INERTIA AS RELATED TO HEREDITY 65 



of inheritance or of acquisition. By environmental 

 stimuli acting through affectability we become 

 educated, trained to be what, under other circum- 

 stances or in another environment we might not 

 ever have become, whereas through the possession 

 of functional inertia, character is inherited and 

 certain tendencies are innate, and one's individuality 

 unfolds as the underlying ground-tone of the life, 

 and we are what we could not in any way what- 

 ever help becoming. By an internal momentum y 

 character, " the person/' is forced into manifestation, 

 in opposition it may be to parental objections, the 

 teacher's frown and the disapproval of society 

 generally. There is an inertia of character in the 

 family, the clan, the nation, the race. It was not 

 affectability in the family that was alluded to when 

 the Bourbons were described as the dynasty " that 

 had learned nothing and forgotten nothing." 

 Place the Jew, for instance, anywhere under the soft 

 southern sky or the harsh grey north, and he never 

 alters, he is the same physically and mentally 

 as he was a few thousand years ago : neither 

 time nor environment can change him. Professor 

 Haeckel is evidently referring to this twofold 

 tendency in living beings when his views are 

 represented by Professor Huxley * as follows : 

 " Professor Haeckel looks upon the causes which 

 have led to the present diversity of living nature as 

 twofold. Living matter he tells us is urged by two 



* T. H. Huxley, " Darwiniana : Collected Essays," vol. ii. p. 114. 

 (Macmillan.) 



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