422 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE IN THE CENTURY. 



portant in our eyes. If the results of nurture are 

 not inherited, it is all the more urgent that we should 

 secure that the influences making for evolution 

 should be brought to bear upon each successive gen- 

 eration. " Is my grandfather's environment not my 

 heredity ? " the American asks. Well, if not, let me 

 secure my grandfather's environment if it made for 

 progress, and flee from it if it tended elsewhere. Is 

 nurture not inherited ? — perhaps it is just as well, 

 for we are novices at nurturing even yet. Is nature 

 alone inherited ? — then we are saved from undue 

 pessimism when we think of the harmful functions 

 and environments which disfigure our civilisation. 

 Is there not some result if we are forced to the con- 

 viction that, to sustain and improve the standard of 

 our race, we must bend our energies more and more 

 to the development (in the true sense) of our func- 

 tion and environment. At the same time, there is 

 no denying the thought that man is a slowly repro- 

 ducing, slowly varying organism, and that for prog- 

 ress which is really organic — progress that is in 

 nature — ^we must wait patiently. 



On the negative side — of inaction — the scientific 

 decision ought, however, to have some effect, ^o 

 longer should we hear the still frequent assertion: 

 " Ah, he has got his father's nature, it does not mat- 

 ter much what he learns, or what he does, or where 

 he lives, he will come all right out of it," forgetting 

 that what is called the father's nature is much more 

 than his inheritance, it is in adult life the in- 

 heritance plus all the results of acquired char- 

 acters. No longer should we hear the extreme pes- 

 simism in regard to the decadence — the debacle — 

 the abyss — towards which those who fix their atten- 

 tion on the disagreeable acquired characters of our 



