116 CHANGE IN CHAEACTEE. 



slighter amount, of change ; and this greater facility 

 of change in the moral nerve element is, I venture to 

 think, perhaps the most significant fact in the whole 

 range of biological science. Circumstance is certainly 

 more powerful in the domain of morals, but the pow r er 

 is restrained within given limits ; the circumstance is 

 exceptional and a comparatively small number of 

 individuals are affected. Intellectual nerve is much 

 more stable, anil therefore intellectual change 

 change in endowment is not to be looked for. But 

 the very plasticity of moral nerve, and the resulting 

 greater capacity for change in moral conduct, is as 

 certainly hereditary as the non-pliancy of intellectual 

 nerve and the narrower sphere of intellectual change. 

 Evolutionary exigency demands that the nerve appa- 

 ratus which appertains to right and wrong, touching 

 as it does the foundations of social existence and well- 

 being, shall be submissive obedient nerve. One law 

 of our existence is that it is easier to make a man good 

 than to make him clever. Stupid, if morally submis- 

 sive, men may possibly give help to a community ; the 

 morally disobedient are always a hindrance. In other 

 words, and to put the matter into a nutshell, the 

 natural fool cannot be made wise nor the natural 

 coward brave ; but within certain limits, circumstance 

 may transform the bad fool into a good fool and the 

 bad coward into a good coward. 



Society, it may be said again, is based, as a whole, 

 on the stability of inherited adequate organisation and 

 on the stability of more or less normal circumstance. 

 There are groups of individuals who are not adequate 

 and there are abnormal currents of circumstance. 

 Neither the groups nor the circumstance can be more 

 than hinted at here. One group inherits, and pos- 



