OUR NATURAL INHERITANCE 49 



It is unnecessary to linger any longer over prelimin- 

 aries, provided it be clear that it is only for purposes of 

 convenience that we can separate o& organism, inherit- 

 ance, environment, and function. An organism cannot 

 live without an environment ; function is action and 

 reaction between organism and environment ; the 

 organism and its inheritance are, to begin with, one ; 

 heredity is the organic relation between a creature and 

 its ancestry. All this is biologically commonplace ; 

 we separate off these ' aspects ' for convenience of study. 

 But the trouble is that when we pass to the problems of 

 human Hfe we either ignore the biological fundamentals 

 altogether, and imagine, or act as if we imagined, that 

 human children can be rightly reared in inhuman 

 environment, or we lay emphasis on one factor, and make 

 a fetish of it, out of relation to the others, as when we 

 say that if we could only put an end to this or that 

 pernicious function then all would be well with mankind. 

 The condonation of the second error is that different 

 aspects of betterment appeal to different minds and 

 that few people can do more than one thing at a time. 

 None the less we must bear in mind that the realities 

 are living creatures acting and reacting in certain sur- 

 roundings, and not only affiliated to ancestors but 

 responsible for descendants. 



§ 2. The Elements of Our Inheritance 

 Inheriting suggests an heir and a legacy, but our 

 inheritance is at first the whole of us. As will after- 

 wards become clear, it is not very accurate to continue 



