INHERITAXCE OF MORAL CHARACTER 247 



on " the inheritance of acquired characters," if we are thereby 

 freed from indulging in false hopes, but are forced to the convic- 

 tion that " nurture " is more important than ever? Although 

 what is " acquired " may not be inherited, what is not inherited 

 may be acquired. Thus we are led to direct our energies even 

 more strenuously to the business of re-impressing desirable 

 modifications, and therefore to developing our functions and 

 environments in the direction of progress. 



It may be, however, that our methods must change with the 

 change in our expectations. For though we can by modifica- 

 tion directly influence the individual, and in some measure even 

 control the expression of his inheritance, it is not through modi- 

 fications that we can hope directly to influence posterity. Man 

 is a slowly reproducing, slowly varying organism. What is 

 above all precious is the conservation of good stock. No number 

 of veneering modifications — superficial screens of organic defects 

 — can atone for allowing a deterioration of the germinal in- 

 heritance to diffuse itself or accumulate. For progress which is 

 really organic — for progress, that is, in our natural inheritance — 

 we must wait, or rather work, patiently. The quest after 

 Eutopias and Eutechnics must be associated with an enthusiasm 

 for Eugenics. 



Inheritance of Moral Character. — In the development of 

 " character," much depends upon early nurture, education, and 

 surrounding influences generally, but how the individual reacts 

 to these must largely depend on his inheritance. Truly the 

 individual himself makes his own character, but he does so 

 by his habitual adjustment of his (hereditarily determined) 

 constitution to surrounding influences. Nurture supplies the 

 stimulus for the expression of the moral inheritance, and how 

 far the inheritance can express itself is limited by the nurture- 

 stimuli available just as surely as the result of nurture is con- 

 ditioned by the hereditarily-determined nature on which it 

 operates. It may be urged that character, being a product of 



