VARIATIONS. 31 



reach that stage wan and pinched, no more like his 

 twin brother in the country than Hamlet was to 

 Hercules. This is the action of the environment 

 upon the individual. Here we see its effect upon 

 the physical organisation during the early years of 

 life, and no proof is needed that its effect upon the 

 mental and moral natures is equally, if not still more 

 powerful 



But let us follow these brothers. Suppose the 

 ploughman, full of life and vigour, marries a strong, 

 healthy country-woman, while his town-bred brother 

 marries her sister, who, like himself, has been brought 

 up in poverty in a large town, and whose store of health 

 is more or less reduced in consequence ; can we for a 

 moment suppose that the natural inheritance of the 

 children of these twin brothers and these sisters will 

 be identical ? The one family, having inherited the 

 sound physical constitution of the ploughman and his 

 healthy wife, will grow up vastly different from their 

 stunted, pale-faced, town-bred cousins, who show the 

 second step on the downward path leading to the 

 extinction of the family : different as is the typical 

 yeoman from the typical Cockney, who, it has been 

 said, " has no grandfather." * 



This is the action of the environment upon the 



* Mr. Cantlie, aftsr prolonged and careful search, could not find 

 a single person whose ancestors, from the grandparents downwards, 

 had been born and bred in London. He describes some miser- 

 able creatures who most nearly approached this record, and then 

 remarks : " I have never come across the children of any such, 

 and I believe it is not likely I ever sl^all. Nature steps in and 

 denies the continuance of such." "Degeneration amongst Londoners" 



