Conclusion. 387 



of the materials constituting the organism of both parent and child, 

 and in the division of this substance at reproduction. Heredity 

 is really, therefore, partial identity. Thus we have been enabled, 

 precisely topographically, as it were to define the position of 

 our subject with reference to all other psychological studies. 

 Heredity belongs to the science of the relations between the 

 physical and the moral; it is one form of the influence of the 

 physical over the moral ; it is therefore a fraction of one great 

 branch of that science. 



The study of consequences led us to practical questions. 

 Heredity transmits, preserves, accumulates. Is the result of this 

 to create intellectual and moral habits that all progress prepares 

 further progress, all decadence further decadence ? Two solutions 

 occurred to us with regard to the general consequences of heredity, 

 the one radical and hypothetical, and the other positive. The 

 first, which attributes to heredity a creative part, explains thereby 

 the very genesis of our faculties ; the second, which attributes 

 to it the conservative part, explains thereby the development of 

 our faculties. We accepted the first, as any bolder solution seemed 

 premature. 



The question of the consequences appeared to us to be really 

 dominated by this general law, which is verified by experience the 

 transmission of any acquired modification. When the fact of 

 mental heredity shall be better known ; when our vague intuitions 

 of this matter have become evident truths then its social import- 

 ance, as yet hardly suspected, will be better understood; and 

 many a question which it were now idle to discuss will perhaps 

 arise and furnish their own solution. Yet it is hardly possible for 

 even the most inattentive observer not to ask whether, if the laws 

 of psychological heredity were known, man might not employ 

 them for his own intellectual and moral improvement, thus bending 

 to his own purposes, here as elsewhere, the forces of nature. It 

 is now some forty years since Spurzheim and others put the 

 question, whether one day we might not be able to foresee the 

 intellectual character of children, the psychological constitution 

 of their parents being known, and whether 'we could not easily 

 create races of able men, by employing the means adopted for 

 the production of different species of animals.' 



