The Blood of the Nation 



we may lay on individual initiative or 

 on individual variation. 



Equally true is it that the present 

 character of a nation is made by its past 

 history. Those who are alive to-day 

 are the resultants of the stream of 

 heredity as modified by the vicissitudes 

 through which the nation has passed. 

 The blood of the nation flows in the 

 veins of those who survive. Those who 

 die without descendants can not color 

 the stream of heredity. It must take 

 its traits from the actual parentage. 



The word " blood " in this sense is 

 figurative only, an expression formed to 

 cover the qualities of heredity. Such 

 traits, as the phrase goes, " run in the 

 blood." In the earlier philosophy it 

 was held that blood was the actual 

 physical vehicle of heredity, that the 

 traits bequeathed from sire to son as the 

 characteristics of families or races ran 

 literally in the literal blood. We know 



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