THE INFLUENCES OF NURTURE 119 



(2) Perhaps one is a little apt to forget that the 

 hereditary relation is even-handed. It is for better as 

 well as for worse. It secures the entailment of all 

 manner of wholesome human qualities. Nay more, 

 when we take a broad view, it is more than even-handed, 

 for there is more likelihood of the hereditary entailment 

 of the stable, the harmonious, and the integrative. 

 The dice are loaded in our favour. 



(3) There is a continual variability or creativeness 

 w^hich affords fresh raw material for progress. The 

 mould is always being broken, and the image cast over 

 again. But this metaphor is too static ; it is better 

 science to say that the little child is always leading 

 the race. Against the fact of persistent hereditary 

 resemblance has to be set the fact of variability. 



(4) We do not really know how novelties take origin. 

 We have no recipe for the production of organic move- 

 ments in the direction of heritable vigour or intelligence, 

 beauty or goodness. But the speculation is worth 

 considering whether beneficial changes of nurture may 

 not evoke beneficial variations in the germ-cells. We 

 know that individual children often take big strides 

 after they have had a change to a new environment — ■ 

 a new world of liberating stimuli. Is it ridiculous to 

 suppose that this may be true of the implicit potential 

 organisms we call germ-cells ? As Professor E. B. Wilson, 

 one of the wisest of living biologists, has said, " In the 

 present defective sfcate of our knowledge we may w,ell 

 grant that there may be many a thing between germ- 

 cell and body that is not dreamed of in our biological 



