VIRILE SENTIMENT 61 



artificial accomplishments which can always be 

 had for nothing in the class immediately above that 

 to which he belongs ? In this next higher grade we 

 not only obtain the artificial accomplishments, but 

 in addition better innate civic qualities. What we 

 are really doing by such methods is paying for an 

 inferior stock when we have already the better one 

 for nothing. We pay for a few putative accomplish- 

 ments in an individual whose sex-cells are going to 

 give us an inferior civic stock ! That is one con- 

 sideration which tliis new fact of heredity bids us heed. 



We are going to deal, then, with the sex-cells. 

 When the male sex-cell unites with the female sex- 

 cell there is produced the first body cell, by the 

 repeated divisions and growth of which a new in- 

 dividual arises. What this new individual will be, 

 and what he will transmit to the next generation, 

 depends not upon his environment, but upon what 

 the two sex- cells, male and female, of his parents 

 brought in. A sex-cell which carries leaden social 

 instincts is not going to develope into a golden 

 individual because he has been given a golden en- 

 vironment. From it a person of leaden instincts only 

 will develope. 



Let us appeal, then, to accurately-conducted 

 experiments, and see how far we can ascertain some 

 rehable facts as to what the sex- cells are really doing. 

 When a sex-cell of a pure black rabbit is united 

 with one of an albino rabbit, to what sort of offspring 

 will it give rise ? Without exception, whenever this 

 cross has been made, black rabbits indistinguishable 



