Moral Consequences of Heredity. 345 



all things is mechanism or free-will. To this end the physiological 

 and psychological phenomenon of generation would have to be 

 without mystery, whereas such is not the case. On the other 

 hand, when Schopenhauer and his followers assert that free-will 

 lies without the categories of causality, time and space, by the aid 

 of which we think, and that these forms of thought are inappli- 

 cable to it because that in its essence it is not a phenomenon, 

 and therefore cannot fall into the universal concatenation they 

 advance a metaphysical hypothesis, perhaps true, certainly in- 

 genious and specious, but for which verification is impossible ; 

 they offer a possibility as a reality. 



But taking, as we do, the humble standpoint of experience, 

 we can only say that if character what Kant calls empiric 

 character is inherited, it is so only with many exceptions ; that 

 this heredity is even harder to prove than that of a simple mode 

 of psychical activity; and that in proportion as we descend 

 towards the unconscious, which is the groundwork of the character, 

 this affirmation becomes more and more hypothetical, without, 

 however, being stripped of probability. 



We can now reach a practical conclusion. The basis of morals 

 is responsibility ; can it be said that heredity suppresses this ? 

 There is no universal reply to this question, but we may reduce all 

 the particular cases under two principal heads. 



One of these comprises all those cases where inherited ten- 

 dencies do not possess an irresistible character. Man inherits 

 from his ancestors certain modes of sensation and of thought, and 

 is therefore disposed to will, and consequently to act as they did. 

 This heredity of impulses and tendencies constitutes an order of 

 internal influences, in the midst of which the individual lives, but 

 which he has the power of judging and of overcoming. They do 

 not, any more than any other internal or external circumstances, 

 imply the suppression of free-will, the abolition of the personal 

 factor, or the irresistible necessity of acts. 'In a word, it is for 

 heredity, as for spontaneity, to give a more or less sensible inclina- 

 tion to good or evil, and consequently more or less disposition to 

 commit faults. But vice or virtue does not depend on either; vice 

 or virtue is not self-existent they do not consist in the fatal 

 nature of the internal or external impulses acting on us, but in the 



