CHANGE IN CHARACTER. 113 



physiological hereditary law the more effective their 

 zeal will be. In spite of all or any change of circum- 

 stance the vast majority of our population are average 

 individuals because their parents were average indi- 

 viduals ; their children also will certainly be average 

 individuals. The vast majority of each generation of 

 human beings, no matter how extreme the changes, 

 or diverse the varieties, of encompassing circumstance, 

 are more or less uniformly honest, kindly, and indus- 

 trious because the preceding generations were fairly 

 honest, kindly, and industrious. On these terms the 

 very existence of society is based based on the 

 dominancy of organisation over the possibilities of 

 circumstance. Even 'hoverers' over dividing lines 

 follow ' hovering' parents and beget ' hovering ' chil- 

 dren. 



If twelve boys of different parentage were, during 

 early infancy, placed, say, in a monastery (the same 

 might be said of twelve girls put into a convent) and 

 were to spend their lives in one uniform routine of 

 circumstance, is it conceivable that they would not 

 in essential matters in gifts certainly, in proclivities 

 probably unfold into twelve different men ? Or, dis- 

 carding alike both time, and race, and individual 

 parentage, is it conceivable that by any common en- 

 compassment the old Greek artist, the law-contriving 

 Eoman, the Chinese pedant, the dreamy Hindu, and 

 the Scandinavian sea-dog could have been moulded to 

 one and the same pattern ? In Goethe and Charles 

 Spurgeon, in Dante and Charles Dickens, four quite 

 different skeletons supported and protected four quite 

 different nerve centres : could any possible similarity 

 in the play of external forces have imposed Spurgeon's 

 character on Goethe, or Dante's character on Dickens ? 



