324 SOCIAL HEREDITY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION 



Individual Responsibility 



Another result of the recognition of the signifi- 

 cance of social heredity is to restore to us the feel- 

 ing of individual responsibility, which Weismann's 

 theory of heredity and the discussion of eugenics 

 have tended to destroy. If each individual is the 

 result of his inherited tendencies alone, and if his 

 heritage is fixed by the unalterable laws of inherit- 

 ance, there seems to be little encouragement toward 

 individual striving. Our inherited characters are 

 fixed by the mating of our parents, and the charac- 

 ters that we may transmit to our own offspring are 

 similarly fixed when we choose our own mates. By 

 the principles of organic heredity, nothing that we 

 may subsequently do can modify these fixed char- 

 acters. Our eugenists tell us that an evil trait may 

 persist in a family for generations in spite of any 

 kind of training, and even in spite of mating with 

 one in whom the weakness is lacking. The laws of 

 organic heredity make it hopeless to strive by any 

 kind of life either to eradicate a weakness or to intro- 

 duce strength into the nature of our children. Per- 

 sonal responsibility thus tends to vanish entirely as 

 we become filled with this conception. We do not 

 seem to be responsible for our own acts inasmuch 

 as they are determined by our inherited traits, nor 

 are we responsible for our children's inheritance, 

 since it is beyond our reach. The life one lives seems 

 to weigh as nothing and to be without any influence. 

 With these conceptions it would seem to be a matter 

 of wisdom that attention should be concentrated 

 simply upon the matter of choosing one's mate, as 

 eugenics are at the present time insisting. All of 



