LESSONS OF EVOLUTION 607 



vigour. But now it can be done with fuller and finer knowl- 

 edge. Certain it is that there can be no secure progress 

 which does not recognise that Heredity, the past living on 

 in the present, is the first Fate, and the greatest of the three. 

 " Bless not thyself," said Sir Thomas Browne, '' that th<m 

 wert born in Athens; but, among thy multiplied acknowl- 

 edgments, lift up one hand to heaven that thou wert born 

 of honest parents, that modesty, humanity, and veracity 

 lay in the same egg, and came into the world with thee." 



§ 3. Nurture the Second Determinant of Life. 



The second determinant of life is Nurture — all manner 

 of environing influences, whether due to surroundings, or 

 to use and disuse, or to the social fabric. This nurture is 

 largely within control — especially for the more prosperous, 

 or more enlightened, or more idealistically ambitious mem- 

 bers of the community ; and the fullness of expression that 

 the inheritance finds in development depends in part on 

 the abundance and appropriateness of the nurture. If the 

 nurture be opulent the buds may blossom richly. Conversely, 

 buds which are detrimental may be kept dormant if the ap- 

 propriate wakening stimulus be withheld; and for the in- 

 dividual at least this may be well. More than a few of 

 us may have to confess with the poet that wo are " stuccoed 

 all over with quadrupeds", including some reptiles; but, 

 happily, these may remain in a starved state if we refuse 

 them the appropriate nurture. Thus '' the ape and tiger " 

 in Man may die,— in the individual at least. It comes to 

 this, that the controllability of nurture gives us some hold 

 on the expression of our inheritance. We cannot alter the 

 number of talents that we get to start with, but we certainly 

 have some freedom in our trading with them. Not very 



