UKKDKK 



HEREDITY 



675 



In 1704 Herder In-came assistant-teacher in a 

 school, :ni.l assistant-pastor iii certain rlmn-li,-, 

 in Kiga. Being convinced that literature wan to 

 IM- lu.s life's calling, lie began to practise it \>y writ- 

 ing Fnif/iiii /if' ii/H-r die neuere deuts<-h<- l.ili-nifiir 

 (1766-67), Die /.////./(// Wiilder (1709), and 

 minor pieces, in \\liii-li In- maintained that the 

 truest poetry is tin- poetry of the people, the spon- 

 taiifinis, uiiartilicial expression uf the character- 

 istic human nature that is in them; and, in the 

 spirit of \Viiickelniaiin and Lessing, In; took up a 

 1. rief for tin- idiosyncratic, development of national 

 genius in opposition to the fashionable pseudo- 

 . l.i i,- ism of the day. He was an impressive 

 preacher, the subject of his sermons, as of all his 

 writings, being man i/nu man in all phases of his 

 essential and complex nature. Leaving Riga in 

 17ii'.', he spent sum-- moiitlis in travel. It was 

 during this tour that he made the acquaintance 

 of young (ioethe nt Strasburg ; from Herder the 

 future literary imperator of Germany learned to 

 understand the realities of life. In 1770 Herder 

 accepted the appointment of court-preacher at 

 Biickeburg ; but six years later he exchanged 

 this uncongenial uost for that of first preacher 

 in the town churcn of Weimar, a position which, 

 partly owing to untoward circumstances, partly 

 and perhaps principally to his own innate irrita- 

 bility of temper, proved to be little less uncon- 

 genial, in spite of his intercourse with Goethe and 

 tin- other literary celebrities then gathered in 

 Weimar. It was there that Herder died on 18th 

 December 1803. 



Herder's love for the songs of the people, for 

 human nature unadulterated, for simple truth 

 warm with the blood of life's reality, in preference 

 to classic grace and coldness, and the beautiful 

 but artificial poetry of cultured minds, found 

 expression in an admirable collection of folk- 

 songs, Stimmen der Volker in Liedern (1778-79), 

 in his favourite book, Vom Geiste der Hebraischen 

 Poesie (1782-83; Eng. trans, by James Marsh, 

 1833), Ueber die Wirkung der Dichtkunst auf die 

 Sitten der Volker (1778), in a series of oriental 

 mythological tales, in parables and legends, in 

 his version of the Old (1805), and other works. 

 The principal constructive idea of his thinking 

 was, however, what we should now call the sense 

 of the supreme importance of the historical method. 

 The stimulus or this thought is discernible 

 not only in the works quoted above, but in 

 such books as Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache 

 (177'2), Die alteste Urkunde des Menschenge- 

 schlechts (1774-76), and especially in his greatest 

 masterpiece, Ideen zur Geschichte der Menschheit 

 (1784-91; Eng. trans, by T. Churchill, 1800), 

 which, like so many of his other books, was left 

 uncompleted. This work is not only the ripest 

 product of his thinking ; it is, as it were, the 

 capital of his intellectual kingdom, in which are 

 gathered all the wealth and beauty and power of 

 his mind. Besides its great intrinsic value, the 

 book is remarkable for its anticipations and adum- 

 brations of evolutionary theories. Herder shows 

 that higher and higher types of organisation are 

 observable in all things, stones, plants, and 

 animals, until the culminating type is reached in 

 man ; and, as the scale is ascended, a closer and 

 closer resemblance to the culminating type is 

 revealed both in organisation and in the develop- 

 ment of powers and instincts. Moreover, the more 

 complex the organisation of a being the greater 

 the extent to which that organisation partakes 

 of the forms existent in the Tower grades. But 

 he does not vitalise the scheme of the universe 

 by the conception of genetic development, or the 

 doctrine of organic descent. He does, however, 

 recognise, in a more or less imperfect way, the 



si niggle for existence and adaptation to environ- 

 ment. The end for which all things exint that 

 do exist is, he teaches, man, the crowning 

 work of the uni\eise. Hut man in not merely 

 tin- crowning work of tho universe; he in also, 

 by analogy of reasoning from the laws of nature, 

 the lirst and rudest link in a still higher aeries of 

 existences, and what he has in common with them 

 is his pure humanity, his intelligent, sensitive, and 

 spiritual (towers. Hence the life business of man, 

 the loftiest aim of philosophy and religion, i- to 

 cultivate these. Herder is one of the few authors 

 who appreciate the poetry in philosophy and the 

 higher synthesis of both with religion ; yet he can 

 scarcely be called a great writer. His last years 

 were chiefly occupied, apart from the Ideen, with 

 the Humanitutsbriefe (1793-97) and an ill-advised 

 polemic against Kant. 



His Sdmmtliche Werke (60 vols. ) were published in 

 1827-30 ; later issues are Suphan's (32 vols. 1877-87) and 

 his edition ( with Redlich ) of the ' selected works' ( 9 vols. 

 1884 sq. ). See Er inner un/t 'en, by Herder's widow ( 1830 ) ; 

 the Lebennbild, by his son Emil ( 1840-47 ) ; and collections 

 of his Letters. The standard Life is Haym's (2 vols. 

 1880-85 ) ; but see shorter lives by Kuhnemann ( Munich, 

 1894 ), Jorel ( Paris, 1875), and Xevinson (London, 1884). 



.Jos MARIA DE, French poet, born 

 in Cuba of a wealthy house 22d November 1842, 

 came in boyhood to France, where he was 

 educated, and where with short intervals he 

 subsequently lived. He printed occasional poems, 

 sonnets, &c. for private circulation, and though a 

 Spaniard born, he gradually came to be reckoned 

 one of the most gifted and accomplished of French 

 poets. A collection, Les Trophees, published in 

 1894, deals largely with the Conquistadores. He 

 was admitted to the Academic in 1895. 



Heredity* the organic relation between gen- 

 erations especially between parents and offspring. 

 All offspring produced by sexual reproduc- 

 tion, from a male and a female organism, owe 

 half of their essential (nuclear) material to each 

 parent. Therefore through successive generations 

 there persists a constancy of likeness or stability of 

 type, as expressed in the familiar saying that ' like 

 begets like.' Besides this general resemblance 

 between offspring and parent, there is frequently 

 a reappearance of minute features, idiosyncrasies, 

 and peculiar traits ; yet this is not inconsistent 

 with the occurrence of variations, which are in part 

 due to the twofold origin of the offspring, and force 

 us to modify the familiar saying into ' like tends to 

 beget like.' In many cases, moreover, the offspring 

 exhibits not only parental, but grand-parental or 

 ancestral characteristics, which when very pro- 

 nounced or remote are called 'Atavisms' (q.v. ) or 

 'reversions.' Nor is the inheritance confined to 

 normal characters, for diseased, pathological, or 

 abnormal conditions of parents or grand-parents 

 often reappear in the offspring, though this ^ re- 

 appearance is not always due to transmission. 

 Characteristics acquired by the parents, not as out- 

 crops of their innate constitution, but as the results 

 of use and disuse, or as dints from the environment, 

 often reappear, though there is lack of evidence 

 that they are transmitted. Finally, throughout 

 successive generations, there is a tendency to sus- 

 tain the specific average, by the continued approxi- 

 mation of exceptional forms towards the mean of 

 the species. 



Denials. While a few have lieen so misguided by 

 prejudice as to maintain that there was no trans 

 mission at all, and while a few have exaggerated 

 beyond all credence the undeniable tendency of 

 similar work and surroundings to make offspring 

 like their parents, there is no scepticism of any 

 importance except that which denies the trans- 



