REPRODUCTION 397 



chief forms of intemperance, the alcoholic and the sexual, 

 balefully threaten the welfare of the children. 



What shall be said of less flagrant irregularities of con- 

 duct on the part of the parent? Is he to think that fre- 

 quent failures to govern his temper are preparing the way 

 for similar lapses in the next generation? Has he ground 

 for hoping that habits of concentration which he may cul- 

 tivate will add to the efficiency of his sons and daughters 

 who are to be? Will simple laziness lower the physical 

 standards of the offspring? Belief in such consequences of 

 one's behavior is undoubtedly wide-spread. It is hard to 

 see that it can have any but good results. Yet, as we have 

 hinted, an alternative statement may be suggested. 



Let us take the specific case referred to above: the loss 

 of temper. A man's life is disfigured by outbreaks of this 

 kind and years later his son's irascibility constantly recalls 

 the father's. The moralist may say that the father al- 

 lowed a character to develop which passed in an intensified 

 degree to the boy. Another explanation is probably more 

 just. The hereditary qualities of a race or family are so 

 stable that they are scarcely modified by the events of an 

 individual life. The father's explosions of anger have not 

 given fresh momentum to the underlying tendency, but 

 they have most clearly indicated what the tendency is. 

 The boy starts about where his father did; a common in- 

 heritance is behind them both, and it is this community 

 of descent which we should dwell upon rather than the 

 succession of one life to another. They have inherited as 

 brothers from one ancestry though more correctly, as has 

 been said, "as half-brothers having different mothers." 



Shall we conclude that what we do is of no significance 

 to our descendants so long as we do not grossly poison the 

 germinal reserves? It is not necessary to express the situ- 

 ation so recklessly. Our 'lives are filled with the sense of 

 struggle, and, as we review them, we regard certain episodes 

 as victories and others as defeats. Perhaps the victories 

 have not so definitely added to our strength as we like to 

 think, but they have again and again shown that we pos- 



