The opening of Chapter I
FREDERICK CHOPIN'S ANCESTORS.--HIS FATHER NICHOLAS CHOPIN'S BIRTH, YOUTH, ARRIVAL AND EARLY VICISSITUDES IN POLAND, AND MARRIAGE.--BIRTH AND EARLY INFANCY OF FREDERICK CHOPIN.--HIS PARENTS AND SISTERS.
GOETHE playfully describes himself as indebted to his father for his frame and steady guidance of life, to his mother for his happy disposition and love of story-telling, to his grandfather for his devotion to the fair sex, to his grandmother for his love of finery. Schopenhauer reduces the law of heredity to the simple formula that man has his moral nature, his character, his inclinations, and his heart from his father, and the quality and tendency of his intellect from his mother. Buckle, on the other hand, questions hereditary transmission of mental qualities altogether. Though little disposed to doubt with the English historian, yet we may hesitate to assent to the proposition of the German philosopher; the adoption of a more scientific doctrine, one that recognises a process of compensation, neutralisation, and accentuation, would probably bring us nearer the truth.