114 BIOLOGY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 



examples, but the instance par excellence of 

 the inheritance of property is to be found 

 in the human species. As a social proposition 

 this practice has its advantages, though its 

 effect on many individuals in removing their 

 incentive to normal activity shows that the 

 curse of the Nibelungs' hoard is more than a 

 poetic fancy. 



But is everything that we inherit from our 

 parents either an object handed down to us 

 in a physical sense or a tendency or other in- 

 direct influence transmitted to us through the 

 egg ? Probably not ! A large part, perhaps 

 the larger part, of what we are accustomed to 

 say makes up our lives is obtained neither as an 

 inherited object nor as a transmitted tendency, 

 but has reached us in a somewhat different 

 way. What comes to us over this third route 

 may be put briefly as our heritable intelligence. 

 As I pointed out in the first lecture, the mind 

 of the young child is an unwritten page on 

 which the environment, acting through the 

 sense organs, inscribes the story of life. Much 

 of the sensory inflow is controlled and directed 

 by the parent, and thus in the early stages 

 of life he can exert a most profound influence 

 on the personality of the child. With the 



