HEREDITY 215 



love the physiological conditions are sacrificed to 

 the economical, and with them the future of the 

 family. Money often alters the conditions and 

 affection between parents and children, brothers 

 or friends. For money, states declare war, which, 

 as has been said, has robbery as its object and 

 murder as its method. But monstrosities are not 

 merely moral but physical also, and reach all 

 social classes. Nature is relentless towards those 

 who trample under foot her laws, and social con- 

 solidation is so great that often it is the innocent 

 offspring that condemns social violence. How 

 often in the streets, in the hospitals, or in families 

 do we see poor, innocent beings, sickly, weak, and 

 at times with such deformities that they look like 

 the grimace by which suffering humanity reveals 

 the martyrdom of her womb ! Here it may be said 

 that man is the slave of his own guilt. 



Psychic Heredity 



We have already seen in psychic adaptation that 

 it is a reflex of the outside world, and that from 

 the lowest animal to man the ego has always been 

 progressing and trying to acquire an ever closer 

 contact with the external. In this increasing 

 adaptation present man has not reached his term 

 of evolution ; he represents only a moment in the 



