Miscellaneous Payers. 163 



individuals are the resultant of three causes, i. e., heredity, en- 

 vironment, and free will. But he sums up his investigations in 

 the statement, " The most interesting, and even startling thing has 

 been the ease with which heredity alone has been made to bear the 

 brunt of explaining the general make-up of character." His facts 

 all point to the importance of inheritance as a factor in character, 

 and if so, society must bear the blame, in some measure, for the 

 propagation of the criminal and vicious classes. Biologists, in con- 

 sidering the development of moral qualities by natural selection, 

 have found difficulty in perceiving how altruistic tendencies could 

 be favored by natural selection, but there were correlations ob- 

 served which would throw light on the subject. He says (p. 513): 

 "The probability is that there are at work forces of natural selec- 

 tion of which we know little of the value as yet, but which are 

 such that, setting aside the influences of environment, whether we 

 will or not, the natural quality of humanity must progress." He 

 says again (p. 515) : "The upshot of it all is, as regards intellectual 

 life, that environment is a totally inadequate explanation, We are 

 forced to the conclusion that all the main differences in intellec- 

 tual activity are due to predetermined differences in the germ cells." 

 Taken all together. Doctor Woods has made us feel that heredity 

 has a much more important part in the determination of character 

 than it has credit for, and the sociologist finds suggestions for 

 the improvement of the race, which, if not feasible now, may be so 

 sometime. 



Darwin's influence upon biology in general was most profound 

 and far-reaching. As Prof. Wm. R. Wheeler, of Harvard, in his 

 anniversary address, says (Pop. Sci. Mon., Apr. 19, '09, p. 881) : 



"Charles Darwin undoubtedly exerted a great and threefold influence 

 upon zoology, botany and kindred sciences, first, by his rehabilitation of 

 Lamarck's theory of trans formism or evolution; second, by his wonderful 

 studies on variation; and, third, by his brilliant theory of natural selection 

 and the survival of the fittest. ... (P. 383:) The first effect of the 

 ' Origin of Species ' was destructive, as it tended to dissolve the rigid con- 

 ceptual scheme that dominated not only in zoology and botany but the whole 

 cosmogony of the time. The conception of an evolution that melted all living 

 beings into a vital stream that surged on into the future as it has surged 

 through the Eeons of the past, continually creating new and destroying old 

 forms, could not but clash with a conception of a world created once for all 

 and since engaged in marking time. . . . Evolution, as conceived by 

 Darwin, admitted of a mechanical explanation and so allied itself with the 

 physical sciences rather than with psychology and philosophy. It compelled 

 zoologists and botanists to attend to every aspect of an organism, everv 

 phase of its development, from an egg to its dissolution; nothing in its 

 structure was too insignificant to decide whether a species could survive in 



