HEREDITY 497 



our inheritance may be made to unfold, and the buds of bad 

 qualities may be kept more or less dormant. 



(6) There is an undeniable moulding power in changes 

 of function and environment, and though the resulting modi- 

 fications of our plastic organism do not seem to be genetically 

 persistent, i.e., transmissible as such or in any representa- 

 tive degree, they can be re-impressed, if desirable, on each 

 successive generation. This is part of the biology of educa- 

 tion. 



(7) Lastly, it must be recognised that in our social 

 heritage, which is as supreme as our natural inheritance 

 is fundamental, there are ever-widening opportunities for 

 transcending the trammels of protoplasm. Wherefore, Sur- 

 sum corda: Let us lift up our hearts. 



Mr. Bernard Shaw speaks of " the unbreathable atmos- 

 phere of fatalism which is the characteristic blight of Dar- 

 winism ". We have sought to show that as regards heredity 

 there is air to breathe. It appears to us, moreover, that the 

 fatalists assume a knowledge which they do not possess. A 

 human inheritance is a very wonderful thing; it is very 

 difficult to tell how much or how little a man has got. The 

 son is told that he is handicapped by his father's defects, 

 but it is quite possible that the father's innate defects were 

 fewer and his excellences greater than ever transpired. For 

 the fullness or sparseness of nurture determines the degree 

 of expression which the inheritance attains in development. 

 Of course there are limits. " He that will to Cupar maun 

 to Cupar." " Though thou shalt bray a fool in a mortar, 

 yet will not his folly depart from him." Our possibilities 

 are hereditarily pre-determined, but can this be said of our 

 actual personalities? The higher the organism the greater 

 its unpredictability within certain limits, the greater the 



