328 THE PRINCIPLES OF HEREDITY 



material growth, as would throw the kindred but smaller 

 and weaker people of Japan into the shade. The mental 

 habits of the Chinese would be changed, and with that 

 change would come an alteration in much besides. Just 

 such a change not so great perhaps because we are more 

 enlightened, but great enough would occur in England 

 were elder boys and university students taught the main 

 facts and conclusion of heredity, instead of the words and the 

 relationship between the words of a dead language. Their 

 labours, moreover, would be full of interest. No longer 

 would they toil in misery at a task against which instinct 

 and reason alike rebel. 1 



513. However with education controlled as at present, 

 and in the face of widespread prejudice and ignorance, there 

 can be no hope that any considerable change in mental 

 training will occur for many years. Before then the nation 

 will have lost and suffered much. The most we may expect 

 with any degree of probability is that the authorities who 

 control the education of the great majority of scientific 

 men will perceive the necessity of including a tolerable 

 knowledge of heredity in the mental equipment of medical 

 students. At present the science is not taught at all to 

 them, or taught so casually that no student gains an 

 adequate knowledge of or realizes the importance of the 

 subject with which he is dealing. There does not exist 

 even a text-book to which the independent inquirer may 

 turn. 



514. The teaching of heredity involves the inculcation of 

 such facts as that the world is more than six thousands of 

 years old, and that the various species of plants and animals, 

 including men, have arisen by evolution from pre-existing 

 forms. Doctrinal objections, therefore, may be raised against 

 it even by medical men. But that these things are true is 

 definitely known, and as true they are accepted by every 

 reasonably- educated man. That opposition on such grounds 

 to them is possible demonstrates very forcibly the necessity 



1 A very thorough acquaintance with the essentials of heredity could 

 be acquired in a tenth of the time devoted to classics. I do not mean to 

 suggest, therefore, that the study of this science alone ought to supplant 

 that of classics. An adequate study of many other subjects which are 

 now not taught, or very scrappily taught for example, physics could 

 be added to the school and university curriculum, the great object in 

 every case being to bestow on the student such a knowledge of his en- 

 vironment, and such powers of utilizing his knowledge, that in after 

 years he shall be capable of more than routine, and have pleasures 

 other than those afforded by mere sport. 



