THE CHILD AND HEREDITY 173 



become fixed, whether in the ways of vice or of virtue, to 

 that degree all the new forces which play upon him either 

 leave him unaffected or simply re-inforce his existing 

 tendencies. This is the reason why so little can be done 

 to assist the adult wastrels ; and why the very means of 

 well-doing are turned by them into instruments of deeper 

 corruption. Such is the power of character, once formed, 

 over that which plays upon it, that, whether it be good or 

 evil, it turns it into its own substance. And social re- 

 formers, as their experience grows, tend more and more 

 to despair of doing anything real for adults, and to turn 

 their forces of improvement more and more upon the 

 child. 



Itfollows in the next place that what a child inherits 

 are not actual tendencies but ^potential faculties. Biologists 

 sometimes speak as if it were possible for parents to trans- 

 mit tendencies or propensities towards good or evil to their 

 offspring ; and we have already seen something of the way 

 in which this conception has entered into the common 

 belief and practice of our times. It arises from the direct 

 application of natural categories jo moral facts. Goodness 

 is considered as a " variation," and as capable of transmis- 

 sion through inheritance, as if it were an organic structure. 

 It is supposed to develop from age to age in a race, " the 

 race which has much of it having an advantage over that 

 which has little." In short, it is made subject to ordinary 

 evolution. Hence, in accordance with the germ-plasm 

 theory, goodness should be present potentially in the 

 lowest organism. "If goodness appeared in the world 

 only in evolution's latest stage, we may nevertheless infer 

 its existence before life began upon the earth. The Dar- 

 winian believes that no new power or faculty has been 



