142 ETHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



felt till too late ; in many it is feeble and slow, and re 

 stricted in range. The men with the liveliest conscience 

 are not always the most moral, and those are to be envied 

 in whom it attains the proper mean between defect and 

 excess. The formed character of every individual is the 

 product of his inherited character and the influences to 

 which it has been exposed, and the amount contributed 

 by each factor will vary with the strength of his inherited 

 character and the degree of constraint imposed on him by 

 his surroundings. A Jesuit seminary will contribute a much 

 larger proportion than an English public school, but even 

 that will produce no moral characteristic of which some 

 rudiment or predisposition did not exist at birth. A human 

 child who has been brought up with a litter of wolves will still 

 be human. The influence of education on the conscience 

 is comparable with its influence on the intellect. No man 

 can be either a philosopher or an engineer without the 

 appropriate education ; but it is not by that that his 

 fitness to be either is determined. No general formula 

 has been ascertained for determining the proportions 

 contributed respectively by heredity and education, and, 

 when general views are expressed on the subject, they are 

 merely opinions. 



The date of its first appearance affords no safe indication 

 as to whether a reaction is inherited or acquired. The 

 reactions to stimuli depend altogether on the character 

 of the mechanism which receives them, and what will elicit 

 no response at an earlier period of life will at once set up 

 a reaction as soon as the appropriate organ has been suffi 

 ciently developed. The special emotions of adolescence 

 are as purely hereditary as the instinct to seek a mother s 

 breast. Again, there are differences in the degree of readi 

 ness in purely inherited instincts. Some reactions will 

 be excited on the first application of a stimulus ; others will 

 require it to be many times repeated. But both are equally 

 hereditary in the sense that had they not occurred in the 

 ancestors they would not have occurred in the offspring; and 

 equally dependent on experience in the sense that no 



