HEREDITY 495 



dispositions of a deteriorative sort. In Man's case nurture 

 is very modifiable and largely under control ; much is made 

 that is not born, and it rests with Man to determine whether 

 it be ameliorative or the reverse. But it must never be for- 

 gotten that the direct effect seems to be restricted to the 

 individual. 



6. The Other Side of Heredity. 



The past lives on in the present, that is what is meant 

 by heredity. There is an inexorableness in the persistence, 

 the so-called transmission, of all sorts of inborn peculiarities, 

 except sterility of course, not only to the third and fourth 

 generation, but far further. Sometimes it is a trivial feature 

 like a shock of white hair ; sometimes it is a deadly vice of 

 blood ; sometimes it is all bodily, leaving the spirit unblem- 

 ished, as in certain cripples; sometimes it is a blot on the 

 brain that affects the character, now in this way and again 

 in that, but always perniciously. There is no gainsaying 

 the fatalistic impression that the study of heredity forces 

 upon us, and since heredity is the relation of organic or 

 genetic continuity between successive generations, there can 

 be no other side to it. But there is another side to the 

 fatalism. 



(1) There is a growing solidarity among men and women 

 of good-will; there is a wider recognition of the social or 

 racial aspect of parentage; there is an increasing control 

 of life. So that, while words are easy and actual doing is 

 difficult, it is not speaking unadvisedly with our lips to say, 

 that the reappearance of an evil past is not inevitable in 

 the future : it may be blocked in the present. The transmis- 

 sion of defects and weaknesses of a misery-bringing, race- 

 weakening sort can be in some measure checked. A man. 



