176 THE CHILD AND HEREDITY 



mean very different things to different children, and the 

 education of the child into a virtuous manhood may be 

 much more difficult in one case than in another. But that 

 such education is more or less possible in the case of every 

 rational being I must believe. The possession of a 

 rational life implies it, or, rather, I should say that the 

 possibility or potency of such a life implies it ; for the 

 possibility is turned into actuality, and the powers are 

 realised only in their interaction with the environment. 



The conclusion to which we are thus led, by our con- 

 sideration of heredity in its relation to the child, is that 

 character cannot be_tran_smitted. The vital energy which 

 passes from parent to. child is variable in absolute quantity 

 and in the relative strength of its constituents. And I do 

 not believe that there is reasonable room for doubt that a 

 degenerate parentage brings weakened offspring ; or that, 

 in this restricted and metaphorical sense, the sins of the 

 fathers are visited upon the children. But in every other 

 sense, except this of varying capacities awaiting realisation 

 by actual contact with circumstance, each child is a new 

 beginning ; and the way to virtue, so far as internal condi- 

 tions are concerned, is as open to the child of the wicked 

 as it is to the child of the virtuous. The whole stress, 

 therefore, falls upon the environment, and above all else 

 upon the social environment, into which from birth the 

 child enters. And the essential element in thatjgnviron- 

 mentjsnot the precept_but the^practice of those injQjwhose. 

 hands the care of the child falls. For not only does the 

 child measure the significance of the precept by reference 

 to the practical life which it observes around it, but it is this 

 practical life which constitutes the constant, normal en- 

 vironment, the very air it draws in with every breath. 



