we have seen that a peculiarity appearing in a caterpillar (or in a child, as shown by the hereditariness of peculiarities in the milk-teeth) reappears in its offspring, so we can at once see that our common principle of the selection of slight accidental variations would modify and adapt a caterpillar to a new or changing condition, precisely as in the full-grown butterfly.

The Foundations of the Origin of Species Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 Charles Darwin 1845