164 THE CHILD AND HEREDITY 



elusion. "In the lowest known organism, in which not 

 even a nucleus can be seen, is found potentially all that 

 makes the world varied and beautiful." 1 More strictly, 

 perhaps, biologists seek to find this potentiality, that is, 

 they proceed on the hypothesis that it is there, and are 

 engaged in discovering the conditions and manner of its 

 presence. 



But structure and function go together and, so far as 

 the general observation of animal life shows, develop part 

 passu at all its stages. And if it be true that the promise 

 of the human structure is latent in the lowest organism, 

 it would seem that the promise of its functions lies there 

 likewise. No doubt we must distinguish between the 

 psychical and the physical. However they are related they 

 cannot be identified. But that does not prevent us from 

 regarding both as developed forms of the lowest life, the 

 one on the side of its functions and the other on the side 

 of their physical condition. Indeed we must derive both 

 or neither, unless we are prepared to destroy all intelligible 

 correlation between what an organism does and what it is. 

 Hence it follows that the mental powers of man are brought 

 within the sweep of natural evolution ; and the child is 

 determined at birth to go no further as a rational not 

 less than as a physical being. No doubt, as in other cases, 

 the environment, or, as we may say in this context, experi- 

 ence may furnish the means of modifying the inherited 

 powers, but it cannot initiate. The child can become only 

 what it was potentially at the first. 



Now, at first sight, this hypothesis seems fatal to the 

 possibilities of ethics and religion and all the higher 

 interests of man ; and to limit greatly the range within 

 1 Headley's Problems of Evolution, p. 39. 



