THE CHILD AND HEREDITY 161 



all else will follow in due course. Moral disease, thinks 

 the more militant socialist, will disappear under the new 

 external conditions of which he dreams as surely (though 

 perhaps more slowly) as physical diseases tend to disappear 

 with better sanitation. Nor does this view lack some 

 evidence to support it. There is no denying the signifi- 

 cance of environment in moral matters, any more than in 

 physical. 



Not only are the influence of environment and the sig- 

 nificance of heredity alternately accentuated and minimised, 

 but these two factors of character are held to be opposed 

 to each other. For it seems too evident to admit of dispute 

 that the more the child brings with it into the world 

 through the hereditary transmission of its parents' qualities, 

 the less can external environment affect it for evil or good ; 

 and, vice versa, that the more there lies in the power of 

 outward circumstance the less the significance of the 

 inherited qualities. And it is this supposed opposition 

 which has led to the persistent and apparently hopeless 

 effort to determine the limits of their respective influences 

 upon child life. What practical reformer would not prize 

 highly the discovery of the line of compromise which would 

 guide his endeavour and show what he may, and may not, 

 attempt for the objects of his care? 



On this account those who inquire into these matters 

 with the dispassionate continuity of the scientific investi- 

 gator listen with keen interest to the deliverances of Biology 

 in its comparatively simpler field. It is felt, in particular, 

 that the controversy raised, mainly perhaps by Weismann, 

 as to the inheritance by the offspring of the acquired char- 

 acteristics of the parent, is of profound significance. That 

 controversy is still so far from being settled that we are 



