ON HEREDITY 
together to help us form our judgment of a single 
human being with whom we are about to deal. 
As the weeks have rolled into months, and as the 
months have melted into years, new impressions 
have arisen to crowd out the old; stronger impres- 
sions have supplanted the weak, bigger impressions 
have taken the place of lesser ones—but the old 
impressions are always there—always blending 
themselves into our judgments, our ambitions, our 
desires, our ideals—always ready and waiting, 
apparently, to single themselves out and appear 
before us brilliantly whenever the proper com- 
bination of conditions arises. 
So, too, with the seed. 
Every drought that has caused hardship to its 
ancestors is recorded as a tendency in that seed. 
Every favoring condition which has brought a 
forbear to greater productiveness is there as a 
tendency in that seed. 
Every frost, every rain, every rise of the 
morning sun has left its imprint in the line of 
ancestry and helped to mold tendencies to be 
passed from plant to plant. 
Beneath the wooden looking, hard sheathed 
covering of the seed, there is confined a bundle of 
tendencies—an infinite bundle—and nothing more. 
One tendency stronger than another perhaps— 
a good tendency suppressing a bad tendency—or 
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