184 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



of moral science, it is to be urged with all possible 

 emphasis that to treat such direction as a simple 

 quality, transmissible as a deformity is transmissible, 

 is impossible in every way ; it is absurd ; it is 

 mythology." Has Miss Wodehouse ever read of 

 the Jonathan Edwards' and Jukes' families ? If not 

 I commend them, not only to her attention, but to a 

 reverent study. She will then find that mythology 

 becomes fact and absurdity becomes reason. She 

 will find that while metaphysics has been soaring in the 

 Empyrean regions of speculation and abstraction, 

 incontrovertible fact has been walking on the earth. 



Let me make one disclaimer of my opponent's 

 statement. I have not said that " purpose and 

 will " may be regarded as a simple quality. I did 

 not deal with the subject at all. But I am prepared 

 to say and to prove that the capacity of forming 

 wrong purpose, the capacity of determining will in 

 the wrong direction, are both hereditarily trans- 

 mitted. I am prepared to state it in another way, 

 and to say that there are some people who can never 

 form a right purpose, nor develope a right will, nor 

 say the right thing at the right time, nor do the 

 right thing at the time it should be done ; and that 

 these incapacities are hereditarily transmitted and 

 are not cured by education. I do not know whether 

 this is a " common-place of ethics," but I think 

 everyone will recognise it as a common- place 

 of life. 



Miss Wodehouse throughout her criticism has 

 misunderstood the standpoint from which my article 



