CHAPTER IV 



FUNCTIONAL INERTIA AS RELATED TO 

 HEREDITY 



JUST as there is no property in the organ which is 

 not to be found in its component cells, and nothing 

 in the organism which is not in its component 

 organs, so there is nothing in the race which is not 

 in its component units, individuals. Functional 

 inertia is expressed racially because it has existed 

 individually, and is expressed in the individual 

 because it is a property of the living units the 

 cells of which the individual is built up. We 

 have seen that functional inertia is a fundamental 

 property of the simplest portion of undiiferentiated 

 protoplasm, we shall see that it is no less responsible 

 for racial characteristics and national destinies. 

 An organism in action is, at any one instant, what 

 it is in virtue of two distinct tendencies the ten- 

 dency to correspond with the environment, to profit 

 by education, a tendency obviously the outcome of 

 affectability, and the opposite tendency to dis- 

 regard the environment, not to be educable, to 

 maintain the ancestral status quo transmitted and 

 unmodified, this is evidently related to functional 

 inertia. All one's endowments are the result either 



