TENDENCY TO BREED TRUE 69 



§ 2. The Tendency to Breed True 



Relative Stability of Specific Characters.— Belonging as 

 we do to a race which seems to have varied very slowly within 

 historic times, we have not far to seek for good examples of 

 what is the biggest fact of inheritance — the stability of specific 

 characters throughout a long series of generations. If we 

 exclude monstrosities due to arrested development and the 

 like, if we set aside the numerous malformations and deforma- 

 tions induced on the bodies of individuals by peculiarities of 

 function and environment, the stability of the essential human 

 characteristics for many millennia is obvious. This racial 

 inertia, which holds in some measure at least for mental charac- 

 teristics, is at once the hope and the despair of the social 

 reformer. 



If we pass from general specific characters to those of par- 

 ticular races, we read the same story. Not only do the salient 

 characteristics of the skull persist within a narrow radius of 

 variability, but the same is true of minor features : the oblique 

 eyes of the Japanese, the oval face of the Esquimaux, the 

 woolly hair of the Negro and the Jewish nose. 



Conservative Types of Organisation.— But the persist- 

 ence of structural and mental characters as illustrated in man- 

 kind is but a tale of yesterday when compared with the persist- 

 ence of type exhibited by many animals which have lived on 

 apparently unchanged for many millions of years. Whatever 

 may be true in regard to the soft parts, of which no record 

 remains, there seem to be no differences in hard parts dis- 

 tinguishing the Lingula of to-day from those of the Silurian 

 ages ; and there are other instances of what are sometimes 

 called " living fossils." The reasons for such remarkable per- 

 sistence do not now concern us, but the fact that structural 

 characters established millions of years ago are reproduced with 

 exactness at the present moment does. 



