306 EVOLUTION AND MAN S PLACE IN NATURE 



Beyond these general aspects of physical heredity 

 in human history, there are the numerous and pain 

 ful illustrations of hereditary disease. If an enfeebled 

 constitution is liable to malady, if it gives lodgment 

 to the seeds of disease, it is impossible that the germ- 

 plasm should escape contamination. If we grant the 

 fusion of two hereditary tendencies in every ferti 

 lised ovum, this hereditary result is inevitable. The 

 human race, notwithstanding its elevation in the 

 scale, notwithstanding all the effective things written 

 by evolutionists as to the flower of the ages, has not 

 been exempted, even in the smallest degree, from the 

 laws of heredity applicable to organism. 1 The phy 

 sique of the parents, whether high or low, must tell 

 on the children. The law of inheritance is as truly 

 fixed law, as any other law of physical existence. 

 The facts, even the most painful which social life 

 presents, must be regarded and interpreted as facts 

 concerned with organic life. The conclusions of or 

 dinary observers, and of specialists, concur in support 

 of this position. 



But it is obviously impossible to end our study of the 

 subject thus. We have before us abundant evidence 

 for the distinctness of two natures in man. What, 

 then, do we mean by responsibility in human life? 

 We never speak of it in the case of the animals, when 

 we note long tails, or a tail falling away, or when we 

 remark on shortened legs, or atrophy among the 

 lizards of southern Europe. Yet we never fart to 

 speak of responsibility in human life. Our medical 

 advisers are, of all men, the most clear and explicit 

 here. This is their testimony to a two-fold nature 



1 On Phenomena of Disease, see Darwin s Descent of Man, p. 7. 



