364 Heredity. 



IL 



The family is the molecule of the social world. So soon as it 

 is constituted society may take its rise. Families unite, associate 

 together, amalgamate, and are perpetuated by thus commingling: 

 the body social is the result of this fusion. After it has passed 

 out of its embryonic phase the hunter and the nomad states 

 and when the first forms of civilized life are beginning to be 

 produced, then heredity appears as a social and political element 

 in the institution of caste. 



Caste is the result of various causes difference of race, con- 

 quest, religious creeds but everywhere its groundwork is the 

 belief in heredity. Caste is exclusive : there is no entrance into 

 it except by birth ; no art, no merit, no violence avail to bursr 

 open the doors of caste ; it reigns supreme over the destinies of 

 the individual. Here we find heredity invested with its constant 

 characteristics, viz., conservatism and stability. Nothing is more 

 stagnant than nations that have accepted caste. 



In India we find the ideal of this arrangement, for nowhere else 

 is it more firmly grounded, more compactly constituted, or more 

 minutely regulated. Moral heredity, its natural basis, is explicitly 

 recognized in the sacred laws of Manu. 



' A woman always brings into the world a son gifted with the 

 same qualities as he who begat him.' 



' We may know by his acts the man that belongs to a low class, 

 or who is born of a disreputable mother.' 



' A man of low birth has the evil dispositions of his father, or 

 of his mother, or of both he never can hide his descent.' l 



Hindu law, as all are aware, admits four original castes : the 

 Brahman, born from the mouth of Brahma; the Kshatriya, sprung 

 from his arm ; the Vaishya, from his thigh, and Sudr from his 

 feet ' The priestly, the military, and the commercial castes are 

 all regenerate ; the fourth, or servile caste, has only one birth. 8 

 There is no fifth caste.' 



1 Manava Darma Shastra, book x. 



' Ibid, book x. ch. iv. According to the Hindu creed, to attain to supreme 

 felicity (Nirvana), one must be born again successively into the noble castes, in- 

 cluding that of the Brahmans. The latter complacently tell of a devout king 



