HEREDITY. 



357 



Pitt, Napier, Fox, Herschel, Darwin, and many more, is evidence that 

 mind and will are as transmissible as complexion and stature. This 

 is more apparent in a country like England, where the institutions and 

 customs favor and confirm the results of heredity, than in America, 

 where there is no law of entail, and as yet little of the ambitious found- 

 ing of families. 



There is abundant testimony to prove that heredity can be moral 

 as well as physical and intellectual. The Stuarts were as constant in 

 the presentation of certain moral traits as the family of the Churchills 

 or the American Adamses are in others. Imprudence, penuriousness, 

 dishonesty, or good judgment, once thoroughly established in a stock, 

 persists with quite as much tenacity as the familiar eyes or nose. The 

 inheritance by posterity of the changes wrought on individuals by 

 their experience is the basis of the modern explanation of the growth 

 of instinct and the evolution of human intelligence. Darwin has de- 

 veloped this theory in a masterly manner. He gives as an illustration 

 that between the finished skill of the honey-bee and the rude capabili- 

 ties of the humble-bee stand the intermediate powers of the Mexican 

 melipona. This last insect constructs a comb of wax, almost regular in 

 form, consisting of cylindrical cells, in which the larvae are hatched, 

 and a certain number of large cells to hold its store of honej'. The 

 latter cells are nearly spherical and situated at a considerable distance 

 from each other. Now, any slight variation of organization or instinct, 

 by which the melipona would construct its cells more uniformly and 

 compactly, would economize its wax and labor, and bring it up toward 

 the plane of the honey-bee. The generations of insects succeed each 

 other so rapidly that no modification can be detected among species 

 low in the scale. Honey-bees, however, are not possessed of unadapt- 

 able and rigid instincts, for ihey have been observed to spring arches 

 and buttresses in their hives to avoid glass rods purposely inserted. 

 An organism's advantage plainly lies in an increase of its skill and 

 ingenuity, and any slight advance made by individuals is preserved by 

 heredity, persists in tendencies and habit, and becomes fixed as in- 

 stinct. 



The development of intelligence among mankind is accounted for 

 in the same manner : efforts at first painfully made by our ancestors 

 in new paths were at last rewarded by the facility that comes with 

 repetition ; their immediate descendants were born with new aptitudes 

 and an organization with a wider range of powers ; the acquisitions 

 thus gained and transmitted have grown into the varied faculties of 

 the men and women of to-day. " Mankind," Comte says, " is as one 

 man, always living and always learning." The passing away of one 

 generation and the birth of another do not interfere with the con- 

 stant progress of the race. 



The method applied to the explication of the growth of instinct 

 and intelligence has been used by Darwin in approaching the problem 



