Color-hearing, while an abnormal phenomenon, it
must be added, cannot be called a diseased condition, and it is probably
much less frequently associated with other abnormal or degenerative
stigmata than is inversion; there is often a congenital element, shown by
the tendency to hereditary transmission, while the associations are
developed in very early life, and are too regular to be the simple result
of suggestion.[238]
All such organic variations are abnormalities. It is important that we
should have a clear idea as to what an abnormality is. Many people imagine
that what is abnormal is necessarily diseased. That is not the case,
unless we give the word disease an inconveniently and illegitimately wide
extension. It is both inconvenient and inexact to speak of
color-blindness, criminality, and genius as diseases in the same sense as
we speak of scarlet fever or tuberculosis or general paralysis as
diseases. Every congenital abnormality is doubtless due to a peculiarity
in the sperm or oval elements or in their mingling, or to some disturbance
in their early development. But the same may doubtless be said of the
normal dissimilarities between brothers and sisters.
Pages:
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739