THE LA WS OF HEREDITY. 77 



not be too much to infer that much of the mental and 

 moral obliquity and degradation met with in the poorer 

 classes, from which springs the instinctive criminal, 

 has its origin in vicious initial heredity. Let us hope, 

 then, that this law of Nature is as active for virtue as 

 for vice, and take it that not a little of that which 

 makes human nature lovely, is the outcome of a pure 

 and ennobled nature in the parent when he becomes 

 such, for nothing but good can arise from the teaching 

 of such doctrine. 



Laurence Sterne shows a deep insight into the ways 

 of Nature when, in the opening lines of "Tristram 

 Shandy," he says: "I wish either my father or my 

 mother, or, indeed, both of them, as they were in duty 

 both equally bound to it, had minded what they were 

 about when they begot me ; had they duly considered 

 how much depended upon what they were then doing, 

 that not only the production of a rational being was 

 concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation 

 and temperament of his body, perhaps his genius, 

 and the very cast of his mind, and, for aught they 

 knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole 

 house might take their turn from the humours and 

 dispositions that were then uppermost. Had they 

 duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded 

 accordingly, I am verily persuaded I should have made 

 quite a different figure, on the whole, from that in 

 which the reader is likely to see me. Believe me, good 

 folk, this is not so inconsiderable a thing as many of 

 you think it." 



