8o FUNCTIONAL INERTIA 



As in the case of plants, so in animals, we have 

 many instances of the difficulty and impossibility 

 of overcoming the inherited by means of the ac- 

 quired. Speaking of his own inherited left-handed- 

 ness, the late Sir Daniel Wilson said,* " Nor has 

 the habit (of using the right hand) fostered by the 

 practice of upwards of seventy years overcome the 

 preferential use of the other hand." The inherited 

 status quo is based on too primitive a property- 

 inertia to be overcome even in a long lifetime. 

 Most truly might the late Sir Michael Foster write, f 

 '* What we are is in part only of our own making, 

 the greater part of ourselves has come down to us 

 from the past." This aspect of things had impressed 

 the late Professor Tyndall. In his address to 

 students at University College, J he said, "We may 

 remove obstacles and render latent capacities 

 active, but we cannot suddenly change the nature 

 of man. No man knows what the potentialities of 

 any human mind may be, requiring only release to 

 be brought into action. There are in the mineral 

 world certain crystals which have lain darkly in 

 the earth for ages, which nevertheless have a 

 potency for light locked up within them. In their 

 case the potential has never become actual. The 

 light is, in fact, held back by a molecular detent! 1 

 The italics are mine, for Professor Tyndall meant 



* Daniel Wilson, " Left-handedness," p. 142. (Macmillan, 1891.) 

 f Foster, " History of Physiology," p. i. (Cambridge University 



Press, 1901.) 



J Tyndall, " Fragments of Science," vol. ii. p. 97. (Longmans, 



1902.) 



