238 PROBLEMS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION 



Potential But we must not lose sight of a very encouraging fact that a 

 an stature mar ^ e< ^ distinction is to be drawn between the physique of the 

 race and the actual physique attained by the individuals who 

 represent it. The germ-plasm, as Weismann has made clear, 

 leads to a great extent a life apart. The line of descent in a 

 family is thus largely independent of the representatives of the 

 family. The line is like a string of beads to use Mr Galton's 

 simile and an individual is a pendant from one of them. True, 

 it is difficult to believe that the health of the whole organism has 

 no effect upon the reproductive cells. Still nature, intent upon 

 the continuance of the species, seems not to allow them to share 

 to the full the sufferings of the individual who is the trustee and 

 guardian of the race. Their vigour remains, when, to use 

 Weismann's term, the soma is weakened and impoverished. We 

 must, therefore, be careful to define the word carefully when 

 we speak of the degradation of the poorest of our town popula- 

 tion. It is a degradation of the individuals and not of the race. 

 That this is no fanciful distinction is shown by the fact that the 

 Jews have emerged from the squalid life of the Ghettos in many 

 ways a stronger race than the peoples among whom they live. 

 It is in fact the Ghetto life to which they owe their strength. 

 None but the strong could survive under such conditions. To 

 apply this to the subject of this section, we must recognise that 

 there is for each individual a potential and an actual stature. 

 The stature of the race is the potential stature of the individuals 

 that compose it, and if a foul environment dwarfs a particular 

 generation, the next may, nevertheless, attain to the full de- 

 velopment or nearly to it. This might be proved by experiment. 

 If a child, untainted with the worst diseases, but sprung from a 

 stock apparently as degraded as any in London, were from the 

 first placed in a favourable environment, then there is reason to 

 believe that he would attain to a physique of an utterly different 

 order from that of his parents. Even when the experiment is 

 made with boys already in their teens, the improvement is very 

 great. But a perfect experiment of the kind suggested requires 

 more than one generation. From conception to birth a child is a 

 parasite on its mother. She is its whole environment. The un- 



