360 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



generation and development of that which some will 

 consider my total being, and others a most potent factor 

 of my total being the living, speaking organism which 

 now addresses you? As stated at the beginning of this 

 discourse, my physical and intellectual textures were 

 woven -for me, not by me. Processes in the conduct or 

 regulation of which I had no share have made me what 

 I am. Here, surely, if anywhere, we are as clay in the 

 hands of the potter. It is the greatest of delusions to 

 suppose that we come into this world as sheets of white 

 paper on which the age can write anything it likes, 

 making us good or bad, noble or mean, as the age 

 pleases. The age can stunt, promote, or pervert pre- 

 existent capacities, but it cannot create them. The 

 worthy Kobert Owen, who saw in external circumstances 

 the great moulders of human character, was obliged to 

 supplement his doctrine by making the man himself 

 one of the circumstances. It is as fatal as it is cow- 

 ardly to blink facts because they are not to our taste. 

 How many disorders, ghostly and bodily, are trans- 

 mitted to us by inheritance? In our courts of law, 

 whenever it is a question whether a crime has been 

 committed under the influence of insanity, the best 

 guidance the judge and jury can have is derived from 

 the parental antecedents of the accused. If among 

 these insanity be exhibited in any marked degree, the 

 presumption in the prisoner's favour is enormously en- 

 hanced, because the experience of life has taught both 

 judge and jury that insanity is frequently transmitted 

 from parent to child. 



I met, some years ago, in a railway carriage the 

 governor of one of our largest prisons. He was evi- 

 dently an observant and reflective man, possessed of 

 wide experience gathered in various parts of the world, 

 and a thorough student of the duties of his vocation. 



