106 CHANGE IN CHARACTER. 



enfeebling influences which together make an unfa- 

 vourable environment. 



The various influences which tell on character, by 

 telling on nerve, tell on it in one or both of two ways : 

 they either prevent the natural unfolding of its traits, 

 or they modify those traits at some period of their 

 unfolding. 



With the growth and maturity and decadence of 

 brain is associated growth, maturity, and decadence 

 of character. Whatever dwarfs or favours or perverts 

 health of nerve, dwarfs or favours or perverts 

 character. 



The progress of brain development and brain action, 

 if undisturbed by exceptional mischief injury or 

 disease will be determined by inherited organisation. 



It is important to note that, while organisation in 

 its leading features is perhaps most frequently derived 

 from an immediate parent or parents, it is also not at 

 all rarely, by a process of reversion, derived from 

 remoter parentage. If, according to the carefully pre- 

 served lineage of certain domestic animals there appear, 

 in our time, bodily peculiarities which have not appeared 

 before since the days of Queen Elizabeth, it may well 

 be that, in the human body (and character), traits 

 reappear after disappearance during many centuries. 

 I believe it is not very unusual for a child to take 

 mainly after a grandparent in organisation and cha- 

 racter, and for this incident to happen during several 

 known generations : in fundamental features, of course, 

 all the generations are much alike. Where the rever- 

 sion is to remote and unknown or unremembered 

 parentage, it may, though rarely, be difficult to say to 

 which line of parentage a child belongs. It has already 

 been remarked that the family line passes sometimes 



