Note 283 — Chapter VII

In applying these principles to family consanguinity, we may say in a general manner, that it will be favourable or not to the offspring according to the state of the parents. If the parents are perfectly healthy, and exempt from all commencing degeneracy, they can only give birth to children at least as healthy as themselves. If one of the two parents is tainted with a commencement of degeneracy, the descendant, in his quality of offspring, will perhaps bear the trace of this degeneracy, but sensibly weakened. If the two parents are separately tainted with a different commencement of degeneracy, one or the other ought to continue it in the child, only in a lesser degree. But if the same degeneracy has already tainted both the parents, the offspring will show it in a greater degree, and will tend towards entire disappearance.