CHANGE IN CHARACTER. 107 



through the man and sometimes through the woman : 

 hence the futility of the method, so frequently adopted 

 by historians and biographers, of tracing the lineage 

 of good qualities or bad qualities, of genius or of 

 crime, through the men only. It is unusual for 

 characteristic qualities to be transmitted through one 

 sex only for more than a very few generations. 



The question is often asked which is the more 

 potent factor in the formation of character, heredity 

 or circumstance ? By heredity we mean, and can only 

 mean, organisation and particularly organisation of 

 nerve. We call the special group of a man's character- 

 istic peculiarities his idiosyncracy, and idiosyncracy 

 is, at root, a question of organisation, that is, of 

 inheritance. 



The inherited nervous organisation stands apart as 

 the most elaborate, complex, and highly organised of 

 known things ; the thing through which all other 

 e things and events ' are known so far as they are 

 known. All nature is merely the aggregate of messages 

 -for the most part muffled and imperfect messages 

 which come from without to central nerve : what the 

 central nerve of the individual can manufacture out of the 

 message-material is that individual's universe. Grant- 

 ing, within certain limits, action and reaction between 

 central nerve and circumstance, the question arises : 

 is the shaping, and in effect the creating, thing less 

 potent than the shaped, and in effect created, world of 

 things and events or circumstance around him ? In 

 strict truth thunder is silent and the cannon does not 

 roar : is the nerve less important than the wave- 

 impulse (or circumstance) which it converts into 

 sound ? The sun and stars are black : is the nerve 

 less potent than the solar and stellar circumstance 

 which it converts into light ? 



