72 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



partly wrong. Hence the endless controversies main- 

 tained by the adherents of the Intuitive and the Utili- 

 tarian systems of philosophy, each party being able 

 to support its views, to some extent, by unimpeach- 

 able arguments. The truth is that within certain 

 limits utilitarian considerations sway tlie individual, 

 and that these establish a bent in his nature which, 

 becoming ingrained, is transmissible to his posterity. 

 It was this hereditary tendency which constituted 

 the Greek Nomos or custom having the force of law, 

 as described by Grote — the established fact and con- 

 dition of things which each new member of the 

 community is born to and finds subsisting, the 

 aggregate of beliefs and predispositions to believe, 

 ethical, religious, sesthetical, social, respecting what 

 is true or false, holy or unholy, honourable or base, 

 in all the relations of life.^ 



Recently physiologists have begun to doubt whether 

 the influence of circumstances upon the species is as 

 immediate as Darwin assumed it to be, Weismann's 

 much-discussed theory of heredity {Die Continuitdt 

 des Keimplasmas) appearing to exclude the transmis- 

 sion of acquired or accidental modifications of struc- 

 ture, and to greatly circumscribe the Darwinian theory 



^ Grote, Plato and the Companions of Socrates. 



